Top five tips for effective SEO

Here are our five top tips for effective SEO:

1. Internal Linking

The SEO 'gurus' of the world swear by the power of backlinking from other blogs. Whilst this does quite a bit for your rankings, it isn't the complete package. You need to focus on internal linking as well. This involves finding a relevant anchor text in your content and linking it to another page on your site.

It's considered more convenient for the user, and therefore your site is more relevant in the eyes of Google.

2. Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are those clickable terms on a website when you start clicking on sub categories. They take you back on your journey. It's like pressing the 'Up One Level' function on your computer. It has the same effect as internal linking.

Breadcrumbs are classified as internal links by Google. Again, they'll consider your site more relevant and more convenient. The easiest way to think of these is like tunnels in a pyramid.

3. Copy Style

You've heard tips telling you to not put keywords into content if they don't fit. This should apply to anything. Remove anything which sounds clunky or awkward. Stick with Standard English and read your content out loud to yourself and see what it sounds like. Google doesn't take into account accents or colloquial speech, so leave it out.

There have been cases where something perfectly valid in real life is marked down on Google as 'low quality content'.

4. Repeat

Repeating the same keywords too often will get you accused of spamming. A site which is caught spamming is liable to being de-indexed, and it can take years for it to return. The damage is so great many sites shut down and start again.

What people don't know is any phrase can damage you and get you accused of spamming. Repeating the same phrase over and over again will land you in trouble. It doesn't apply to small words or single words. It applies to strings. Take care to check your content and ensure you aren't using the same language over and over again.

5. Join Google+

Google runs the world of search engines. It's the only engine which matters in getting your website noticed. Over the past few months, they've steadily pushed the emphasis onto Google+. Make sure you sign your business up to Google+ and publish this fact. Their algorithms pick up on this and consider sites with Google+ more important than those which aren't.

Exceptions include government websites and prominent news sites, but for the average business it can make a big difference in the long-term. Some would call this blatant and disgusting promotion from Google. It's here to stay, though, so sign up right now!