Backlinks are the fuel that drive the engine. But the actual work is done by the internal links that help visitors quickly and easily move to the content they want. Your website’s health will not only impact your SEO results but will also have a hand in how well you’re able to convert your traffic. A breadcrumb is a row of internal links at the top or bottom of the page that allows visitors to quickly navigate back to a previous section or the root page. Many breadcrumbs have the most general page (usually the root page) as the first, left-most link and list the more specific sections out to the right. When building your content, it’s important to remember to give the crawlers enough to bite into. A hundred words typically isn’t enough copy for these crawlers to read and understand what the content is about. And this content shouldn’t be stuffed with keywords either, as some search engines (as you’ll learn in later sections) punish websites for keyword stuffing.

A well-optimized Google My Business listing will form the cornerstone of your local SEO efforts

Try to ask questions in the headers of your copy. Because more and more people are typing in whole questions when using search engines, these websites are going to be looking for content with those same questions – and the assumed answers within. Add structured data markup in your website's code to include vital business information for Google to find and showcase. Links and content are certainly at the top of your SEO strategy. However, Google identified CTR and user experience as major ranking factors. Increasing one will certainly increase the other as well. If you haven’t already I highly recommend you sign up for both Google Analytics and Google Webmaster tools. Both of them are free, and provide a wealth of information about your website, who visits it and what keywords they are using which really helps when planning/assessing your SEO campaign.

Advanced detection of Google duplicates requires special efforts

With content being king, SEO may as well be queen. They both play an integral role in getting your message out and building your following. The two biggest algorithm changes that Google released to ward off the abuse of link building included the Panda and Penguin updates, which came out in 2011 and 2012, respectively (and received regular updates ever since). One cracked down on websites with poor quality content and the other penalized websites conducting spammy link building efforts. Build links as if Google didn’t even exist – links that will bring you customers in addition to rankings. Descriptions are a tagged part of your website code which describe the content on the page. Having one at all will help your rankings and having one which contains good keywords will help even more.

Improve engagement to improve rankings

After crawling your site and collecting every bit of information possible, search engines index and organize their findings in databases (think of these as massive file folders). All of these databases make up what’s called The Index. For years, many webmasters relied on sloppy techniques and used automated tools to build hundreds of backlinks every day. Monitoring tools are a huge part of ensuring only quality links are connected to your site, and give you an easy way to remove any negative or potentially harmful ones. According to SEO Consultant, Gaz Hall: "Standard engagement behaviours on SERP results, such as click-throughs and time on page, can be an indicator of freshness and relevance."

Add Facebook “Like” and “Share” buttons

It is widely understood in the industry that search engine optimization should be built in, as early as possible, to the entire site development strategy, from choosing a content management system (CMS) and planning site architecture to developing on-page content. With the constant updates to Google’s algorithm and best practices, the very same tactics that once landed you on the first page for your target keyword can now result in massive search engine penalties. Experience-based competitive audits analyze variables that would affect the experience someone has on your website compared to that of your competitors. For years, we’ve viewed off-page SEO as the process of getting more inbound links … whether that be through link exchange deals, paid links, or other link-building schemes. What do all of these tactics have in common today? Google doesn’t like them, and has been known to drop the proverbial hammer-of-SEO-doom on numerous occasions when companies get caught using them.