Things change pretty much on a daily basis in the world of SEO.

Since the announcement of Google’s AI machine learning algorithm – RankBrain – in 2015, one of the most discussed topics in SEO galleries is:

The Impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

With Google admitting RankBrain being one of the top three ranking factors, these discussions have become even more worthwhile.

Image Source: IKF Communication Creator

In past 3-4 months, we also saw a spike in the number of SERPed members asking the same question. And, multiple posts claiming 2017 as the year of AI and Voice Search, we think it is the right time to dive deeper to understand more about it.

To get more clarity on this topic, we decided to go straight to the big guns and find out what they think about it. Our team reached out to 26 SEO Experts from around the globe and asked the following question:

How do you see the increasing role of AI in search algorithms and what are your suggestions for SEOs to handle it?

The responses from each expert are compiled below.

Fasten your seat belts and get ready for an awesome ride.

1) Albert Mora

Albert Mora is the CEO and co-founder of Seolution, an SEO agency for Shopify e-commerce sites. He has been doing SEO from 1997 and has around 20 years of experience. Follow Albert on Twitter here.

Since the beginning of the Internet, artificial intelligence has played a relevant role in the operation of search engines. Logically, the algorithms have been evolving, but the fundamental underlying principle remains the same: search engines want to deliver quality search results to the users. For this reason, if you want a long term sustainable SEO results, you must think about the users first, not about the search engines. This implies:

• Quality content on your website, to meet the needs of the visitors
• Becoming the online reference for your niche or sub-niche
• Not only improving the on-site SEO but the usability of the whole website
• Do outreach, to search for links from reputable websites directly related to the topic of your website

2) Alex Chris

Digital Marketing Consultant at reliablesoft.net and author of The Complete SEO Guide. Alex has more than 15 years of experience in Digital Marketing, and he is working online since 2002. Follow Alex on Twitter here.

The AI does change the way Google is ranking websites but SEO wise, the recipe of success is pretty much the same: Great content, Avoid keyword stuffing, Add related keywords to the content and title, strong incoming links from highly trusted websites.

3) Ana Hoffman

Ana never thought Internet marketing would be her career of choice, but when she got her head around SEO, she knew she had found her passion. That passion became the centerpiece of her popular blog, Traffic Generation Café. Ana is always ready to serve her readers and subscribers, with free traffic generation strategies, like SEO, social media, blogging and other internet marketing methods. Follow her on Twitter here.

The goal of a search engine is to understand and mirror the human evaluation of a page. The more human it ‘thinks', the better it can serve humans.
AI is the ultimate answer to humanizing search engines.

In many ways, AI will make a job of an SEO a lot easier. After all, it's a lot easier for us to relate to humans than a machine algorithm.

So what are humans looking for in a search engine result?

They are looking for the best and quickest solution to their problem – their query.

Thus, knowing your audience and the keywords they use to look for a solution will remain the key to being found.
Once you are found, your goal is to be read. So make it easier for both humans and search engines and make your content more readable.

Use:

• keywords throughout your content
• descriptive headings that help a reader follow along
• bite-sized sentences
• visuals

4) Anil Agarwal

Anil Agarwal is the founder of BloggersPassion.com blog where he helps his readers in improving their search traffic and sales. You can connect him on FB here.

Although AI role is increasing in search algorithms to determine the weight of a web page, however, the user intent is still a top priority. If you're not focusing on giving the best experience to your target audience through your content, no matter what tactics you adopt, they are of no use.

So make sure to focus on people's intent rather than worrying about the AI role. That's how you succeed in the long run. As Google always say “content is king”, that's what your top priority should be.

5) Ashley Faulkes

Ashley is obsessed with SEO and WordPress. He is also the founder of Mad Lemmings. When he is not busy helping clients get higher on Google he can be found doing crazy sports in the Swiss Alps (or eating too much chocolate – a habit he is trying to break). Follow Ashley on Twitter here.

Google is using AI to tune search to give the best results to the searcher. In some ways, this is not a major change, so it is not something I would recommend worrying about. It is just another evolution of Google's algorithm in the direction of filtering out the best results.

To handle this, I would just continue – providing excellent content (above the competitors) that answers the query at hand. Also, tuning things like Headlines and Meta Descriptions has been shown to have a significant impact at the moment. As Google is starting to look at user behavior and not just keywords or links.

So, if you stick to the fundamentals and stop trying to game the system you can still win – do keyword research, create great content and get some links.

6) Chris Dreyer

Chris has 12+ years of SEO experience and is the founder and CEO of Rankings.io.  He has worked with 100s of law firms as well as other businesses to help them increase leads and get more clients with search engine optimization. Follow Chris on Twitter here.

AI (or more specifically ANI for Artificial Narrow Intelligence) already plays a significant role in SEO and search.  Google’s Rankbrain has been around for a little while and is key in weighing Google’s core algorithms depending on the types of queries users enter into a search bar and the corresponding signals produced by those searches.

There is a lot of buzz around AI in the SEO community, and in the next 5-10 years, we are going to see a rapid increase in capabilities of what AI can do and how smart it gets.  That phenomenon is grounded in basic computing principles and the Law of Accelerating Returns.  The more advanced AI gets, the faster it grows.

As far as what that means for SEO I think it’s safe to predict some short term impacts (although long term I don’t think anyone has a solid idea of what’s going to happen).  In the near term (i.e. 5-10 years or sooner), I think we will see a lot of loopholes for SEO closed.  Right now algorithms are pretty good at spotting link spam and other black hat tactics.  AI is going to make it much, much harder if not impossible to game a search engine.

Another thing that could happen is that sites will need to become much more niche-focused as AI works to sort out what are bad sites and what are good sites.  A lot of machine learning is based on existing examples fed to a machine.  For example, Rankbrain has to classify websites so that it can compare them to what it knows to be ‘good’ and what it knows to be ‘bad’.  Sites that contain too much varying information (and that are not that well known in the offline world such as Wikipedia or dictionary.com) may have a much harder time ranking.  Sites that focus on a single topic area are much easier to classify and (as long as all else is equal) will have a better chance of ranking well for relevant phrases.

Lastly, in the near term, I envision SEO becoming far more technical than it is today.  If you think about it, in the beginning, it was super easy to rank well in search.  The tactics were extremely straight forward (i.e. keywords in a meta tag, any link placed anywhere from any other website helped, etc.).  Fast forward just a decade and SEO has already become much more advanced because search algorithms have become more advanced.  As search engines move closer to the realistic human analysis of websites (and beyond), SEOs will have to adapt.  We will have to understand how AI works in order to optimize sites to rank well.   

7) Chris M. Walker

Chris M. Walker was active in the Information Technology industry for over a decade. In 2013 he formed his SEO agency and rapidly expanded it to have clients in numerous industries across the United States.

Chris also runs one of the most successful SEO services and outsourcing businesses in the industry with his services featured in Source Wave and other SEO industry webinars. You can follow his blog at http://superstarmarketingonline.com.

At first glance, AI might seem intimidating to the average SEO. They may think that none of the “tricks” they use to get rankings will work. In my opinion, however, a more intelligent search engine algorithm will only benefit an SEO professional. The key is for them to change the way they think. Instead of thinking from the perspective of an SEO they should think as a site or business owner. What actions would a person that is launching a new, or managing an existing site take in order to increase its search engine visibility? That is how the AI will determine ranking, and that is what a smart SEO will ask themselves when developing a campaign instead of thinking about what kind of links they should build or what type of metrics a site has.

8) Craig Campbell

Craig Campbell is a UK based SEO Consultant with over 15 years experience in the industry. Craig is now focussing a lot more time providing training courses and tutorials online to share his experience with others looking to learn more about Digital Marketing with many FREE tutorials on his blog. Follow Craig on Twitter here.

I think as always the SEO game is changing and AI being used by the search engines has resulted in many minor changes over the short term. However, it's not like AI is something new, it's just getting better and more advanced. Which as a result means that that SEO's out there who use techniques that are maybe a little black hat may get caught out quicker. So anyone using tactics like that will have to be careful on what footprints they leave.

SEO has changed a lot over the years from the days of ramming sites with content full of keywords and any link counted, to a point where the search engines had to evolve and deal with those using automated processes to build links and all of that type of thing. There are folks who want to use spun content and all of this type of things, and it's becoming easier for search engines to identify that with AI and the other things they are doing to ensure that customers who do a search get a good quality relevant website on the search results.

SEO is a game that is constantly evolving and people have to try and test different things to ensure they remain ahead of their competitors, for me using tools and software to gather my own intelligence such as competitor analysis tools and keeping on top of the game is an important part of being an SEO. I feel that the people who say AI is changing the way SEO works come's from people who are lazy, or possibly using black hat techniques and are looking for excuses because they don't want to do SEO/Marketing properly.

For myself I don't put all my eggs in one basket and rely on organic search traffic, I think doing social media, webinars and many other ways to get myself in front of other people is all part of what I call my overall marketing campaign. But I do feel it is the job of SEO and Digital Marketing experts to adapt to change.

But for me, I have adopted a much broader marketing approach, as I for one do not want to have all my leads coming from search, and some AI change results in my leads drying up, so for me building a reputation and marketing myself on multiple channels is important.

It was much easier years ago for me to rank well, by posting to every directory under the sun, I wish SEO was as easy as it was 10 years ago, but technology changes, tools change and I've adapted over the years and tried new things so I think you have to embrace those changes and work on your overall strategy.

9) David Hood

David has been doing Client SEO since 2012.  His journey to SEO is an interesting one. He struggled at first to make good money with it but figured out enough to do $140k in 2013.  His income has increased significantly every year since then.  Now he makes $40k per month and is about to hit $1 million in earnings. Learn more about his money making hacks here.

Technically, Google is a giant AI, but I don't think it is really that sophisticated yet.  Most often, it reads the text in the most important places and determines what queries your website is most relevant to based upon those high priority text locations.

With each level of sophistication, they want to add to their algorithm, the amount of computation grows exponentially.  In other words, adding a new important search engine ranking factor increases their resource needs by about 10x.

I suggest people don't spend too much time focusing on every “AI” tweak that Google makes or worrying about how close to sentient Google's AI is. Instead, I think it is more productive to spend most of your time trying to get high-quality links to pages and sites with proper simple On Page.

10) David Schneider

David is a content marketing guru and a go-to person when it comes to getting links and eyes on his content. He owns a product that is an amazing tool for blogger outreach, check it here http://ninjaoutreach.com/ . Follow Dave on Twitter here.

I think what AI brings to the table is speed. It will let them weed out other black/gray hats that have managed to dodge penalties, and they can increase the capability to recognize black/gray hat attempts. Still, I believe none of the fundamental rules changed. Google and other search engines still want the same thing: search results that give their users the best experience. As long as you stick to those fundamental rules, you’ll do okay.

11) Deepak Kanakaraju

Deepak Kanakaraju is a Digital Marketing Author, Speaker, Trainer, and Consultant. He is the founder digital marketing blog – DigitalDeepak. He also runs India's largest Digital Marketing Facebook group with 36k+ members.

There has been some form of AI in search algorithms since the beginning. But the AI is improving and becoming more complex over time. All the AI tries to mimic human intelligence in ranking websites, and in the next few years, it will come dangerously close to human-level thinking. So you have to ask yourself the question – what if a human reviewed my website? Would he/she like it? Will they rank it high on the search engines? If yes, then you do not have an issue! Do not try to game the search engines because your rankings will be wiped out in the next algorithm update.

12) Evgeniy Garkaviy

Evgeniy is an SEO consultant, Adwords certified specialist, and blogger. His expertise in online marketing has helped him to featured on many top blogs. You can check him out at www.Newsmakers.co.uk and Follow Evgeniy On Twitter here.

Whether it is “Ok Google” on Android and other Google platforms, Cortana on Windows and other Microsoft platforms, Siri on Apple platforms or Amazon’s Alexa, the trend and the enthusiasm with which AI is being pushed in search, is something SEO must tune into very quickly.

The best way for an SEO practitioner to handle the increased role of AI in search algorithm is to study each AI closely. Identify the parameters the AI use to rank sites. Once these parameters are identified, you just need to ensure your site development incorporates the factors the AI you are targeting uses for ranking sites.

14) Jason Acidre

Jason Acidre is an SEO Expert based in the Philippines. He’s the Co-founder of Xight Interactive and the author of Kaiserthesage, where he’s written dozens of guides, case studies, and tutorials on SEO strategy. Follow Jason on Twitter here.

Obviously, Google is starting to understand complex/compound queries and is also capable of serving better search results for many of these queries.

Google algorithm’s dependence on artificial intelligence and integration of different machine learning processes will only grow even more in the coming years (RankBrain is definitely just the first step).

But all these future additions will most likely aim to accomplish one goal – to satisfy searchers.

That’s why the best action to take to future-proof your site’s SEO is to focus on satisfying your target audience (especially those coming from search).

Ensure that you have the best answers for all the queries that your site’s pages are targeting to rank for. It’s imperative to optimize your site’s content to match the searcher’s intent.

Focusing on building your site’s brand is also one of the key areas you should be investing more of your efforts on, through:

• Consistently pushing out high-utility content assets that will be valuable to top, middle and bottom of your audience funnel (to build loyalty and solidify brand recognition).
• Associating your brand with other authoritative entities/publishers/sites in your space (through content partnerships and other linking opportunities).

Google search results are brand-biased for a reason (and for other popular entities as well) because people trust them. That’s why it’s very important to build on trust to really win in Search.  

14) Jordan Kasteler

Jordan Kasteler is a freelance marketing consultant, entrepreneur. Passionately innovating status quo. He has a history of entrepreneurship co-founding and serving positions in such companies as BlueGlass Interactive, an Internet marketing agency and SteelCast, a tech incubator housing several other self-started companies. His work experience ranges from in-house SEO at Overstock.com, marketing strategy at PETA, and to agency-level SEO. Jordan is also an international conference speaker, blogger, and book author of A to Z: Social Media Marketing. Check out his blog here or follow him on Twitter here.

AI will make search engines smarter in how they understand user intent and behavior. They will reward sites for good engagement while serve more relevant results based on context (e.g. device, history, location, buy cycle, time of day, etc.). Algorithms will continue to learn from themselves and adapt to become more intelligent. This will change SEO as there'll be no set of signals to optimize for as algorithms will be dynamic, customized, and ever-changing. It'll become more important than ever for SEOs to understand their audience and serve their needs. A good user experience with compelling content will no longer be semi-optional.

15) Kevin Indig

Kevin Indig currently manages SEO @ Atlassian (JIRA, Trello, Bitbucket, Confluence, Hipchat, …) and advises many brands around the globe for growth. A German implant living in the silicon valley, he has a long-standing background in startup and enterprise marketing for all sorts of industries. Follow Kevin on Twitter here.

In October, Sundar Pichai (CEO of Google) announced: “From mobile first to AI-first”. This completely disrupts SEO and is the biggest change to the field since it's existence after my mind. The impact is severe. Searchmetrics declared ranking factors dead because of this, and they're right.

The connection between AI and SEO is Hummingbird (including Rankbrain). I realized the impact when I did some competitor research for Atlassian not too long ago. I was shocked! Not every page ranking in the top10 for a high search volume keyword had a strong link profile or super long content. It was all driven by user signals. There is no guarantee anymore that you link well with a lot of (good) backlinks. There is no guarantee anymore that you rank well with a lot of words on your page.

There are three takeaways for SEOs from this:

1. User satisfaction trumps everything. That CAN mean long-form content. But it can also mean a simple widget. Or a gallery of images.

2. Traditional ranking factors mean nothing without context.  Instead, focus on industry ranking factors and compare your site directly to your competitors in every aspect. Look at what's ranking in the top10 for the keywords you want to compete for and do it better than then. In the best case, 10x better! See Ross Hudgen's article on that for reference.

3. SEO becomes even broader. Yes, you still have to make sure your site is technically optimized, and that alone can be a full-time job for more than one person. But no, just checking off a list and expecting to get a flood of organic traffic doesn't work anymore. SEOs need to make sure the design and layout are on point, they need to make sure copy is insightful but engaging, and they have to make sure ads aren't killing the brand* – all to improve user signals.

*Side Note: users burned by ads are harder to win over with SEO

16) Kulwant Nagi

Kulwant Nagi is a professional blogger, world traveler, and a speaker. On his blog BloggingCage.com, you can read tips to become an awesome blogger, get traffic on your blog and how to make money with your blog. He is running more than 20 niche blogs where his team writes about technology, health, sports, and supplements. Catch him on Twitter @kulwantnagi and Facebook @kulwantnagi.

AI is playing a big role in ranking these days. Back in the golden days, people use to trick Google by feeding keyword-rich article, making them bold, italic, underline and finally domination the top positions. But with the boom in the internet usage, Google is putting extra efforts to provide accurate content to end-user, which ultimately involves AI to make it better.

AI understands a set of patterns, user's behavior, actions and finally filter the site. If a user is landing on your site by feeding any specific query in Google and spending a lot of time on your page and clicking on many relevant links in the article, this means that you succeed in delivering the right content. But if he/she is just bouncing back after few seconds, you lost the game.

To handle Google AI and to make search engines love your blog, I would recommend reading statistics based, research based articles which help users understand the concept in a deeper way. He/she spends more time on your blog and read many related articles to that specific topic.

Including LSI keywords and voice search keywords can be a big win here. Google is moving more towards voice search now, so making your content compliment to these changes will be a big win.

17) Michael Pozdnev

Michael Pozdnev is a dreamer and a pro in SEO with 16 years of experience who wants to become your friend. His best blog post: How to Write Your First Blog Post. Follow Mike on Twitter here.

I’ve been doing SEO for 17 years already, and the news that AI will eventually control the search algorithms keep appearing every year. However, in reality, virtually nothing has changed for all this time. Usual people keep developing these algorithms. They want to help the users get the most relevant response to their questions. And if you manage to create content that fits these rules + if you have a strategy for getting external links, you’ll be on the first page of Google.

18) Mike Kawula

Mike Kawula is CEO of Social Quant, a top ranked Twitter tool by HubSpot, that helps you find the most relevant followers on Twitter. An entrepreneur whose last 3 businesses each hit 7 figures in less than 3 years with his last being ranked the 144th fastest growing company by Inc. Magazine.

He’s an author, has been featured on CNN, interviewed by Anthony Robbins and featured in over 100+ publications. Follow Mike on Twitter here.

Artificial Intelligence is clearly improving the consumer experience of searching for products and services online.

There is a complex mix of algorithms running all the time, returning search results in a fraction of a second. And each search result has an entirely different algorithm working in the background.

Search engines like Google are better than ever at sniffing out garbage content and will toss low-quality sites into the virtual landfill dumps they belong in.

My advice for any business owner or startup who wants to assure they’re not buried deep in search results is to invest (time and money) in site setup and SEO strategy.

AI analyzes your location, content, reviews, links, social proof, keywords, citations, site structure, onsite user time and behavior as ranking factors for your site.

If you want to win, stop trying to manipulate your rankings with some trending “hack” guaranteeing immediate results (there’s no such thing in SEO).

Instead, do what has always worked in business and create the best user experience possible.

You can’t go wrong by:

• Consistently produce good content around questions your prospects are asking
• Making your site accessible across whatever device your prospect wants to find you on and assure again it’s an amazing experience
• Making your site aesthetically appealing, fast, structured properly, and up to date
• Over-delivering both online and off, so your visitor wants to tell everyone on social media, in person and on every review site just how darn good you are.

19) Mike Morgan

Mike Morgan – Co-founder and head strategist at High Profile Enterprises, an award-winning SEO and Content Marketing agency based at beautiful Ohope Beach in New Zealand (look it up!).Follow him on Twitter here.

One of the big discussion points for 2017 – how will AI affect implementation of SEO?

Google has been moving toward more accurate analysis to provide better answers since its inception. AI simply gives them smarter tools to do this. Several updates have been geared toward supplying this advantage – understanding intent despite linguistic complexity and ambiguity and some easy wins in local intent are already part of the everyday experience. However, there are numerous instances where this is still failing when more complex concepts and idioms come into play.

As an SEO the focus needs to be on when they get this right across the board. Think holistic, think grouping, think clusters when it comes to targeting. And focus on quality and treating the topic with respect. But most of all think about the User. How can you create a solution for exactly what they are looking for – no games, no tricks – just provide value.

20) Nat Eliason

Nat Eliason is a writer at www.nateliason.com on all things interesting and author of “Come Again”. In the marketing world, he works with brands to develop content and SEO strategies based on his experiences with Sumo, Zapier, Programming for Marketers, and his own site. Follow Nat on Twitter here.

To me, this just means that everything is harder to game. You can't use clever tricks for SEO anymore; you have to focus on what actually moves the needle: creating really great content that's better than anything else out there. AI will reward that, don't try to game it.

21) Nathan Gotch

Nathan Gotch is the founder of Gotch SEO, a St. Louis SEO agency. He is a globally recognized SEO expert and entrepreneur. He helps business owners with SEO strategies, tools, and information they need to achieve their goals. You can check him out at http://gotchseo.com/blog/  and follow Nathan On Twitter here.

If your focus is on giving value to the user through content and experience, then it really doesn't matter. Google's objective doesn't change because they are using a different method. Google wants to give the searcher the best answers and results possible. My main recommendation is to move to a content-focused SEO strategy.

22) Robbie Richards

Robbie Richards is the author of robbierichards.com and the founder of Royal Jay's search marketing agency. He has been featured on Search Engine Land, Digital Marketer, AdWeek, Ahrefs, Huffington Post, unbounce, and other large industry publications. Follow Robbie on Twitter here.

In recent years, all search rank signals were based on information and discovery, but not learning. That was until RankBrain and machine learning arrived. Google is now able to draw context from queries (new and old) and learn it permanently. This study from Stone Temple found that AI machine learning improved search results by 54.6%.

With search crossing desktop, tablet, mobile and voice search, the way people search for information, and the way search engines interpret these queries, is rapidly changing. AI will help Google better understand the context of the queries that might not have the exact keywords that were searched for. Optimizing for RankBrain is not a cut-and-dry deal. RankBrain targets non-understandable queries and those containing colloquial terms. Therefore, it's a waste of time to try and target queries that RankBrain targets.

It is far more beneficial for SEOs to focus on semantics and context when producing content. Site structure will also remain extremely important as a mechanism to build relevancy and context through top-level navigation and internal link structure.

23) Sam Hurley

Sam Hurley is a lateral-thinking digital marketer holding years of experience in both agency and client-side settings. He is the Founder of Digital Consultancy venture: OPTIM-EYEZ.

He has achieved success for SMEs, national to international blue chip organizations while being ranked as the world’s #1 digital influencer by Webinale and #2 most influential digital marketer by Onalytica. He was also recently commended as one of the top 3 content marketing influencers of 2016 by ScribbleLive.

Catch him on Twitter and LinkedIn for heaps of helpful material on entrepreneurship and marketing!

AI is the future, and the future is now.

RankBrain is Google’s name for its first innovative, machine-learning artificial intelligence algorithm that’s used to help process search results.

It’s been officially named Google’s third-most important ranking factor…and you can bet your rankings there will be many more algorithms like RankBrain to come…

One of RankBrain’s primary purposes is to sift through what it deems to be relevant search results when a user enters a never-before-seen or otherwise unusual query (and learn from the user’s consequent actions) — something Google has found difficult to interpret in the past.

Not only that, expect it to be constantly learning how to best serve visitors with the most relevant, authoritative, and trustworthy results available — minus the public updates of algorithm changes we’ve received in the past.

That means Google is becoming increasingly difficult to game these days. Simply put: You are better off focusing on publishing remarkable content that aligns with your target audience (while ensuring your website is similarly outstanding to navigate) and distributing this content heavily, rather than attempting to use, for example, isolated black hat tactics.

To optimize for RankBrain:

• Research content topics thoroughly and cater for users’ pain points.
• Apply semantic keyword strategies.
• Produce thought-leading content.
• Distribute your content heavily across all mediums.
• Ensure your website is easy to navigate.

I recently wrote a comprehensive piece on SEO Trends in 2017, which covers RankBrain and much more.

24) Syed Irfan Ajmal

Syed is a serial entrepreneur, digital marketing consultant, author, and speaker. He has written for publications such as Forbes ME, Huff Post, Business.com, SEMrush, Virgin Startup, Tech In Asia and others on content marketing, SEO, growth hacking, and personal branding. He has done training and keynotes on the same topics in Pakistan and Dubai at Google Business Group sessions, various business incubators. He has also been a guest on internet shows such as SEMrush webinars, the MVP Marketing podcast, and the Profitability Revolution Paradigm. He blogs at www.SyedIrfanAjmal.com. Follow Syed on Twitter here.

Since Google still is the leader of the search world, I will share my views in the context of Google’s AI. AI is playing an increasingly important role in search algorithms.

Back in the day SEO experts would anxiously wait for a new algorithm update and then update their onsite optimization and backlinking strategies accordingly.

However, today the changes to search engine rankings are more real-time. According to Gary Illyes of Google, the machine learning system RankBrain helps Google in “coming up with new signals and signal aggregations.”

Through the use of deep learning and natural language processes, Google is able better understand user queries and provides more accurate results.

Let’s use an example: If a user comes to your website and immediately goes back to the search results, Google may use it as a signal that the page it showed to the user was not relevant. Through AI it would learn from this action combined with other signals such as the user’s search history, location etc., and work on providing better results.

This means that rankings for certain keywords can change in real-time based on the query used, and so it would be safe to say that the results that each user sees for the same keyword may actually turn out to be different.

So what does it mean for content marketers, SEOs, and bloggers?

For one, AI advancements are helping Google get better at recognizing the format (text, image, video, audio) of a content piece. This is good news for visual content creators since Google favors YouTube videos and other visual formats. Hence creating visual content (videos, infographics) and optimizing them through the use of relevant keywords, etc. in title, tags, meta description would be smart.

Also, with AI improving Google’s ability to show better and more accurate results coupled with AI’s ability to assess if a particular content piece was not relevant to a user (based on the associated bounce rate or other factors) it is more critical than ever to give more attention to factors such as:

• Content quality (as  someone once said, ‘writer for the readers rather than the bots’. So no keyword stuffing or other spammy, low-quality gimmicks)
• Landing page design and copy
• Relevant CTAs (so that once the user is done visiting your page, you can persuade them to go to other related pages, or get them to convert into email subscribers by offering them more in-depth content)
• This also means it is important that before you work on earning backlinks for a content piece, you ensure that its quality is top notch. As Larry Kim says, a mediocre content piece with tons of backlinks will no doubt become a red flag when the visitors leave the page in no time after landing on it.

To sum it all up, delight the readers by providing top notch value through your content and work on engaging them and keep them entertained and ‘infotained’ throughout their stay on your page. In this regard it would also make sense to think about how your web page appears on mobile and what can you do to improve the user experience for mobile users.

25) Temi Odurinde

Temi Odurinde is an online professional, with over a decade of experience in digital marketing, web hosting, and web development.  He is passionate about sustainability and long distance running. Follow him on Twitter here.

According to the people, AI is the future of search engine ranking and other online technologies for that matter. Deep Learning System powers AI, such as Siri and OK Google. No one fully understands how deep learning works just yet. One thing we are sure of is that it learns and responds to the command by taking in a large quantity of data.

The best way for SEOs to handle AI in search is to do what they have always done in the days before AI. That is to build quality SEO friendly, responsive website, get quality links and root a website in a locality. Most of the time, AI uses the location of the search query, to determine how SERP pages are served to the person searching for information.

26) William Harris

William Harris is a growth marketer and entrepreneur that has positively improved many businesses – from eCommerce stores growing revenues 100% in 2 months to SaaS companies growing revenues 270% in 7 months. He blogs at Elumynt. You can follow William on Twitter here.

When it comes to AI and search algorithms, you have to remember that they have one main goal in mind – to provide the most relevant search results to a human being.  If humans like the results, then they come back to search there more often.  Your goal as an SEO is to take your attention away from algorithms and AI – and focus on what will make your page more relevant for the human beings that will be looking for your information.

WOW… This is too much information to digest at one go.

Around 6350 words later… I would like to say a massive well done if you have made it this far.

The good news is that you now have 26 expert’s views to shield your SEO strategy before Artificial Intelligence (AI) make any dent to it.

What is your take on – How do you see the increasing role of AI in search algorithms and what is your suggestions for SEOs to handle it?

Tell me in the comment section below

And.. If you haven’t checked our 52 Copy-paste topic idea for your blog, click here. Use them today, drive more traffic and you are sure to succeed.

The post 26 Experts On How AI Will Change The Way We Do SEO appeared first on Serped.com.

I've worked in the SEO industry for what feels like a lifetime. I live and breathe SEO and I love keeping up with changes in the industry so things like reading other SEO blogs keeps me informed and competitive.

Something hit me like a ton of bricks a few nights ago while I was on a SEO webinar, it was so simple yet so profound that I dropped off the webinar (which was a very good one by a good friend of mine) and immediately started my research on women in SEO.

It's true that this is an industry dominated by men, but I've also met many women in the SEO industry who make a great living and provide SEO services for some of the best companies out there but it's not very often that they're highlighted and I realized that I didn't come across them as often as I come across their male counterparts. So that's what inspired me to create this article and highlight the top 100 women who have influenced the SEO industry from it's inception.

That means I went all the way back to the very beginning of Internet marketing and selected these amazing woman who contributed to the development of the SEO industry and still contribute today.

Remember not to keep this awesome article to yourself, if you like it, share it.

Enjoy your read.

Aleyda Solis

AleydaSolis.com / @Twitter

~ Aleyda is a technical Online Marketer focused in SEO. She has an international SEO consultancy called Orainti and she is also am a frequent conference speaker.

A consistent organization, detailed description –never assuming anything– and visual support are key to create an SEO audit report that is easily read, understood and drives the desired action to the appropriate parties

Top recommended articles

• The Templates you Need to Create Actionable SEO Audits Reports
• How to easily create an SEO Dashboard using DashThis
• Making the Entrepreneur Leap: Becoming an SEO Consultant with Orainti & Co-Founder of Tribalytics

Angie Schottmuller

Linkedin.com/in/AngieSchottmuller / @Twitter

~ Angie is best known for her expertise in mobile and emerging technologies across the convergence of search and social marketing and is a strong, vocal advocate for white hat SEO.

White hat SEOs are called to a higher purpose of serving up quality content that web visitors would value, while [dark side] black hat SEOs are instead focused solely on the power of search rank, leveraging any tactics necessary to achieve it.

Top recommended articles

• 6 SEO Jedi Tactics to Try Before Turning to the Dark Side
• SEO Wars: Forget Black Hat, White Hat – What Color Is Your Lightsaber?
• 6 Cases Where PPC Trumps SEO

Anita Cohen-Williams

MySearchGuru.com /@Twitter

~ Anita is an entrepreneur, organic SEO, social media manager, cybrarian, and blogger

Optimizing your website is crucial for the long term. I know, I know, doing SEO on your website is not as exciting as posting to your friends on Twitter, but think of it as a necessity, as a way of standing out in the crowd of websites.

Top recommended articles

• Biggest SEO Mistakes – Part 1
• Social Media or SEO?
• Portrait of a Business: Anita Cohen-Williams talks SEO

Ann Smarty

ViralContentBuzz.com / MyBlogguest.com / SeoSmarty.com / @Twitter

~ Ann is the blogger and community manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas. Ann's expertise in blogging and tools serve as a base for her writing, tutorials and her guest blogging project, MyBlogGuest.com.

While it can be rather hard (if not impossible) to handle the off-site SEO campaign, on-site search engine optimization is under your control

Top recommended articles

• Old VS New Link Building Strategies
• Make the Most of SEO Competitive Research : Evaluating the Competition
• On-Page SEO Checklist

Ana Hoffman

TrafficGenerationCafe.com/blog / @Twitter
~Ana writes TrafficGenerationCafe.com, where she blogs about list building, SEO and getting more traffic from social media.

If SEO is the king of your search engine traffic, then Google+ is the voice behind the throne.

Top recommended articles

• SEO Traffic 2014: Your One-Stop Reference Guide for Non-SEOs
• My Favorite Bite-Sized Web Traffic Tips: Reader’s Digest Version
• The Highly Profitable Traffic Strategy You Aren’t Using Yet

Anna Lewis

AnnaSpear.co.uk / @Twitter
~ Anna is a blogger, speaker, SEO Chick. Web analytics specialist in SEO and PPC. She is always looking for a challenge

Knowing the products that are most successful within the business can be very beneficial to planning your SEO campaigns, it gives you the most valuable targets and a higher chance of being able to show successful ROI for your work.

Top recommended articles

• Back to Basics – Goal Reports in Google Analytics
• An In-Depth Look at Enhanced Ecommerce Reports in Google Analytics
• How to get the most from your data

Anna Oshkalo

RussianSearchTips.com / @Twitter
~ Anna is a russian Expat in Europe, Online Marketing Professional. She writes about Russian Internet, SEO and PPC tips for Yandex and other Russian search engines

Yandex clearly state that they consider link buying to be a black-hat SEO technique. They also know that more than 70% of links in commercial verticals are paid.

Top recommended articles

• 13 awesome keywords tools for Yandex SEO success
• SEO and SEM for Russian search engines
• Link building in Yandex SEO: links are back, detailed insights

Annie Cushing

Annielytics.com / @Twitter

~ Annie  is the founder of Annielytics.com. Her areas of focus are SEO, analytics, and data collection and analysis.

Any time someone comes up to me at a conference and tells me something like s/he learned to do a more technical task because of a simplified tutorial on my site, it’s pure dopamine to my brain.

Top recommended articles

• A Sneak Peek At Google Webmaster Tools’ New Sexy Search Analytics Report [VIDEO]
• How To Use Chrome’s Mobile Emulator To Get Your Site Mobile Friendly [VIDEO]
• How To Use Google Fusion Tables: A Simple Guide For Marketers [VIDEO]

Barbara Coll

WebMama.com / @Twitter

~ Digital & Search Engine Marketing Strategist ~

In 2015, Your Job As An SEO Isn’t Actually SEO

Top recommended articles

You need to be visible where your audience is searching

Take These 10 Actions Now To Increase Search Visibility

Enterprise B2B SEO at SMX

Barbara Starr

BarbaraStarr.com / SemanticFuse.com / @Twitter

~ Barbara of SemanticFuse is a semantic strategist and software engineer, providing semantic SEO and other related consulting services.

From an SEO point of view, this means that optimizing a company’s website or web presence will be based on targeting these templates, each of which may well have their own ranking algorithm based on context.

Top recommended articles

• Structured Data & The SERPs: What Google’s Patents Tell Us About Ranking In Universal Search
• Understanding Question/Query Answering In Search & How It Relates To Your Website
• Use These Tools To See What Entities Are On A Web Page

Carla Marshall

ReelSeo.com / @Twitter
~ Carla is the Managing Editor of ReelSEO, and the Community Manager for the ReelSEO YouTube Channel. She is YouTube Certified, and specializes in video optimization and organic marketing.

Granted, Google changes their algorithm daily, but Panda had an especially huge impact on organic search. They pointed to the importance of having content that engages, educates and incentivizes users to stay on a company’s website.

Top recommended articles

• Video SEO Tips – by Carla Marshall [Video SEO Series]
• Video SEO Strategies – ThinkVisibility Leeds March 2012
• Why is Video so important for SEO?

Carolyn Jones

WebDurance.co.uk / @Twitter

~ Carolyn is a Multilingual SEO and a Marketing professional. She works for well known clients and manages to launch websites and new products.

Curated lists are awesome as someone else thinks the site is worthy enough to mention it on their list. So chances are really high of genuine readership and a social presence.

Top recommended articles

• Link Prospecting: Step Away from the Search Engine – BrightonSEO Slides & Resources
• Carolyn Jones: Making Your WordPress Site More Shareable
• Harnessing Lists for Link Prospecting – Part 1

Caroline Constable

CarolineConstable.com / @Twitter

~ Independent #SEO consultant. Founder of @stylereins #magazine & @equestrianhour.

Websites should be built with SEO in mind from day one but often (mostly?) they are not

Top recommended articles

• SEO Headline Here – Washington Post & Google Fail
• Universal Search Optimisation
• Turn Your Niche Site into an Online Community

Carrie Hill

IgnitorDigital.com / @Twitter

~ Carrie works in SEO and Online Marketing. She is a noted speaker and writer about a variety of topics, including Schema protocols, Google Analytics, Social Media and more.

A really good SEO and Marketing audit is worth it’s weight in gold.

Top recommended articles

• Small Business SEO Podcast with John Ellis
• Are You Jumping the Gun? Avoiding Trigger-Happy SEO
• Local Search for SEO Copywriters – Tips and Tactic

Casie Gillette

CasieGillette.com/about / @Twitter
~ Search Marketing Girl in a Crazy Internet World ~

It’s no secret that keyword research is an integral part of crafting a successful SEO strategy. After all, keywords provide us insights into our users and help drive our content strategy.

Top recommended articles

• How To Build A Customer-Centric Keyword Strategy
• 3 Keys To Understanding Your SEO Needs
• What To Do When Your Link Building Campaign Fails

Christine Churchill

KeyRelevance.com / @Twitter

~ Christine, the President of KeyRelevance, is a recognized expert in the field of Search Engine Marketing. She is a strong advocate for ethical search engine marketing.

There is strong synergy between SEO and usability.  The very things you do to make a web site easier for the user, is often the same things you do to make it easier for the search engines to crawl the site.

Top recommended articles

• Key Insights from KeyRelevance’s Christine Churchill
• Best Practices on Keyword Research and PPC Management from Christine Churchill of KeyRelevance
• SMX Advanced 2014 Series: Christine Churchill on Keyword Research Post-Hummingbird

Cindy Krum

MobileMoxie.com / @Twitter

~ Cindy is the CEO and Founder of MobileMoxie, LLC, a mobile marketing consultancy and host of the most cutting-edge online mobile marketing toolset available today.

As the growth of mobile charges on, mobile search optimization becomes an increasingly important skill for an in-house SEO to possess.

Top recommended articles

• Mobile SEO: The Canonical Tag
• The Challenge Of Getting Mobile SEO Right When Google Is Inconsistent
• In-House Mobile SEO — Why Is It So Difficult?

Claudia A. Bruemmer

ClaudiaBruemmer.com / @Twitter
~ Claudia has over 10 years of online writing and editing experience in Internet marketing and search marketing. Her published articles can be seen on iMediaConnection, Search Marketing Standard, SiteProNews, Search Engine Guide and TopTenWholesale News.

The competition now is to appear on the first page of the Google search results because most people would contact the ones on the first page first. This can be achieved by SEO or Search Engine Optimization.

Top recommended articles

• Have A Successful Website With SEO
• The Impact of Personalization on SEO By Claudia Bruemmer
• SEO Tips for Contractor Businesses: How They Can Use SEO?

Cynthia Johnson

CynthiaLIVE.com / @Twitter
~ Cynthia is director of Marketing & Social Media at RankLab,  Editorial Director & Global Communications for Social Media Club, Speaker, & Contributing Writer to Entrepreneur, Search Engine Journal & Startup Grind by Google for Entrepreneurs.

Social media and SEO are becoming more dependent on one another everyday. Without proper integration, your marketing strategy can't find fufillment.

Top recommended articles

• SEO and Social Media: Tips for Successful Integration
• Pinterest and SEO: PubCon 2014
• Viant, Google, Myspace, and the Future of Advertising

Dana Todd

Linkedin.com/in/DanaTodd / @Twitter
~ Interim and turnaround CMO with high digital expertise.

My history in SEO actually goes way back before it was called SEO. It was called search engine positioning back when we first started messing around with it.

Top recommended articles

• Expert Search Engine Optimization Interview with Dana Todd
• Dana Todd
• Get To Know: Dana Todd, CMO For Professional Services Company Aftermath

Dana Lookadoo

YoYoSeo.com / @Twitter

~ Dana was a SEO Consultant / Online Marketer focused on audience engagement + all things search. Founder of Yo! Yo! SEO.

Optimizing for social media is important, especially if your goals of developing content are increasing audience engagement and going viral…and ranking!

Top recommended articles

• 10 Commandments to Developing Personas for SEO #PubCon Preso
• Mozinar Slides – Stress-free Website Redesign for Search and Social
• Optimizing for Social – Why & How: SEO Copywriting Certification Presentation

*** Dana passed away last year. We are  thanking her for her tremendous contributions to the industry!

Debra Mastaler

Alliance-Link.com / @Twitter

~ Debra, online marketer , is President of Alliance-Link. In 2011 Debra was voted one of the Top SEO Women of 2011 and in 2009 she was listed 17th in the Top 100 Most Influential Marketers of 2009 .

The idea here is to research the linking structures of well ranked sites and determine what helped get them there. Whether you hire a consultant or use in-house staff shouldn’t matter at this point, both would have a first rate link marketing plan to work from.

Top recommended articles

• Six Degrees Of SEO Bacon & B2B Link Building Q&A
• Interview of Debra Mastaler, the Link Guru
• Link Building Tool Review: Link Prospector

Donna Fontenot

DonnaFontenot.com / @Twitter

~ Donna, aka DazzlinDonna, is an Internet Entrepreneur and SEO, who has long utilized search engine optimization and affiliate marketing to create a successful online business.

If the site is a local brick-and-mortar business, then it’s imperative to do a Local SEO audit. This could be an entire post in itself, so I’ll have to keep it simple at this point. Local SEO relies heavily on citations, so run the domain through the GetListed tool.

Top recommended articles

• Ethical SEO – A DazzlinDonna Definition
• The Cheapskate’s Guide To SEO Analysis
• Intelligently Crafting Content

Elisabeth Osmeloski

@Twitter
~ Elisabeth is Director of Audience Development for Search Engine Land and Marketing Land. In addition, she assists in programming sessions at Third Door Media's Search Marketing Expo conference series and manages speaking engagements for editorial staff.

Now, we’ve transformed our Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors and Guide To SEO into a quick slideshow format which summarizes each of the key factors in each chapter of the guide.

Top recommended articles

• Slideshow: Search Engine Land’s Guide To SEO
• What Makes You A Best In Class SEO? Survey Says
• The Most Popular Organic SEO Columns Of 2010

Emily Grossman

Goutaste.com / @Twitter

~ Emily is a Mobile Marketing Specialist at MobileMoxie. She specializes in app search marketing, with a focus on strategic deep linking, app indexing, app launch strategy, and app store optimization (also known as ASO).

If you want to surface your app content for iOS users, Apple Search could become a key part of your SEO strategy. Like Google, Apple Search relies on an index (or more accurately, multiple indices) to organize the set of app screens that can be ranked in a search result.

Top recommended articles

• App Indexing & The New Frontier of SEO: Apple Search + iOS App Indexing
• App Indexing & The New Frontier Of SEO: Google Search + Deep Linking
• How Apple's Changing Up Search: From Siri to Safari to Spotlight

Emma McHale

EmmaMcHale.co.uk / @Twitter

~ Digital marketer | Search marketing (SEO and PPC) specialist | Bookworm & sci-fi fan.

Off-page optimisation has been important for search engine optimisation for a really long time. I wanted to investigate if I could rank for the terms using only on-page SEO optimisation.

Top recommended articles

• Case study: Ranking for local SEO keywords
• IDM Professional Certificate in Search Marketing Review
• IDM Certificate in Search Module 11 review

Gabriella Sannino

Level343.com/Article_Archive / GabriellaSannino.com / @Twitter
~ Gabriella is an international SEO consultant. She loves writing about marketing, social, SEO, relevance, ruffling feathers and starting revolutions.

In conclusion, using your brand and SEO is really a smart way to capture not only your readers’ attention, and the attention of the community at large, but it will also give your brand recognition and visibility in the search engines.

Top recommended articles

• Increase Your SEO Branding Power
• Managing by Metrics: Setting KPIs for Your Web Marketing
• Your Client: He’s Just not that Into you Anymore

Gini Dietrich

SpinSucks.com / @Twitter

~ Gini is the founder and CEO of Arment Dietrich, an integrated marketing communications firm. She also is the lead blogger at Spin Sucks and is the founder of Spin Sucks Pro.

The point is we have to shake our SEO-addled brains and create content that answers questions people want to know if they are going to buy from us.

Top recommended articles

• Feature Content that Answers Questions for Better SEO
• The Week’s Biggest Social Media News
• How to Build Landing Pages for PR Pros

Ginny Marvin

SearchEngineLand.com / @Twitter

~ Ginny writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land and Marketing Land.

I started researching and learning about this thing called SEO and decided that was where I wanted to steer my career.(…) So, I went from being a marketing director to basically an entry-level SEO contractor at a start-up agency in 2005.

Top recommended articles

• PPC Hero Interviews Search Engine Land Author, Ginny Marvin
• Google Announces Customer Match: Upload Email Lists For Search, Gmail, YouTube Ad Targeting
• Google Files Suit Against SEO Firm Accused Of Robocalling, Launches Complaint Center For Users

Gisele Navarro

InSocialWeTrust.wordpress.com / @Twitter
~ Gisele has a long background in SEO and social media management, she specialises in digital PR through strong long-lasting relationships with publishers, journalists, bloggers and large media groups across sectors.

Users have a huge impact in your rankings today, so it’s not just about building links to your domain and optimizing your site, you need to think about every single aspect of a website with your visitors in mind. It’s time to do SEO as a human and not as a robot.

Top recommended articles

• The SEO way of thinking needs to go
• How a single tweet triggered links, mentions & free offline advertising
• 13 reasons why you should include infographics in your content strategy

Hannah Rampton

HannahRampton.co.uk/ / @Twitter

~ Freelance Technical SEO and Digital Marketer, previously @SEOgadget. Engaged to @DBSEO. TIMEs Person of the Year 2006.

Experiencing my own health crisis led me to a spiritual awakening and like many, I've used this as a tool for transformation – my propeller for change.

Top recommended articles

Twitter leads as social networks enter the search game-00-1444

Contact Centres – Who, Why & Where?

Hannah Smith

Distilled.net / @Twitter
~ Hannah is implementing PPC and SEO campaigns. At Distilled Hannah manages a merry band of SEOs implementing both technical and link building projects.

From our data set it looks as though there isn’t an obvious correlation between % local language links and rankings, and it looks like ‘good’ links are perhaps more important than local language links.

Top recommended articles

• Go Big or Go Home – Hannah Smith, Distilled
• MozCon 2011 – International SEO Presentation & Data
• MozCon 2011 – 09 – Hannah Smith – International SEO: Why a Site Rank in One Country vs Another

Heather Lloyd-Martin

SeoCopyWriting.com / @Twitter
~ Heather is a SEO copywriting geek chick. International speaker. Book author. SEO Copywriting Certification developer.

Working as an SEO copywriter is incredibly fun.Once you master the best practice basics (and yes, you can do it!) you can work from anywhere, choose your clients and make a darn good income.

Top recommended articles

• [Updated] Freelance SEO Copywriting: The Ultimate Guide for Beginners
• Why Recycling Content Will Give You A Woohoo! Moment
• 6 Ways to Handle It When A Client Changes Your Copywriting

Heidi Cohen

ActionableMarketingGuide.com / @Twitter
~ Heidi is an Actionable Marketer, speaker, professor, journalist shares practical advice on social media, content marketing, small business & life.

 It’s important to include a keyword phrase in your headline, use those words in your post’s URL and optimize your photographs for search. Further, where appropriate, link to external information as well as to other areas of your blog or website.

Top recommended articles

• 15 SEO Experts Give Their Best Tips For Blogging
• Content Marketing: How to Super-Charge Your SEO
• 5 Proven Steps To Improve Content Marketing Effectiveness

Jackie Hole

JackieHole.com / @Twitter
~ Jackie, is an SEM strategist, Internet Marketing consultant and Adwords trainer.

In October, MajesticSEO launched Search Explorer on the back of its link intelligence data but now Majestic plan to move forward as a European based search engine and develop the market in its own right. Majestic also plan to show users how they are able to rank results on the fly.

Top recommended articles

• Majestic Search Launches Live Rank Factors
• Adwords Update: Dynamic Sitelinks, Callout Extensions & Upgrading to Display Select
• Top 3 Scripts for Adwords Account Automation

Janaya Wilkins

JanayaWilkins.com / @Twitter
~Janaya is an SEO at Ayima, an award-winning specialist Search Marketing Consultancy, which delivers data-driven SEO, Analytics and Design / Development for its portfolio of enterprise clients.

Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, and their view on SEO best practices, has generally delivered the same message: Provide quality content that is user-friendly, with quality relevant natural links. This will increase your chances of Google ranking your content over your competitors, when deciding what pages to present for a user’s search query.

Top recommended articles

• SMX London Follow-up: Third Party SEO Tools
• Taking SEO to the C-Level
• Whitepaper: Building Corporate SEO Strategy

Jane Copland

JaneCopland.co.uk / @Twitter
~ Jane is an independent consultant working on SEO projects on a freelance basis. P Before joining Ayima, Jane was an SEO consultant and blogger at SEOmoz in Seattle for two and a half years.

Top recommended articles

• Interview with the Lady of SEO, Jane Copland
• 10 Self-Development Web Resources: Free, Reliable and Practical
• How to Find Yourself in the World of Self Templates

Janet Driscoll Miller

Marketing-Mojo.com/blog / @Twitter

~ Janet is the President and CEO of Marketing Mojo. She regularly blogs on a variety of search engine marketing topics, often focusing on technical solutions.

The thing that seems most stunning about the industry is how many people can’t or won’t innovate or change how they operate, even though they’re aware that the techniques they relied on three or four years ago are now outdated.

Top recommended articles

• The Emerging Role Of SEO In App Discoverability
• 12 Elements Of A Solid SEO Contract
• The 8 Most Common But Simple Missed Opportunities In Optimizing Content

Jasmine Sandler

JasmineSandler.com / @Twitter
~ Jasmine Sandler is a veteran in online marketing and CEO and founder of Agent-cy Online Marketing, an online branding agency.

For my  SEO clients I stress the importance of proper SEO Strategy using tools and indicators from my peer SEO leaders like MOZ. Further weekly monitored SEO managed service programs, such as Agent-cy SEO services for small businesses or SEO agencies for enterprise clients, like my friends at Acronym.

Top recommended articles

• 192: The New SEO is PR Online with Jasmine Sandler – Top 40 Digital Marketer.
• The Truth About SEO Backlinks in 2015
• SEO – Is it difficult and does your company need an SEO Consultant?

Jennifer Horowitz

EComBuffet.com / @Twitter
~ Jennifer is trained in marketing with a special emphasis on online and digital marketing and copywriting as well as Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

SEO is a means to an end.  It’s a way to get traffic.  It’s not about looking at pretty reports and feeling good. 

Top recommended articles

• Top SEO Mistakes You Must Avoid (Cheatsheet)
• 2011 SEO and Social Media Checklist
• Google News: Update on November 1

Jennifer Sable Lopez

JenSableLopez.com / @Twitter
~ Jennifer began at Moz as an SEO Consultant, and now she is the Director of Community at Moz.

 The act of optimizing a website to be search engine friendly is a combination of tasks that are fully integrated throughout the dev lifecycle. Not a single line in a project plan expecting to gather all items related to SEO into one task, to be done by one person.

Top recommended articles

• Building SEO into the Development Process
• SEOs and Developers: 5 Ways to Build The Relationship
• How To Make SEO An Integral Part Of Your Online Community Strategy

Jennifer Slegg

TheSEMPost.com / @Twitter
~ Jennifer is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, ClickZ and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.

If you have to take down your website for any reason, such as to do backend maintenance that requires a site be taken offline or if you are re-doing an entire site after it has been hacked, it is important to use a 503 server status code for SEO reasons.

Top recommended articles

• Use a 503 Status Code for SEO Reasons When Taking Website Offline
• Google: Affiliate Links Do Not Hurt a Website
• Google Adds Safe Browsing Site Status to Transparency Report

Jess Hill

JessHill.me / @Twitter
~ Jess is SEO Manager @ http://99designs.com . She likes internet marketing, sports & bourbon.

Trying to keep up with search engine optimization (SEO) and how it affects your website can be tricky, especially with constant changes in search engine products, algorithms and front and back end web technologies.

Top recommended articles

• How to navigate SEO in a sea of changing web design technologies
• Episode #15 – SEO at a Hypergrowth Startup with Jess Hill, SEO Manager at 99designs
• 5 Easy Ways to Boost Your Small Business’ SEO Rankings

Jessica Bowman

SEOinhouse.com / @Twitter
~ Jessica is an enterprise-level SEO consultant, Specialize in SEO Strategy, Technical SEO & Evaluating Processes for SEO.

 One of the rules when I train non-SEO Teams is: I don’t talk about specific algorithm updates, because these roles don’t need to know them. If they only remember 3 things from the course, I don’t want them to be a Google update.

Top recommended articles

• 5 Tips to Elevate Your SEO Training for Non-SEO Teams
• How to Get SEO Tasks Done, When you Can’t do Them Yourself
• Hit the Ground Running with In-House SEO

Jill Whalen

Jill.Consulting / @Twitter
~ Jill, was a widely-respected SEO Consultant / seminar speaker and CEO of ‘HIGH RANKINGS', a Boston SEO Consulting Agency from 1995 until Oct. 2013.

As long as there are developers and designers who believe in any of the following, there will always be a need for SEO consulting:They think SEO is impossible.

Top recommended articles

• 85 Reasons Why Website Designers/Developers Keep SEOs in Business
• Jill Whalen on SEO: then & now
• Interview with Jill Whalen

Jo Turnbull

SEOjoblogs.com / @Twitter

~  Jo at SEO Jo Blogs offers consultancy services in search engine optimisation (seo), paid search and social media and is also the organiser of Search London.

If you do not have a presence within the search engines, that is the biggest failure you can make with your website. Summary: SEO is not dead, nor will it ever be.  Social is just playing a bigger role in the search market.

Top recommended articles

• July Update in SEO – Monthly New Blasts
• Search London – Three Ways To Execute Marketing Campaigns on a Budget
• Which SEO Tool Should You Use?

Judith Lewis

deCabbit.com / @Twitter
~ Judith has extensive experience in performing “hands-on” SEO, indulging in everything from keyword research through to content development and linking building.

I keep hearing horror stories about SEO companies ripping off the very people they are meant to help. While there are some excellent search companies out there dedicated to helping customers and going above and beyond, there are others who, like cowboy builders, want to take the cash and run.

Top recommended articles

• How to Choose a Search Engine Optimisation Agency
• What To Do When Good Links Go Bad
• How to use SEO & Social media to get more traffic – Ladies In Blogging Presentation

Julie Joyce

LinkFishMedia.com / @Twitter
~ Julie has been working in search engine marketing in 2002 and years later she started her own agency, Link Fish Media, Inc., with her husband, Jay Young.

I live and breathe SEO, but as someone with a primary focus on link building, there are many times when I refer something out because it’s too far outside of my knowledge.

Top recommended articles

• After Suffering Link Trouble, Should You Second-Guess Your SEO?
• Are There Really Any Outdated Link Techniques?
• How Can Link Builders Keep Learning?

Kate Morris

KateMorris.com / @Twitter
~ Kate is a digital marketing consultant. She specialize in international search marketing, content creation, online marketing strategy, and search engine marketing.

SEO is not going anywhere but it has changed. Long gone are the days of “tricks” and “secrets.” SEO is moving towards (and about time IMHO) being a staple of every company’s IT and Marketing schedule. But we are not there yet.

Top recommended articles

• Building a Proper SEO House
• Choose Your International Strategy Tool
• Outdated SEO Concepts People Still Think are Reality

Kathleen Garvin

SemRush.com/blog / @Twitter
~ Kathleen Garvin is a community manager for SEMrush blog and former editor of the blog. She’s an active part of the Philly tech scene and a contributor for I Want Her Job.

Keyword research! It’s less about gaming the algorithm with keywords and more about related terms, associated phrases, even sentences that tailor the content to readers’ progress, whether that’s on the road to a local conversion, the trail to knowledge or the path to purchase.

Top recommended articles

• Food for Thought Friday: Webinar ROI & What’s New in SEO
• How Do You Manage Your Blog Comment Section?
• Meet Kathleen Garvin: Director of Content Marketing SEMrush and Speaker at Inbound Day Milwaukee

Kim Krause Berg

CreativeVisionWebConsulting.com / @Twitter

~ Known globally as an expert in Holistic SEO and Usability, she provides usability, user experience, accessibility and information architecture and various web consulting services for websites and online software applications

SEO inhabitants live, eat, breathe and play in the realm of marketing, especially in search engines. Their challenge is to monitor search algorithms and find new ways for getting their clients’ websites to appear at the very top of search results.

Top recommended articles

• Why Blending Usability & SEO Really Matters
• Site Navigation & Information Architecture Fundamentals For SEOs
• What Skills Do Successful Website Teams Require?

Kirsty Hulse

KirstyHulse.com / @Twitter
~ Kirsty is the Head of SEO Best Practice at Linkdex. She has been in SEO for 6 years and has worked with global brands as well as start-ups, and over the years she has tried and tested most SEO.

I love to talk about digital and will take part in any and all digital based event, conference and webinar that’ll have me.

Top recommended articles

• Why content marketing is not the future of SEO
• Forecasting for SEO
• WHY I DON’T WANT TO CELEBRATE BEING A WOMAN

Kristine Schachinger

SearchEngineWatch.com / @Twitter

~ Kristine has a focus on website design and implementation, accessibility standards and all aspects of website visibility involving SEO, social media and strategic planning.

SEO will never be dead as long as there are algorithms in search to position a site against. So if someone tells you to not worry about SEO, know this means to lose out on a significant portion of your website visibility and traffic. It is as vital as it was one, two, and even five years ago.

Top recommended articles

• 5 SEO Myths to Forget in 2015
• 5 Techniques That May Be Killing Your Website (and SEO)
• 5 Ways of Rethinking Your Referral Traffic

Kristy Bolsinger

KristyBolsinger.com / @Twitter
~ Kristy's areas of focus include engagement strategies, customer experience design, social customer care, community activation, influencer and advocate programs, insights/analytics, and the intersection of SEO & Social.

Make your education a priority and watch what happens. Your business, your career and your colleagues will all benefit and for basically no cost. Win win!

Top recommended articles

• MozCon 2011 – 17 – Kristy Bolsinger – Leveraging Community for SEO + Social Boosts
• How To Setup Your Surveys The Right Way
• Lean Learning: A guide to online learning on the cheap

Laura Crest

SEOcopywriting.com / @Twitter
~ Laura is Content Strategist & Certified SEO Copywriter, Editor & Project Manager.

Asking questions is the best way to get at the answers you need to write highly effective, targeted SEO content. Meaning, content that resonates with your clients’ prospects and succeeds with conversions.

Top recommended articles

• SEO content marketing roundup, week ending September 25th
• How to successfully launch your own freelance SEO copywriting business
• The women who made SEO great

Laura Lippay

LauraLippay.com / @Twitter
~ Laura is a consultant and marketing exec based in the Silicon Valley. She held previous roles that include Technical Marketing Director for Yahoo Media, SEO Specialist for CNET and, in a past life, was a professional athlete.

Doing SEO strategy right takes targeted competitive insight and very specific recommendations, beyond any SEO basics rulebook. And ideally a good relationship with the product (site) manager.

Top recommended articles

• The 8-Step SEO Strategy, Step 1: Define Your Target Audience and Their Needs
• Think Bigger: 28 Ways to Be a Better SEO
• Trade in Your PR & Creative Agencies. SEOs Do it Better.

Laura Thieme

BizWatchSearchAnalytics.com / @Twitter
~ Laura founded Bizresearch in 1997, as a search marketing agency. She grew the company to nearly $1M in sales, and 12 employees

 Get some help from your search marketing professional or SEO guru on what are the best keywords to target.

Top recommended articles

• Five Ways to Improve Your Organic SEO Visibility in Google and Bing
• How to Conduct an SEO Analysis or SEO Audit Using SEO Reports
• Need an SEO Analysis by an SEO Expert?

Lauren Hall-Stigerts

MarketingGal.com // @Twitter

~ Marketing consultant, writer, social justice advocate, gamer, @TeaVoyeur ~

I'd say blekko is the search engine to keep your eye on. If Facebook, Bing, Amazon do not bring down Google, blekko has a good chance.

Top recommended articles

• Confessions of a Content Marketer: Interview with Lauren Hall-Stigerts
• MozCon 2015 Notes (We’re doing it live!)
• Google's rolling out indexed tweets to us non-celebrities

Lexi Mills

Dynamopr.com / @Twitter
~ Lexi is a PR SEO specialist, she loves all things digital, fraggle rock theme tune, cooking and big fluffy cats.- freelance writer. Works at Dynamo.

I would say most teams need a technical SEO and a technically savvy PR, alongside someone who understands the overall business functions and visions.

Top recommended articles

• Behind the Headlines with Lexi Mills
• Full Stack Marketing Q&A: Lexi Mills, Dynamo
• Lexi Mills – How you can get BIG links from BIG media sites

Lianne Wilkinson

EngageWeb.co.uk / @Twitter
~ Lianne is particularly focusing on SEO and content management, planning and creative online advertising strategies. In 2009, her marketing management and formidable planning skills founded Engage Web.

The secret to SEO copywriting for the web isn't about how many keywords you insert into a page while attempting to maintain a degree of readability; it's about the page's worth to the user, how the sentences are crafted and even about how the code on the page is formatted around the content (for example, which words are bolded, italicised or linked to other pages).

Top recommended articles

• The Secrets of SEO Copywriting
• Why SEO is Important for Businesses Spread over Multiple Locations
• The ‘not so secret’ secret behind SEO

Lindsay Wassell

KeyPhraseology.com / @Twitter
~ Lindsay, the CEO and Lead SEO at Keyphraseology has extensive experience in Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization beginning in 2000.

Think about how you can provide something no one else is providing, or how you can do it better than everyone else. What is an under-served market or area, or content topic, or tool or resource? Take it and own it; make it better

Top recommended articles

• Improve Your SEO by Mastering These Core Principles
• 32 SEO Tactics to Avoid in 2011
• Interview with Lindsay Wassell

Lisa Barone

OverIt.com / @Twitter
~ Lisa, is Vice President of Strategy at Overit where she serves on the senior staff overseeing the company’s marketing, social media and content divisions.

Without SEO, your great content wouldn’t get found. SEO should be a content writer’s best friend because it does all the things mentioned above. It helps you understand your audience, to use the right terms, to organize your content, to know what to write about, etc.

Top recommended articles

• Creating Your Small Business SEO Plan
• How SEO Actually Improves Content Quality
• Google to Clients: Go Ahead, Break That Moneymaker

Lisa Buyer

SocialPRsecrets.com / @Twitter
~ Lisa is President and CEO of The Buyer Group, and editor for Social #PR Chat covering trends in Social PR, Mobile PR, Brand PR and SEO PR.

SEO is no longer a technical skill. It’s a marketing and PR must.Collaborate or die! SEO and PR should no longer be on separate teams.Google is the largest search engine that dictates the SEO “rules” and it’s critical to stay educated and informed on the latest best practices related to SEO writing.

Top recommended articles

• Why Public Relations and SEO Go Together: Tips, Truths, Tools, and Faves
• The Ultimate Entrepreneur’s SEO Checklist for 2014
• 12 Ways to Optimize Press Releases & Avoid Google Penalties

Lisa Myers

VerveSearch.com / @Twitter
~ Lisa is the founder and CEO of Verve Search. She is the founder of SEO-Chicks.com and co-founder of StateofSearch,com.

Even after a few Guinness’, SEO’s are so passionate about their craft. I feel privileged to be a part of a community which is so open when it comes to asking questions and sharing ideas.

Top recommended articles

• LEARN INBOUND: Getting the BIG Links – using creative campaigns to win in SEO
• #SEBC15 Successful SEO in 2015
• International SEO? Forget About The Big Brands And Do This Instead

Lyena Solomon

NetSprinter.com/blog / @Twitter
~ Lyena's experience in online marketing, social media, analytics, and web development results in using diversified tactics to achieve the desired outcome.

 Sites that neglect mobile SEO, multi-device optimization, and user intent will fade away from mobile search results . They will suffer noticeable drop in mobile search rankings and conversion rates.

Top recommended articles

• SEO in 2015: Prediction Trends & Your Action Plan
• Summary: How Evergreen Content Influences SEO and How to Measure Its Impact on #SEOchat
• DMR #45: LYENA SOLOMON – How do you ensure that your website is as user friendly as possible?

Lyndsay Walker

LyndSEO.com / @Twitter

~ Lyndsay is an web marketing professional. She has been a web enthusiast for over 15 years and has dedicated her career to web marketing and usability.

In the SEO industry, there are far too many – the folks who call themselves SEOs but are neglecting the knowledge behind on major factor – Online Reputation Management.

Top recommended articles

• SEO Columbus – Why SEOs NEED to know ORM
• SEOmoz Interview – Lyndsay Walker on Bing
• Six Hurdles to Clear When Exercising Your Brand In-House

Mackenzie Fogelson

MackWebSolutions.com / @Twitter
~ Mack is the Founder and CEO of Mack Web. She has been a featured speaker at MozCon, SearchLove, and other top industry conferences.

 Driving home the reality of the time and effort required to successfully market their website online, build trust, and earn authority is just one of the crosses that an SEO must bear.

Top recommended articles

• Competitive Domain Analyses: Educating & Qualifying Clients in One Fell Swoop
• SEO Then. SEO Now. – Max Impact Hangouts 002
• Define and Align: A Manageable Content and Social Media Marketing Process

Marianne Sweeny

Daedalusia.com / @Twitter
~Marianne joined Portent Inc (www.portent.com) as SR Search Strategist in 2012 where she focuses on the user experience factors of SEO for client sites.

So, it is time to let go of all our old SEO and keyword research binkies. We must update our methods to match the century we’re living in. We need to start doing site optimization the right way.

Top recommended articles

• Team of Rivals: UX, SEO, Content & Dev UXDC 2015
• Marianne Sweeny: UX as the New SEO
• IO (Information Optimization) is 21st Century SEO

Martyna Sroka

@Twitter

~ Martyna is particularly interested in Online Marketing, SEO and SEM.

Top-quality, unique content will still be a high priority for Google, which has long spoken of the virtues of original, readable content. Search engine results will skew further in this direction as improved and updated Google Panda algorithms will increasingly penalize websites which use duplicated content

Top recommended articles

• Basic SEO guide
• Martyna's SEO Predictions for 2012..
• BrightonSeo April 2014 Takeaways

Mary Obrien

@Twitter
~ Mary O’Brien is the Pay Per Click (PPC) Summit Founder and Chairman. PPC Summit is the premier educational Search Engine Marketing training event that is designed to help online marketers make more money with Pay Per Click advertising.

Whether you’re on the bus or at the bar, it’s easy to see that everyone is attached to their mobile device. Not surprisingly, it is expected that by 2015, searches via a mobile device will surpass those on a desktop. If your website doesn’t already have a responsive mobile-friendly design, now is the time to get one.

Top recommended articles

• How Search Engine Technology Is Changing the Way We Think About SEO
• How Site Security Impacts SEO
• User Experience: The Makings of a Sustainable SEO Strategy

Melanie Mitchell

@Twitter

~ Melanie is passionate about SEO, SEM, Social, performance mktg & analytics. Emmy winner Live 8. Love to travel, laugh, learn, meet people. Global speaker & author.

Laying the foundation for in-house SEO success includes building and organizing a large cross-functional team, optimizing assets/creating accountability, prioritizing efforts, defining tactics, tracking consistent metrics and increasing SEO consistency across the organization.

Top recommended articles

• Laying the Foundation for In-House SEO Success in Large Organizations: Part I
• Standing Out with SEO: Expert Advice from Melanie Mitchell (Collection), 2nd Edition
• 6 Actionable Ways to Use PPC and SEO Data to Improve Overall Results and Focus

Melanie Nathan

TopDraw.com / @Twitter

~ Melanie works in digital Marketing, Link Building. She is a SEO Veteran @TopDrawINC in #yeg. Founder: CanadianSEO.

A person who truly understands the value of an SEOs service is extremely rare and this makes our job harder than it should be. It’s frustrating having to first convince someone that a) SEO is real, b) you know your stuff and c) there’s actual benefit to them being listed for the products they sell or the service they offer.

Top recommended articles

• SEO Haters: Misconceptions and Misinformation
• Melanie Nathan: one-woman SEO show, link building master, bacon addict
• 10 SEO Resources for Beginners

Melissa Fach

SEOAware.com / @Twitter
~ Melissa  is the owner of SEO Aware, LLC, FloridaSEOTraining.com and MedicalSEOTraining.com.

SEO is all about goals and planning.(…) Any reputable person in this industry can tell you that part of the job is keeping up on the changes that are non-stop! I read every day and they read every day.

Top recommended articles

• 2011 Must Have #3 and #4 – Off Site Optimization & Local Search
• SEO Bull, Those That Lie, Cheat & Steal From Businesses
• SEO Aware’s Smart Marketing

Michelle Robbins

Linkedin.com/in/MichelleRobbins / @Twitter
~ Michelle oversees and implements all technical initiatives for each of the company's brands – Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, Search Marketing Expo (SMX), Digital Marketing Depot (DMD), and MarTech

The one thing I wish I could change about this industry would probably be it’s dependence on Google. I firmly believe that if your entire business model hinges on page one of Google – you’re doing it wrong.

Top recommended articles

• Industry Insiders – Interview with Michelle Robbins
• An Insider’s Look At SMX Advanced: Michelle Robbins
• Is a Lack of Perspective Costing You Money?

Mona Elesseily

MonaElesseily.com / @Twitter
~ Mona is the Vice President of Online Marketing Strategy at Page Zero Media where she focuses on search engine marketing strategy, landing page optimization (LPO) and conversion rate optimization (CRO).

 Writing books is certainly hard work. To get my latest version done (written in 10 months), I set small writing goals and tried to achieve them consistently (for example daily).

Top recommended articles

• Yahoo! Panama – An Interview with Mona Elesseily
• Get Connected – Tech Talk – Google Ad Words
• 7 Mobile Landing Page Tips You Can Implement Tomorrow!

Monique Pouget

MoniqueTheGeek.com / @Twitter

Top recommended articles

• 3 Content-Powered Link Building Opportunities
• 2013 AIM Presentation | SEO for Creatives
• This Week’s #SEOchat: Panda, Penguin, and Pigeon Google Updates

Motoko Hunt

Ajpr.com / @Twitter
~ Motoko writes about the Japanese online market on her blog, and other sites including ClickZ and The SEM Post.

Translators usually have no knowledge of SEO/SEM [search engine optimization/ search engine marketing]. Good translation doesn’t mean that the translators used the keywords that have the most search demands in Japan.

Top recommended articles

• Motoko Hunt on Search Engine Optimization in Japan
• 3 Reasons Your SEO Integrations Fail
• Search in Asia Goes Well Beyond Google

Nichola Stott

TheMediaFlow.com / @Twitter

~ Nichola is an online business and communications specialist with over ten years in the industry, ranging from digital communications at PR Newsire, to design and usability at Investis Ltd.

With SEO and in particular the more technical aspects of this marketing discipline, test and experimentation is a critical part of learning and development

Top recommended articles

• SEO: Test and Experimentation in Agency Practice
• Technical SEO Best-Practise: Slides from The Digital Marketing Show
• Too Little SEO? Some Characteristics of an Under Optimized Website

Pamela Ravenwood

SEOEssentialSolutions.com / @Twitter
~ Pamela is recognized for her knowledge of online marketing strategy and her breakthrough ideas in the realm of optimized branding solutions that have grown multi-million dollar corporations and small businesses tenfold.

Determining whether your website is SEO friendly is critical if you want to make sure you are found in the search engines and are competing well  in rankings with your biggest competitors.

Top recommended articles

• Is Your Website SEO Friendly
• Semantic Search and It’s Influence on Your SEO
• SEO Still Has Value and This Is Why

Rae Hoffman

Sugarrae.com / @Twitter
~ Rae aka “Sugarrae” is an affiliate marketing veteran and an SEO consultant. She is also the CEO of PushFire, an online marketing agency that specializes in SEO and PPC management services.

Before all the Penguin / Panda craziness, we (SEOs) had one core offering. We helped you get your on site technical shit straight, and helped with building branding and links with the end goal being to get you more exposure in the search engines. Nowadays…

Top recommended articles

• Google Propaganda, SEO and Why Marketers Need to Wake Up
• What You Need to Understand about Google Penguin Recovery
• SEO Checklist for Local Small Business Websites

Rebecca Lehmann

BradsDeals.com / @Twitter
~ Rebecca is manager, Content and SEO at bradsdeals.com in Chicago, IL.

Google has gone to great lengths lately to incorporate local data wherever it can. Google Place Search rolled out in late October and services such as Google Tags and Google Boost offer increased visibility, for a price.

Top recommended articles

• 7 Essential Google Intelligence Custom Alerts That Keep Me Sane
• 10Q w/ Rebecca Lehmann
• Tracking Traffic from Google Places in Google Analytics

Rhea Drysdale

OutspokenMedia.com / @Twitter
~ Rhea is the Chief Executive Officer of Outspoken Media. She speaks on online reputation management, search engine optimization and link development at conferences like Search Marketing Expo, PubCon as well as private, corporate presentations.

Investing really means contributing to long term SEO success, not owning it. You can contribute by building a team with great perspective that will be together for a long time. It’s also important to give them the tools to educate themselves because SEO changes every single day. Listen to your team, develop them, and focus on retaining them for the long term

Top recommended articles

• Rhea Drysdale – the woman who saved SEO
• Survey Results: Educational Background of Digital Marketers & SEOs Revealed
• Creating Long-Term SEO Success: An Interview With Rhea Drysdale

Ruth Burr Reedy

RuthBurr.com / @Twitter
~ Ruth is an independent SEO consultant living in Norman, Oklahoma. Previously, she was the Head of SEO at Moz (formerly SEOmoz).

Top recommended articles

• SEO Musts for the Non-SEO – Ruth Burr Reedy
• How Much SEO Advice Should We Give Away for Free?
• What New SEOs Don't Know Unless You Tell Them: A Reminder from Outside the Echo Chamber

Sarah Bernier Danks

SnapshotsBySarah.com / @Twitter
~ Sarah is co-owner and part-time SEM consultant for her husband's business, ThinkSEM Consulting, a Twin Cities search marketing company specializing in pay-per-click services.

Top recommended articles

• How Google+ is Affecting Search Results
• All-Flash Websites Still Not Okay
• Self Promotion in Social Media: To Do or Not To Do?

Sarah Bird

SarahBird.me / @Twitter
~Sarah is CEO at Moz in Seattle, WA

Top recommended articles

• SEOmoz’s Sarah Bird Interviewed by Eric Enge
• My Final Post as CEO: Sarah Bird Has the Conn
• TAGFEE Core Valueswith Sarah Bird from Moz

Sha Menz

Rmoov.com / @Twitter
~ Sha is currently Project Manager for a US based Web Development company, where she handles client liaison with a specialty in content development and SEO.

 A performance-based SEO agreement can work out really well if the parties have a lot of trust and openness, and if there is a good contract in place. But before you get a good contract, there needs to be a lot of good communication. You’ve got to talk about all the details and all the expectations.

Top recommended articles

• Around the SEO World in 89 Days – Sha Menz and rmoov Spring 2014
• Adding “Related Post” Links without a Database
• MozCon 2013 – Sha Menz – 10 Link Removal Pro-Tips That Will Change Your Life

Shari Thurow

Search-Usability.com / @Twitter
~ Shari is the Founder and SEO Director at Omni Marketing Interactive and the author of the books Search Engine Visibility and When Search Meets Web Usability.

Link exchanges might seem to be an ancient SEO tactic — one that can get your site penalized or banned for search engine spam. But what if the domestic violence shelters from each state in the United States linked to each other? If that happened, maybe victims of domestic violence could more easily find the closest shelter online

Top recommended articles

• Long-Term SEO: Sustainable Tactics, Strategies & Solutions
• How Does Color Usage Affect SEO & Conversions?
• Spreading SEO Awareness & Knowledge

Sheena Schleicher

SheenaSchleicher.com / @Twitter

~ Sheena is specialized in advanced, technical SEO (search engine optimization), branding, eCommerce analytics, content strategy, and PR.

When led with transparency and integrity, and with taking care of your brand and its audience as the top priority, SEO can be one of the most powerful ways to drive brand awareness, customer acquisition, and ROI.

Top recommended articles

• The #1 Thing I Heard From Young Women at MozCon + My Response
• Winning Growth Strategy: Invite Prospects, Clients to Conferences
• SEO You Can Understand

Sherryl Perry

KeepUpWithTheWeb.com / @Twitter

~ Sherryl helps people develop online marketing strategies for products and services. Want blogging tips on SEO, social media and WordPress? Visit http://KeepUpWeb.com

It’s in Google’s best interest if they deliver search results that meet the needs of the person who is searching. Google’s Panda algorithm was intended to target quality content. Panda was first rolled out in February of 2011 but it was probably Panda 4.1 (rolled out in September of 2014) that had the biggest impact on bloggers.

Top recommended articles

• Does SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Confuse You? #FridayFinds
• SEO Resources Bloggers Can Use #FridayFinds
• What SEO Tools Do You Use? #FridayFinds

Stacey MacNaught

BlogSession.co.uk / @Twitter
~Stacey works as Search Director for Tecmark, an awesome Digital Marketing Agency with offices in Manchester and London.

Top recommended articles

• 3 Link Building Tactics That Can Work on Low Budgets
• 21 Questions to Ask SEO Prospects (Before you Even Think About Selling them Anything)
• 11 Ways to Learn SEO Without Spending a Fortune

Stephanie Chang

Distilled.net / @Twitter
~ Stephanie is SEO at @etsy. Former Senior Consultant at @distilled NYC. Former science teacher. She is passionate about teaching & learning.

By the time an SEO consultant is brought into the Sales process, we’ve already identified the prospect as being a project we want to close. As a result, a SEO consultant is brought in to analyze the prospective’s client site and identify opportunities (both short-term and long-term) as elements that we should focus on during our engagement together.

Top recommended articles

• An Introduction to Integrated Marketing and SEO: How It Works and Why It Matters
• Why SEOs Should Work with Sales to Obtain/Retain Clients
• How the Winners Do Mobile SEO

Stephanie Woods

StephWoodsSEO.com / @Twitter
~ Stephanie is a SEO specialist. She works at a large strategical web and marketing agency in Vancouver. Stephanie is providing top level SEO consulting for top Fortune 100 and 500 clients.

Covering the basics for site optimization doesn't need to be overly complicated, but it does require educating yourself on how to do it. If all of this seems like a lot to deal with, don't worry. There are plenty of online marketers around who are more than willing to help you with your site!

Top recommended articles

• Website Redesign Checklist: SEO 101
• What SEOs Ought to Know About HTML 5
• Learn SEO: How to Do Onpage Search Engine Optimization

Tamar Weinberg

Tamar.rocks / @Twitter
~ Tamar Weinberg is a professional hustler who is always working on some kind of cool projects behind the scenes

 Local search engine optimization is pretty significant, and small businesses need to heed to the importance of local SEO to grow their footprint and to make sure that patrons are actually visiting their establishment.

Top recommended articles

• The ultimate guide to local SEO ranking
• 6 Keys To Getting Local SEO Started On The Right Foot
• Interview with Tamar Weinberg

Tori Cushing

ToriCushing.tumblr.com / @Twitter
~ Tori has been in Inbound Marketing for five years. She has worked for agencies, in house and now for Moz.

Top recommended articles

• Tori Cushing – Actionable SEO Insights – SMX 2015
• iBlog Expert Interview: Tori Cushing of Moz
• Learn How to Make Tables and Graphs with Tori Cushing, April 30, 3PM Eastern

Tracy Wood

StreetSmartSocial.co.uk / @Twitter

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO to impress your “techie” friends, is the process of tweaking your Web site to make it more popular in search engine queries.The goal of most Web sites is high volume of quality traffic.

Top recommended articles

• ABC?  XYZ?  What on earth is SEO?
• Your Business Will Reach Maximum Success In Minimum Time When You Learn Search Engine Optimization Skills!
• Content Marketing Strategies [VIDEO]

Vanessa Fox

VanessaFox.com / @Twitter

~ Vanessa is the author of  Marketing in the Age of Google: Your Online Strategy IS Your Business Strategy (Wiley, 2nd edition, April 2012), which has been called the “first must-read-to-survive business book of the twenty-first century”.

Mobile issues that prevent an ideal user experience may hinder the site’s ability to rank well to mobile searchers, but won’t impact the site’s ability to rank well to desktop searchers.

Top recommended articles

• The Definitive Guide To Technical Mobile SEO
• Panda 2.0: Google Rolls Out Panda Update Internationally & Incorporates Searcher Blocking Data
• Is SEO Killing America?

Victoria Edwards

Linkedin.com/pub/6/78a/799 / @Twitter
~ Victoria has been working in online marketing for the past eight years, with specific focus in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media and Content Marketing.

Basic search engine optimization (SEO) is fundamental. And essential. SEO will help you position your website properly to be found at the most critical points in the buying process or when people need your site.

Top recommended articles

• SEO Basics: 8 Essentials When Optimizing Your Site
• 13 Essential SEO Power Tools
• International SEO: Need Your Help

Zoe Soto

ZoeSoto.com / @Twitter

~ Zoe is SEO Analyst @Glassdoor. Computer Systems Engineer. Bilingual.

Top recommended articles

• Are Website Home Buttons Overrated?
• Be honest. These are two of the reasons why SEO gets a bad reputation

MinucaElena

So there you have it. The top 100 women in SEO who have influenced the search engine game. As you can see, some of these bloggers are among the top authority figures in SEO today, while others have decided to pursue different interests. We are grateful to all of them and this post was created to acknowledge their role in helping to make SEO what it is today!

If you have learned something new today, then give this post a share!

Thank you!

The post 95 Women Who Influenced the SEO Industry appeared first on Serped.com.

Does this sound familiar?

You work like a dog for hours… days… weeks and months… writing blog posts left and right, with little to show for it.

You visit other people's blogs and leave comments, yet traffic is still trickling.

You've tried almost everything… and your site still looks like a ghost town?

Sounds painful. I know. SEO is not an easy game. Until you learn what works and what doesn't!

Do you really know what's the quickest way for learning the secret to boosting
your SEO rankings in Google?

Learn from the pros. People who are tracking & testing their blog post and webpage rankings day in day out.

That's why we connected with more than a hundred experienced bloggers for this article.

Half of them were willing to reveal their best SEO rankings methods.

More specifically, we asked these men and women to name…

3 important SEO techniques that had an impact on your rankings, in no order of importance

Enjoy the ride and share the post with others.

Thank you!

Tor Refsland

TimeManagementChef.com // @TorRefsland

~ I decided to leave my six-figure job in order to follow my passion.

1. Guest posting technique

As you have probably heard before, it doesn't matter if you have created the best content in the world, if no one knows about it.

When you start out you have no traffic to your blog, so there is no need to write content for your blog yet.

So what do you do?

Write guest posts for some of the biggest blogs in your niche.

Why?

You will get your content in front of a big audience within your niche, connect with the blog owner, get a backlink to your website (landing page) and get subscribers. It's a win-win situation for the blog owner and you.

In addition, when writing a guest post you can link to relevant articles on your own blog and / or to other guest posts you have written, which will create more value for the readers and more link juice to your content.

This is a long-term strategy.

When you focus on writing guest posts for big websites providing great content, people will start to notice. After while the table turns and great websites will ask you to guest post for them.

I wrote the guest post for Pick The Brain “Want To Become Super Productive? Stop Doing These 5 Stupid Activities” and asked my contacts to share it.

What happened?

Enstine Muki wanted to feature me on his great blog:

Sylviane Nuccio wanted me to write a post on her awesome website:

Aaron Lynn from Asian Efficiency wanted to interview me on their ass-kicking podcast, write another guest post for them and review their best product.

How awesome is that?

The more you focus on an activity, the better you become and the more opportunities will come your way.

When guest posting it's important that you really bring your A-game.

You're in the spotlight, make it count!

2. Spaghetti technique

With this technique you pick X amount of keywords you want to rank for, and then you write a blog post for each keyword.

Example:

Keyword 1 – Blog post 1
Keyword 2 – Blog post 2
Keyword 3 – Blog post 3
Keyword 4 – Blog post 4
Keyword 5 – Blog post 5
Keyword 6 – Blog post 6
Keyword 7 – Blog post 7
Keyword 8 – Blog post 8
Keyword 9 – Blog post 9
Keyword 10 – Blog post 10

It's like if you were going to cook a new type of spaghetti, and you didn't know how long the spaghetti was going to cook.

You would then just cook X different pots of spaghetti with different cooking time, and then… throwing the spaghetti on the wall to see if it was sticking to the wall. Hence, the name I gave this technique – the spaghetti technique.

I used Long Tail Pro to search for keywords I wanted to rank for within my topic. Then I wrote a blog post for each keyword, shared each post 2 times a week on Twitter.

I reviewed the results after 6 months (yes, it takes time), then I picked my highest ranking posts and did a total post makeover:

• I rewrote the content so it went from mediocre to pretty awesome

• Changed the headline (the permalink and keywords stayed untouched)
  
• Created new blog picture
  
• Created new pictures for Social Warfare (great plugin to increase your social media shares)
  
• Inserted content upgrade on the post (which lead to more value to the readers and more subscribers)

• Linked to the post in my other posts (internal linking)
  

Example:

My blog post “Want To Become A Winner? Use The DUMB Goals System” is currently ranked #7 on Google for the keywords “dumb goals”.

3. Roundup post technique

Start by connecting with influencers and then give them a lot of value first. Then do a roundup post that included the topic and keywords you want to rank for.

My last roundup post went totally crazy bananas: 80 Productivity Tips From Incredibly Busy Experts.

In 6 days the post generated 20 231 page views, and it has 1200+ shares, 74 comments and some backlinks.

And the best part?

It's ranked on top #14 on Google for the keyword “productivity tips” in just a few months.

You probably thought that I would share some magical tips that would make unicorns jump out from the mist under the rainbow.

If that is the case, I'm sorry to disappoint you. SEO is a long-term strategy, where you create amazing content and promote it like your life was depending on it.

It's a lot of hard work, but done right, you it WILL definitely be worth it!

By using the three techniques mentioned in this post, I won the award for “Most Epic category” on Jon Morrow's blog Boost Blog Traffic, I got interviewed 5 times, I got 14 guest posts published on big websites and I got featured as an expert on 24 websites.

For more details, click here.

Nothing of that would have happened, if I didn't take action.

Now you have the recipe on how to rank high on Google.

Remember, that the recipe is useless, if you don't apply it.

Get out there, put in some massive action and claim your top ranking Google!

Bill Gassett

MaxRealEstateExposure.com //@massrealty

~ One of the top 5 RE/MAX agents in MA for the last decade. Social media/SEO junkie.

One of the best SEO techniques I have found to have an impact on rankings is through the proper use of content marketing.

The problem with many is that they don't know how to do content marketing properly. Two examples of the perfect vehicles for content marketing are Scoop.it and Storify.

Each of these sites allow you to take your existing content or content of others and add your own thoughts and opinions into what you are sharing.

When done properly this can have an impact on your own contents search position.

You will not see your position change immediately by sharing content in these channels but I guarantee you when checking back 3-4 weeks later even if you did not acquire another single link your position will have gone up by a decent amount.

The key however is doing your content marketing properly in the eyes of Google.

If you just are dropping links into a page your contribution will be of no value. What you must do is a few things:

• Change the title to something other than the original article title.

• Use a different graphic when possible.

• Add your own thoughts and opinions to anything you are sharing. I am NOT talking about adding two sentences either! If you want to make your page valuable add some meat to the content

• Share this new resource in all the top social media channels like Google Plus, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, Linkedin and any others you use to promote your main site.

Take a look at my real estate page at Scoop.it and my social channel at Storify. Pay attention to how I have added content into every article I have shared.

A second great way to increase your SERP position is through the proper use of social media.

There are numerous people who think there is no measurable value from using social media as a means to capture business. Boy are they wrong!

What they don't realize is social media should not be used for direct selling but by building relationships with key people that can help your business grow!

Here is the perfect example of what I mean – I have been a big fan of Google+. In fact it is one of my favorite social channels since it was first introduced.

You can have far more meaningful conversations there than in any other social channel.

One of the best things I did on the first day they were offered was start a great a Google+ real estate community. This has allowed me to form meaningful relationships with real estate bloggers from around the country.

What these relationships have done is create a fantastic opportunity for acquiring links to my real estate content.

It is rare there is ever a week that goes by that someone does not link to my content.

This is a direct result of forming a Google Plus real estate community. I would highly encourage anyone who is using Google+ to start building relationships with key influencers within your industry.

The third method for gaining some good traction in search results is to create an account at Tumblr and start sharing your content in the site. Again how you do this is key to making it work.

You should create a unique article that links back to the content you want to perform better.

This does not mean copy and paste or put through some silly spinning tool. You need to put effort into whatever you are doing!

Take a look at my Massachusetts Real Estate Tumblr site to see what I am talking about. Notice how I am putting a unique graphic into my posts.

All of the real estate content I am writing is completely unique.

You will notice within the article I link back to my site which not only provides the reader with a better experience but helps in the long term search position of the original article I wrote on the given topic.

Always remember that gaming does not get you anywhere for very long. You need to put time and energy into doing things the right way for long term success.

Brian Lang

SmallBusinessIdeasBlog.com //@sbizideasblog

~ I am a small business owner since 2002 and blog to give free business tips and ideas.

1. Brian Dean's Skyscraper Technique

Brian Dean started making his mark in the SEO community when he first published his now famous Skyscraper technique. I've tried it myself on my own blog with good success.

101 Sources for Blog Content Ideas was my first attempt at the Skyscraper technique. Asides from ranking for “blog content ideas”, other blog posts on my site started getting more traffic also.

http://www.smallbusinessideasblog.com/101-blog-content-ideas

110+ Keyword Research Tool Alternatives to Google Keyword Planner is another successful Skyscraper post that permanently increased my SEO traffic. This is perhaps my most successful Skyscraper with over 1,000 social shares:

http://www.smallbusinessideasblog.com/keyword-research-tools

60+ Tools and Tips to Find Someone's Email is my most recent attempt at a Skyscraper post.

http://www.smallbusinessideasblog.com/find-email-addresses

2. Great Content + Email Outreach

My LinkedIn publishing study on how top writers get featured on the Pulse has over 5,000 social shares and is one of the most popular articles on my blog.

Since LinkedIn publishing was new at the time and in beta access, this study was highly useful to people trying to figure out how to get traction by publishing on LinkedIn.

http://www.smallbusinessideasblog.com/linkedin-publishing

Email outreach allowed me to get some backlinks and social shares to spread awareness of the content and rank for some relevant terms, which has resulted in even more links and shares even long after it was published.

3. Guest Blogging

Guest blogging on popular blogs has allowed me to create even more awareness of my brand and blog.

If you create quality content on an authority blog, then people will also link to that content naturally and share it on social media and other channels.

An article on an authority domain with natural external links to that article is a big win.

Bryan Adams

Ph-Creative.com //@Bryan_phc

~ CEO-Founder of @PhCreative Inbound Marketing Agency. Speaker, Co-Author of Getting Goosebumps. Addicted to Marketing Strategy, Storytelling & Social Media.

1) Landing Pages

New landing pages to accurately target low competition/long tail keywords and increase click throughs.

The keyword “matt emulsion paint” is ranked at position 1 for DDC, the page that is ranking is http://www.duluxdecoratorcentre.co.uk/product/paint/interior-emulsion/matt

2) Internal Linking

To spread authority more uniformly and hierarchly throughout a site.

We created a new website for Simplicity in Business last December.

When we compare the amount of pages being indexed in July 2015 to July 2014, the figure jumps from 63 to 418 – a 663% increase.

Although we did a number of pages, it certainly wasn't enough to reconcile with this figure.

The improved site structure and internal linking played a huge part in this

3) Relevant keywords

Identify relevant keywords already ranking on pages 1/2 using SEM Rush and make the standard onpage changes such as Content/Metas/H1's to effectively target the keywords for quick wins

Chris Dreyer

AttorneyRankings.org // @AttorneyRanking

~ Lawyer SEO specialist. Owner of a unique, full-service lawfirm Internet marketing agency.

Technique #1 – NAP (Name, Address, Phone) Consistency Update

I frequently see a lot of businesses struggle achieving solid local SEO results due to having incorrect or outdated name, address and phone number information. This typically occurs when the business relocates.

Updating external websites can be very challenging if the owner hasn't kept detailed username and password information. Here are some tips that may help with this occurs:

1. Identify all outdated websites and collect the URLS into a spreadsheet. Do so by searching for the outdated address, phone number of by doing a directory search using search parameters. Example: site:yellowpages.com “[insert business name here]”

2. Obtain contact information directly on the website or do so by using https://www.whois.net/ domain searches to obtain email addresses and/or phone numbers.

3. Next, go to the sites and do a standard password reset. If that doesn't give you access you'll need to manual outreach to each website with the contact information you've found to try and update the website with the correct information.

4. YEXT Powerlistings – Offers duplicate suppression to individuals or businesses that have passed their certification requirements. Using their dashboard in conjunction with duplicate suppression you can create a clean organized listing for some of the top local website directories on the net. It's an easy relatively inexpensive way to update many of the top local directories all at once.

Check out some of the sites they have within their network here:
http://www.yext.com/products/listings/network/

5. Moz Local – Submit your updated correct information to Moz Local. Moz Local distributes your information to most of the major location aggregators (ie. infogroup, acxiom, neustar, etc.).

Technique #2 – Highlight Accolades with Press Releases

A great way to improve your social proof and achieve backlinks is to highlight your achievements with press releases.

There are a lot of great press release sites out there.

Typically, the press release sites themselves are set up with the no-follow tag but often times the media distribution networks they syndicate to, do contain do-follow backlinks.

Remember that if you do not tell your consumers about achievements when they occur then they are not going to know they happened. Don't think of it as bragging. Thing about it as informing.

It's important to celebrate accomplishments and it's' a great away to obtain backlinks as well.

My agency does primarily law firm marketing and we've seen the most success with the following:

PRWeb.com
LawFirmNewsWire.com

Technique #3 – Create an Effective Local Foundation and/or Charity

Creating a charity can be a very rewarding experience.

You're able to help those in need for something that's important to you and it also has the secondary benefit of creating great PR for your business as well as natural backlinks.

In most cases, if you have a cause you're passionate about, people are more than willing to contribute.

Often times without asking you'll begin to achieve natural mentions of your work on social media and external websites as well.

The main outlet that most individuals use to promote a charity is social media. This can generate a lot of traffic very quickly as well as natural backlinks.

Chris Lee

RankXl.com

~ Making a full-time income with Adsense since 2013.

1. Creating groups of similar keywords

One of the biggest things that really took my SEO and niche sites to another level was when I planned ahead for ranking for similar keywords.

Rather than just target one keyword, I would group all the similar keywords that meant the same thing and targeted all of them throughout the page.

When I built enough links and started ranking, I would rank for everything.

2. Building links through outreach

When I stopped fooling around with weak grey-hat methods and just focused 100% on doing outreach, my sites started to rank much higher for big keywords, and they stayed there.

Really focusing on the idea that the more difficult the link is to acquire, the more powerful it usually will be really changed the way I link build.

3. Finding link opportunities BEFORE creating content

Another important technique is to identify link opportunities before you create any content for it. Creating a post, and then looking for site that will link to you limits your scope.

If you can find opportunities first, and then determine the best content that will attract links from them got me to thinking of link building opportunities in a new way.

Cosmin Negrescu

SeoMonitor.com // @Ncosmin

~ Founder & CEO of SeoMonitor.com , the tool that makes SEO measurable and easy to manage. Organizer of SEM Days conference.

Before talking about any SEO technique, I believe understanding the circumstances and the SEO opportunities in terms of topics / keywords is crucial.

Only after that can we efficiently apply SEO techniques that generate results.

For example, if we focus on technical SEO for a new brand / website we can't expect any improvement in terms of visibility, but for big brands, fixing the technical stuff can do magic in Google.

Then, if we target difficult topics where we have to outrank big brands, we still can't expect to win the game.

Identifying keywords that target our audience, have a decent search volume and a lower difficulty to rank on, that's what will make our strategy powerful.

As about techniques, content marketing and native advertising that generate engagement, social signals, done for the topics on which our brand can rank in Google are what make an SEO campaign successful for us most of the times.

Dave Schneider

NinjaOutreach.com // @SelfMadeBm

~ Business, Entrepreneurship, Internet Marketing, Content and Social media Marketing.

It's difficult to directly tie back an action to rankings because I never directly track them. That said, the common linkbuilding tactics I've used that I believe have been successful for us, have been:

Resource Page Linkbuilding – this is essentially reaching out to bloggers and asking them if they'd be interested in featuring NinjaOutreach on their resource page. Often, with the addition of an affiliate link, they are.

Broken Linkbuilding – This involves searching for broken links/articles and then informing the articles that link to them that they are linking to a broken link and seeing if they're replace it with one of our own.

Content Marketing – Simply creating great content and promoting it has probably been the best way to get natural, organic links and social shares. For example, doing expert roundups.

Dom Wells

HumanproffDesigns.com // @Human_Proof

~ Niche site blogger and specialist

1.) Guest posting

Not only does guest posting work great for getting high quality links, but the fact you are getting exposure to a new audience means you'll be even more likely to get new links in the future.

You also start to get people inviting you to guest post for them or be involved in things like expert roundup posts. Every guest post you do is worth way more than just 1 or 2 links.

2.) Host blogging

As well as posting on other people's sites, you also want to consider hosting other people on yours.

They'll share these posts with their audiences, which often garners a lot of social shares and possibly some links as well.

It might just be my site, but I find that these types of posts get a lot of engagement as well. Some of my most commented on articles are from a guest blogger.

3.) Expert Roundups

Similar to host blogging, a really good expert roundup gets you a lot of social shares, engagement, and also links.

Typically these posts are so full of actionable information, that they generate a lot of links too. I even had one used as an example of expert roundup posts once as well, which was a funny link to acquire.

Evgeniy Garkaviy

HopeSpring.org.uk // @MrGarkaviy

~ Works at Hope Spring

(1) Mobile SEO

According to comScore, number of mobile-only internet users now exceeds desktop-only users. That is why everyone who abandon mobile website losing potential customers.

Another very important thing is that back in April 2015 Google rolled out mobile-friendly update.

It is clear for everyone that this update affects not mobile friendly websites. So mobile website is very important for everyone.

If you do not have money or other resources to create a mobile website on sub-domain then think about responsive design. Usually it is cheaper.

Some useful facts regarding mobile friendly websites:

• 40% people have turned to a competitors site after a bad mobile experience
• Mobile search queries have grown 5x in the last two years
• 67% said that mobile friendly website makes them more likely to buy a product or use a service

(2) High-quality content.

For the past few years we have been hearing that content is the king and spam websites even if they rank high can't sell because of poor content.

Today it is very important for good website/page to have a high quality/fresh content.

If you are willing to rank high for very competitive keywords then content should be 2000+ words. According to the image below, average content length in words for #1 in Google for competitive keywords is 2416,

• #2 – 2494
• #3 – 2492
• #4 – 2341
• #5 – 2327

So, at least 2,000 words for a single page. And don't forget about good internal linking. Google loves such websites.

(3) Wikipedia Broken Link-Building.

If you want to get a backlink from very trusted recourse than Wikipedia is a good place. If you think that it is very hard to get a backlink from Wikipedia site – you are wrong. In fact, it works very easy

1. Go to this page to find all articles with broken links.
2. Find a good article related to what you can write about.
3. Review a dead link content in web.archieve.org
4. Rewrite that content

Replace dead link with a link to your website. Everyone can edit Wikipedia articles and actually it is very easy.

Felix Tarcomnicu

ProOptimization.com // @Felixtarcomnicu

~ SEO, blogger, online marketer.

For me, guest blogging has been the best SEO technique.

It's a great strategy that helped me increase my social media followers count, get relevant referring traffic and more important, improve my SEO.

I only write guest posts for reputable websites, and never for sites that have a lower reputation than my site. To make this strategy even better, I usually avoid writing for sites that have a “write for us” page.

I would rather publish my content on sites that are not very familiar with guest bloggers because this will make the backlinks more valuable. The harder it is to get a backlink, the more valuable it will be.

The 2nd best strategy is building backlinks with infographics. I love it when one of my infographics goes viral on social media and earns lots of backlinks.

Creating an infographic is not as expensive as some might think, and you can easily get editorial backlinks that will have a huge impact on SEO.

The 3rd SEO strategy I use is replicating competitor's backlinks. I always stay up to date with my competition link building techniques and methods using Monitor Backlinks.

My philosophy is simple. If you can replicate the most important backlinks of the websites that are currently outranking you in Google, you'll soon be the one to dominate the SERPS.

So to put this simple, the best methods for me have been guest blogging, infographics and replicating competitors backlinks.

Fervil Von Tripoli

FervilVon.com // @FervilVon

~ Freelance SEO consultant from the Philippines with more than 4 years of mixed experience in internet marketing and search engine optimization.

• Keyword Research

I still cling on the idea that even if you suck at building or earning links but you have great skills in finding profitable keywords and niches, you can easily penetrate and position yourself on top of search engines and open the floodgates of organic traffic.

The most common problem with webmasters competing in the search is that they all have been fighting for the same set of keywords.

This will create a major setback should you decide to join the bandwagon with a newer site considering that the target searches are already dominated by more authoritative pages.

With thorough keyword analysis and research, you can initially determine whether you want to continue (or not) investing time, money and effort on ranking your web page for a particular search term.

It's somewhat hacking the system by keeping yourself away from jam-packed and heavily competitive keywords and stumble on profitable keywords with zero competition.

If you wish to learn how to discover golden keywords without paying for anything, please feel free to check this short slide presentation

• Thought-leading Content

Okay let's take it that you're in a pinch because you are “already” in a very competitive niche.

There's no other way out than to stand out in the crowd. You need to build the most magnificent piece you could build in order to do that.

To put it in layman's term, you need to put together a thought-leading content that can compel viewers and readers to click on the share button.

Will it be easy to do? Hell no. But it's pleasing to create solid content assets within your website than to rely on any link building strategies out there.

At the end of the day, everything will go down to the satisfaction of your audience.

Are they happy to have hit on your page?

Did your content successfully answer the problem of the searcher?

You don't need to become a wizard to create a thought-leading content but you will need dedication (and LOTS of it) in putting it all together.

Pro tip: You can check and analyze the top pages ranking in your targeted search term and understand the thought behind each page. Compile them together and put it as one.

Keep in mind that creating a thought-leading content can be it's a video, a slide, an infographic, a gifographic or a blog post, depends on how you package it as long as hits the spot.

By having a thought-leading piece, you'll less likely have a hard time promoting it and earning unsolicited links.

• Strategic Link Building

There are hefty of ways on how to build the best backlinks to the page you wanted to rank. Google loves authoritative and relevant links and to get those, you will need to perform a decent link building strategy.

In my case, I tend to analyze the backlink profile of my top competitor site and observe the authoritative and relevant backlinks that are pointing to their ranking page.

Pro tip: If I could, I would place and be where my competitors have been placing their links but I'll only pick those backlinks which I think influenced their ranking.

This can be done by filtering the links in terms of “authority” and “relevance”.

Another thing that I would consider is the chance of obtaining a link placement to their backlink page.

If it is highly feasible, I'll give it a go. In this manner, I'll be able to get par with them in terms of backlinks thus increase my fighting chance in ranking my page in top of search results.

Floyd Buenavente

SuperKaizen.com // @SEOphilippinnes

~ SEO consultant and blogger in the Philippines.

1. Proper On-Page-Optimization – When I mean proper on-page optimization I am talking about giving great value to your target audience.

There are many strategies in optimizing your website, but at the end of the day no matter how bad your website looks (although I would still strongly suggest to make it beautiful) it is what it conveys that makes it meaningful to your niche.

Make use of properly understanding sales and marketing and then create content in a way that would improve the knowledge and experience of your readers, that they will be more than happy to share with their friends.

2. Determine The Right Target Keywords – I would have to admit that determining the right target keywords works wonders especially in creating your content.

Being able to properly map out a content strategy that will bring in traffic and will be able to speak the language of your readers is one of the secrets in becoming relevant in the serps.

Take time to study and research what your users want and need, and if need be go and get the keywords of your competitors and study them as well.

3. Focus on Value, Not on just building links – I can't emphasize the importance of value oriented link-building, because the essence of link-building is creating relationships.

There are so many ways to do linkbuilding, but what I learned in my ten years of doing SEO is that links will only matter if people are willing to share it and see you as an authority and a brand.

Gurwinder Singh

JustBlogTips.com // @GSBhinder

~ Internet Marketer, Student and #Blogger

The 3 SEO techniques that had an impact on my ranking are:

1. Using WordPress SEO by Yoast – a real, time-saver and must have WordPress plugin.

2. Guest Blogging – not only helps to get some handy backlinks and improve your off-page SEO but also makes it possible to reach a wider audience & grab some new eyeballs.

3. Interlinking – the big G likes to see these a lot.

Harris Schachter

OptimizePri.me // @OptimizePrime

~ Content Marketing & SEO @CapitalOne. Hybrid marketer, mountain biker, technologist, fan of caffeine & #PrimesPicks

Internal linking structure: Sometimes you can get a simple lift just by making sure all the pages you have are crawlable or worth being crawled.

Conducting a mapping exercise to explore how link equity flows through a site can be hugely beneficial, once you have enough data on how each page performs in search as a landing experience.

Shape the high authority pages to direct attention to new pages to give them a boost, and make sure you explore all the ways your content links to itself.

You don't want to overdo exact match links in body text, and watch out for sidewide links as well, especially monster footer sections.

Keyword Mapping & Overlap analysis: This one might sound simple, but it's amazing how many people still don't take the time to do this.

Once your keyword research and topic maps are complete, this ecosystem of search intents should be overlayed on your content.

Do you have a destination for each search intent?

Do you have too many destinations for the same search?

Are you covering all stages of the funnel from a language and conversion intent?

I've seen lifts in overall site performance simply by deconflicting pages which were otherwise competing with themselves. Sometimes less is more!

Links: No matter what Google says or encourages you to think about links, they still matter. This one also sounds simple, but it's always good to think about how to earn links from high authority sites.

You should never buy them if you want to sleep at night, but simply doing some outreach with your engaging content can earn a few here or there.

Work this into the process and overtime you'll earn more credibility and domain authority.

Andy Drinkwater

IQSEO.uk // @IQSEOuk

~ Copywriter and SEO consultant focusing on ethical campaigns and specialising in SEO Audits, Link-building & Outreach.

3 important factors for SEO…

1) The first must be content.

With great content come amazing links and social activities. However, this tends to fall down if all you are willing to do is pump out a 500 word article that is nothing but waffle.

Spend the time to research your subject; spend time composing it and don't forget to add images / graphical representations to help make points.

Split your articles up in to bite-size chunks that are easily digestible and summarise where you can.

Rather than aiming to create daily articles, spend that extra time and just create one big article a week – your readers will love you for it, and so will Google!

2) The power of best-practice is available for all to see on a regular basis.

One of my mot recent clients works within the recruitment sector and they had been hovering on the 2nd page for quite some time.

After an SEO Audit of their site, I found a good number of weaknesses, lack of good keyword use and gave them a plan of action to work to.

Within a number of weeks, they were showing on the first page. After just 3 months of work, they then dominated the top-3 positions for a very wide range of big-data & analytics recruitment related terms.

Spend time making sure that you are saying the right things about your subject and then look to see if you can carefully increase the number of related keywords and supporting content.

It is also worth creating an internal link campaign as this is a fantastically underused technique that will help build power to hub / important pages.

3) I am sure that links will figure on most SEO's views as they are still very strong signals to Google.

However, there are links, and then there are LINKS!!! Of you are happy to opt for the former, then make your articles and linkable assets very average.

If you would like to achieve the latter, then you must think about increasing how you write your content, how you pitch your site and how you engage with other industry experts.

Out-reach is a huge part to any link-building / link acquisition campaign.

If you think you will get by with just sending a spammy blanket mail to hundreds of recipients, who will likely see the same thing 20 times a day, then think again.

Spend time researching those who you wish to make contact with.

Who has a good number of re-tweets? Who is active in your field? Who likes to talk about personal issues as well as work?

These, and others, will give you an indication for who you want to be making contact with.

Don't just go in there with all guns blazing – this will just scare them off. Take the time to introduce yourself and ask if they could have a read of what you have produced.

Ask if they have any opinions they would like to add and you could cite them? If someone writes about you, and you then make them aware when it's ready, do you think they are going to keep quiet about it?

Not only can this lead to social mentions, but also great back links.

James Brockbank

JamesBrockBank.co.uk // @BrockBankJames

~ UK Digital Marketing & SEO Consultant. He helps turn businesses into brands.

1. Get Your Site Structure Right

Too often, I see websites which have an AWFUL structure!

Taking time to review the structure of a site can have an impact not only upon rankings but also on the overall user experience, something which we all know is becoming more and more important to consider for online success.

The shocking thing, however, is that Google state the importance of a great site structure in their Webmaster Guidelines:

“Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.”

As such, take the advice and stick to it! Spend some time thinking about the structure and how users are likely to interact with your site… it will make a difference, trust me!

2. Ditch Duplicate Content On Product Descriptions

It's still widely seen that eCommerce retailers will copy product descriptions directly from the manufacturers own website.

This is a huge FAIL and spending the time to create unique, engaging content can do wonders from an SEO perspective.

I'm often met with the response of ‘it'll take too long to rewrite every product' however in the long run, it's worth it!

Hire a number of different copywriters to get the job done or employ a temporary member of staff to work through the task.

It's a well known fact that duplicate content is a no-go, however many online stores and even digital marketing ‘experts' continue to ignore this when it comes to product descriptions.

If you want a quick win for eCommerce SEO, go out and ensure every single one of your products has unique content.

3. Take A PR Driven Approach

If you've ever even dabbled in black-hat SEO; FORGET IT ALL!

We all know someone who still uses black or grey-hat approaches and the bottom line is that these techniques no longer work (in most cases)!

If you want to have a positive impact upon your rankings, approach SEO from a PR perspective, creating assets which journalists and bloggers WANT to link to and share.

If you've no previous experience in PR, don't worry!

A fantastic read is “The PR Masterclass: How to Develop a Public Relations Strategy That Works” by Alex Singleton which will give you the basic understanding you need to start thinking about how you can encourage top publications and resources to actually want to feature your business.

Yes, it's by no means an easy feat and great PR takes time, however over the longer-term, your rankings will benefit considerably, added to the fact that you're removing any sort of risk of penalties which is typically associated with using techniques which could be seen to violate Google's webmaster guidelines.

Jason Acidre

KaiserTheSage.com // @JasonAcidre

~ Co-founder/CEO Xight Interactive

1. Acquiring relationship-based links (multiple contextual links from topically relevant sites with strong Domain Authority).

We've done this many times in the past and it's still continuously proving its effectiveness (especially when matched with continuous technical SEO changes made on the site).

I've written something about this strategy a couple of years back that you guys read here at Affilorama.

2. Creating evergreen content assets and optimizing them for search.

This has been the core of my blog's overall SEO strategy – and has since then become a framework we used for many of our past clients. I've written a few case studies about this method that you can check out here:

• Optimizing Great Content for Search
• Maximizing Evergreen Content to Fuel Sales and Marketing
• Simplifying Inbound Marketing through Content Assets

3. Optimizing the site's architecture for better crawling and indexation as well as user-friendly site navigation. This process usually involves the following tasks:

• Strategic keyword targeting and designation, internal linking structure and optimizing permalinks – which I've thoroughly discussed here.
• Maximizing the site's crawl budget.
• Blocking crawlers from accessing and indexing duplicate and poor-content pages.
• Building more support pages that can naturally attract links and usage signals – and funneling ranking signals and link equity from high-performing pages to pages that should be more visible on search.

Jon Dykstra

FatStacksBlog.com // @FatStacksBlog

~ I teach others how to build profitable authority sites

I'm actually going to suggest my 3 step method for improving rankings. Each step in itself is an SEO technique.

1. Step 1 is to target long tail keywords.

A younger site will have a better chance of ranking for longer tail keywords.

While the potential traffic isn't huge, it's a great way to get some organic search traffic and therefore get data with which you can use to identify higher traffic keywords.

Therefore, do research to discover some long tail keywords that won't be terribly difficult to rank for so you can get some organic traffic fairly quickly.

2. Step 2 is to publish the best article or piece of content on the web pertaining to the long tail keywords discovered in step 1.

See what other sites have published on the topic and make yours the best.

Promote the published articles/posts across your social media channels.

Obtain legitimate links from other websites if possible.

3. Step 3 is waiting until your site has some decent organic traffic from long tail keyword articles.

Now, either using software (I like SEMRush) or doing it manually, figure out the higher search keywords you're starting to rank for in the top 20 to 30 spots in the SERPs.

This is very valuable data because your site is now actually on the radar for quality keywords which means with a little SEO nudge (or in some cases a big nudge… depending on the keyword), you can improve the rankings for the higher volume keywords.

This process takes time, but it works very well for me and it's a very strategic approach to ranking for keywords.

Please note that this approach works best when you're open to ranking for many keywords instead of specific keywords.

For example, if you publish a B2C blog and you simply want plenty of traffic, the 3 step strategy above works great.

On the other hand, if you're going after one or a few keywords from the start, this strategy isn't for you because you already know what you wish to rank for.

Jock Purtle

DigitalExits.com // @JockPurtle

~ Business Owner, Health and Fitness Enthusiast, World Traveller

We have still found link building to be the number one source of ranking movements for SEO.

The below are the top three sources of links that we use to grow the rankings for Digital Exits including an example for each source:

1. Guest posts

High quality authoritative content guest posts still work wonders for SEO. Make sure you are an authority on the topic you are posting about and Google will love you.

2. Infographics

Are a create way to represent large amounts of data visually. They are also loved by blogs in most niches.

We use a process of reaching out to blogs and asking them if they want to post the graphic on their site and we write a unique introduction to the infographic in return.

3. Podcast interview

A less well talked about form of link building, however every time you do a podcast interview they will generally post a link back to your site.

Jon Haver

AuthorityWebSiteIncome.com // @PayStudentDebt

~ Husband, father, engineer, sports fan and huge geek when it to comes to automating and outsourcing his activity.

1. Consistent Quality Content Daily

Almost accidentally I have had a couple SEO tests where a couple projects only had the content machine working for a couple months(only daily content and no promotion).

No other promotion was happening (not ideal) and even though no promotion was occurring the sites organic traffic was growing month over month by 50%!

It showed that in certain cases once initial traction is obtained reliably adding additional quality content is enough to grow organic traffic.

2. 301 Building Block Strategy

A strategy I have had success with lately has been leveraging relevant, powerful expired domains to build a quality small site focused around a specific niche and then monitoring how the site performs in Google.

Once I have confirmed the site is leveraging the power of the quality expired domain, solid content and is getting decent traffic I roll it up into a larger relevant site by 301 redirecting all posts and homepage of the smaller site to the larger site.

I call it my 301 Building Block strategy because using multiple building blocks I can build a larger site which leverages the power of the very relevant quality expired domains to push all new content up the SERPs.

301 Building Block Part 1

301 Building Block Part 2

3. Quality PBN Links Still Work

Whether people want to accept it or not quality PBN links still are very effective at driving rankings.

It is a tool when used properly can yield massive results.

Lower value PBNs certainly carry a lot of risk but when a PBN is used correctly it can quickly and reliably get rankings.

Joseph E. Gojo Cruz

RankingElite.com // @RankingElite

~ Digital marketing blogger with a focus on SEO, content development, social media marketing and link development.

I have to say the below information is based on the best practice approach in SEO as I know it.

I've been handling a website in real estate industry. This website was suffering from content quality and manipulative links which have been affecting their website for years in organic search.

Since I started handling this website, I didn't start off by producing content or link building. I started off by conducting an analysis on that website to see where I should start and to identify the needs of it.

I then looked at the following sections:

• Content
• Link profile
• Technical

My first action was to conduct a content audit for the website.

Throughout the years, this website has been publishing content that was written for search engines.

The length of content in general is too short and it was populated with target keywords – basically your ideal content before Panda.

The second action was to analyze their link profile. Since I didn't start the link building to this website, my initial action was to take a look at their link profile data.

I normally use Ahrefs to get the link profile data of a website and every time I use the tool, I always don't get disappointed. Ahrefs never fails to provide me manipulative links.

The last action I did was to take a look at their website technical health. We all know that good content don't matter if Google can't access it.

We have to make sure that Google can re-visit and re-read a website's content in order for them to understand it and rank the page based on their ranking algorithm.

As a result of the clean up, so far a bit of organic traffic increase I was able to bring to the website.

And here's the ranking improvements:

Important things to remember:

When you're about to handle a website, do a background research for it so you know what to do.

Don't always be obsessed with link building to increase your link quantity, focus on quality.

Make your website free from technical or coding issues and control your site's crawl budget.

Kevin Indig

SearchMetrics.com // @Kevin_Indig

~ Organic Search Expert @Searchmetrics advising F500 Companies and startups, living and working in Silicon Valley

I could mention at least 5 methods to improve rankings based on tweaking content, but since I expect many other writers to do that already, I'd like to show up a little different more technical perspective:

1. Index control

Being aware and in control of what is being indexed by Google and what not is huge in terms of rankings. This is mainly due to the fact that many sites have lots of pages indexed by Google that don't rank.

The rank / page ratio is very important after my mind. For one client this even helped me to get them out of a Panda penalty!

(SEO Visibility graph of a site on which we took lots of irrelevant pages out of the index)

2. Internal linking

When it comes to internal linking, I made the experience to deal with two kinds of logics: First, the more the better.

Secondly, don't have more than 200 internal links on a page.

The reality is that websites are an ecosystem and the amount of internal and outgoing links varies depending on important and relevance of the corresponding page.

Especially since backlink building has become such a sensitive topic, optimizing the internal linking structure is a very powerful method to improve rankings.

In order to be successful here: find a way to technically map out as much of your internal linking structure as possible, for example with the Searchmerics Link Optimizer or Screaming Frog.

Next, compare the flow of link juice to your most important pages.

If you want to chance something about internal linking, think in terms of linking modules, not single links. They'll influence your linking landscape way further.

(Internal link graph of a big website)

3. Hygiene

SEO hygiene has become incredibly relevant with the recent roll outs of Phantom II and Panda.

It basically comes down to not only make indexation and accessibility as efficient as possible for search engines, but also avoiding spider traps, links to 404 error pages, soft 404 errors, faulty canonicals, redirect chains and redirect loops.

Funnily, this sort of “cleanup” serves users as much as it does serve search engines.

Kristi Hines

KristiHines.com // @Kikolani

~ Freelance Writer

For my main business website, I rank on the first page for freelance writer.

The only things I did in terms of SEO was:

1. Optimize the website for that keyword phrase (and related ones)

2. Link my website in a ton of guest author bios on quality blogs, and

3. Link my website with answers to crowdsourced posts like these.

While I started out using freelance writer as my anchor text, I switched to mostly using my name as anchor text and closely following it with “…is a freelance writer”.

Kristoffer Howes

WealMedia.com // @KristofferHowes

~ CEO. Social Media, Search and Content Marketing specialist. Devoted Dad, Author. I never lose. Either I WIN or I LEARN.

3 important SEO techniques that had an impact on my rankings:

Social Media

The question of whether social media affects search ranking has been the subject of many fiery debates.

The official answer from Google is that socialmedia does “not directly” affect search rankings. I have seen evidence to the contrary.

Data collected from my own studies, has repeatedly offered proof that social media affects search results, and in particular Google +1s improves search result placement time and again.

The only other social network I can say with a degree of certainty has a positive affect on search results is Tumblr.

The important thing to understand about social media's relationship with search is that it is dependent upon sharing quality content that inspires meaningful audience engagement, on both the social media post and the webpage.

No, it may not be the ever-elusive “social signals,” but IMO quality social media activity contributes favorably to Google's other known algorithm signals; like website traffic and positive user experience.

Schema Markup

Schema markup is an extremely effective, but underutilized SEO strategy. In fact, according to Searchmetrics (2014), only 0.3 of all websites use schema markup.

With low early adoption figures like this, including it on your Web properties puts you leagues ahead of the competition.

Where is the SEO value?

Including Schema in webpages provides a method of effectively communicating descriptive information with leading search engines, that otherwise may have been overlooked or improperly indexed.

Processing this rich-information often results in more search placements and better results.

Use the Structured Data Markup Helper to generate your markup, and the Structured Data Testing Tool to verify your Schema inclusions.

Supplemental Content

With so much focus on Panda and Penguin, very little attention is paid to Google Phantom. This filter targets Web page content that delivers a very poor user experience.

The biggest contributors to a poor user experience are “thin.” and user-generated content.

To avoid incurring any penalty and/or lost performance from “thin” and/or poor user-generated content, I recommend that you:

1. Improve editorial and production quality of new/existing webpages. Do not produce shallow, “click-bait” articles.

2. Eliminate supplementary information – such as stacked videos and advertisements, that make webpages difficult to navigate.

3. Remove (or improve) pages that lack substance.

Marko Saric

HowToMakeMyBlog.com // @MarkoSaric

~ Practical and action-oriented content creator, marketer and blogger. An individualist. Where I lay my head I call home.

1. Picking a descriptive domain name.

Back when I started howtomakemyblog.com I didn't think too much about this but the decision to pick a descriptive domain name resulted in me ranking and getting traffic from a lot of related keywords and keyword phrases.

The importance of keywords in domain name has declined since 2008 when I started but if there's a way for you to create a cool, descriptive but non-generic domain name it could impact your rankings positively too.

2. Going to bigger blogs and submitting guest posts.

I used to go to some of the biggest blogs in my field and submit quality content for them to publish as guest posts.

This helped me get my name out there to a larger audience, it helped me get some traffic and social media followers, and got me some relevant links from high-quality sites.

Guest blogging has got a bad reputation in recent years thanks to all the spammers but even today if it is done well (I have a guide on that here) it can positively impact your rankings.

3. Just publishing great content.

This is the key really for me for everything with content marketing including search engine rankings.

When I publish a great piece of content that answers questions people have, a piece of content that is better presented and easier to understand than other content that is out there, I get traffic, I get social media shares and I get links.

It all happens thanks to the quality of the content and doing this over the long term leads to a bump in rankings too.

Matt Wolfe

MattWolfe.net // @MattRWolfe

~ Co-Founder of BeyondTheHype.com – Father, Husband, Blogger, Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur

Since most of my businesses thus far has revolved around blogging, my responses are directly related to ranking blogs.

The SEO techniques that had the greatest impact on my site are as follows:

1. Write epic content.

When it comes to SEO, I don't think there's any better tactic than creating absolutely epic content that people will love and share.

Google watches bounce rates of websites… If you create some amazing content, people will read the full article and, often, want to dive deeper in to your other articles.

This will cause people to stay on your site longer, decreasing your bounce rate, and validating to Google that they are presenting exactly what someone was looking for…

You will also get more social shares, more links back to your site, and more people subscribing to your list if you just simply make “creating epic content” part of your strategy.

Examples of this would be on my blog at MattWolfe.net and on BeyondTheHype.com. We write in-depth tutorial posts that people love and the search engines reward us for it.

2. Create sites in your niche on Tumblr, WordPress.com, LiveJournal, blogger, and any other free platform you can create content on.

Every time you create a new blog post on your main site, create a post on all of the free platforms that briefly discusses your blog post and then link back to the main post.

Create unique content and commentary on each platform

Hyperlink the naked link and various anchor text… But don't use the same anchor text to link from on each post. This little technique alone has really boosted the amount of search traffic I get.

3. Every time you publish a new blog post, do a Google search for similar topics.

Find other bloggers that have written similar topics or created roundups on the topic.

Contact 20 or so of the bloggers that have written these posts and point them to the epic content post that you just created.

Ask them if they could include your link in their post and ask if there's anything you can do for them to support their blog.

Out of 20, you may get a few of them to reply and be willing to add their link to your post.

I know I've added other people's links to my older blog posts just because people were cool and contacted me, offering to help me in some way in return… It works.

Matthew Barby

MatthewBarby.com // @MatthewBarby

~ Global Head of Growth & SEO @HubSpot, award winning blogger, industry speaker and lecturer @DMIgroup.

1. Designing your architecture efficiently: this is such an important part of any SEO campaign and it's also one of the most overlooked one as well.

If you plan on creating a ton of content, make sure that you're passing PageRank through your domain effectively and not siloing pages deep within your link architecture.

2. CTR within the SERPS: this is incredibly understated as a ranking factor but it's one of the largest contributors to rising up the first page (trust me!).

Instead of creating crappy page titles and meta descriptions stuffed to the brim with keywords, design them in a way that encourages clicks, is relevant to the queries being searched for and so that they read well.

3. LINK ANCHOR TEXT: anyone that tells you that link anchor text doesn't matter anymore is either lying or doesn't know what they're talking about.

Keyword-focused anchor text is a huge ranking factor but it's not just about getting a load of keyword anchored links, in fact it's the opposite.

You need to be able to bring in a nice spread of anchor text but where you can, pepper through some keyword anchors – it'll make a huge difference.

Mike Wallagher

StartBloggingOnline.com // @StartBlog10

~ Full-time blogging blogger

1) Resource link building is one of the best.

You just use the following search string: intitle:”keyword” inurl:”resources” and boom, you have a list of relevant resource page to your website.

Next, just send them the three W-s – What, Where & Why.

What – a brief introduction about your site.

Why – Why it should be included on their resource page.

Where – give them the resource page URL.

2) Broken link building

You find a piece of content that is either outdated or “dead” (leads to page 404 for example).

Then you need to go to Ahrefs and find all the pages that are still linking to it.

Thirdly, get in touch with the webmaster who has the broken link and let them know that your site could be a nice replacement.

3) Guest posting on relevant and high quality magazines with decent DA.

I use Twitter to find guest posting opportunities.

Just search for “keyword” + “guest post” and you are good to go. Then just write up a nice intro with 2-3 examples so the webmaster can see that you really fit into their quality.

Next, write up the guest post with some links to relevant authority sites as well as to your site.

Mark Luckenbaugh

XSynesis.com //@MarkXSynesis

~ Online Marketing Specialist, Marketing Monster, SEO Bruce Lee

1. As ironic as this might sound, considering the nature of the question, the most important thing for us is taking a holistic approach to our search campaigns.

Instead of focusing our energy on one tactic at a time we strive to implement a plethora of techniques that have provided us with hundreds of first page rankings.

We offer a 100% free seo training course, no upsells and no affiliate links, to help people struggling with their rankings or that just want to network with other digital marketers actually in the trenches.

2. With the focal point of most web campaigns being UX, we need to do all we can to ensure search engines can easily understand what our pages are about without affecting the end users search experience.

One of simplest yet most misunderstood ways of articulating this information is through proper schema implementation.

Schema makes it easier for Google to understand more about your website and is of ever growing importance for both organic and map rankings.

Check out this Schema made simple guide that includes a swipe file to help you get your microdata built fast!

3. This last technique not only increases targeted traffic through easy rankings but also exponentially increases the ROI for my clients.

One of the easiest yet most ignored way to take your seo game to the next level is by doing your due diligence with some industry research.

With each campaign we dive deeper into the client's business model and go after the more profitable terms for their business.

“Home remodeling” or “general contractor” becomes “sun room additions” and “concrete contractors” turns into “decorative concrete” or “stamped concrete patios”.

Your search volume will decrease but it will be easier to customize the landing page experience for the hyper targeted traffic, and the rankings will be quicker and easier as well.

Nathan Gotch

GotchSEO.com // @GotchSEO

~ Founder of Gotch SEO, Entrepreneur, Dog lover, Coffee connoisseur.

Blog

Having a blog is the single best SEO technique for increasing rankings.

By producing high-value content you'll attract links and social shares naturally.

You'll also increase user engagement through blog comments. This is important because user generated content is unique and keeps target pages “fresh”.

One quick strategy I use for generating blog post ideas is surveying my readers.

Whenever someone signs up for my email list, they have the choice of filling out a survey.

Not only does this intel give me blog post ideas, but it also helps me understand my audience more and have the information I need to create products in the future.

Links

User metrics are becoming a stronger ranking factor with each passing day, but links are still king.

That is, relevant, quality links are king. At this point, all efforts should be focused on acquiring relevant links from REAL authoritative sites.

Real sites have real traffic and a thriving community.

Focus your efforts on these link opportunities and you'll get targeted referral traffic and links that actually drive rankings.

Social

You're fooling yourself if you think social isn't a critical component of SEO. Examine almost any page ranking in competitive industries and they'll have many natural social shares.

Social activity is a perfect way for Google to verify the legitimacy of a link since social shares are easier to acquire than links. I explain in this brief case study how I ranked a page with nothing but social signals.

Nauf Sid

AffPayDay.com // @NaufSid

~ Niche blogger. Affiliate marketer

3 important SEO techniques that gave me great results are –

1. Web 2.0 Pumper Network

It's the hottest technique that is working right now! Just as I register a domain name, I create 20-30 web 2.0s with 3 articles each and let them age.

After 1 month, I begin to add contextual backlinks to my site (Tier 1).

Afterwards I also point some PBN links and automated dofollow contextual links to the web 2.0 network (Tier 2).

You can read more about this technique here – http://affpayday.com/free-private-blog-network/

2. Private Blog Network

Pretty much everyone is ranking using PBNs. Buy an expired domain, slap some content up, if you have time, make it niche relevant for an added punch and then begin linking to your money site (Tier 1).

3. Guest Posting

Guest posting was dead. How about no? This technique is alive and kicking, All you need to do is use these footprints in Google –

“broad niche” “this guest post is” -/category

“broad niche” “who regularly writes for” -/category

“broad niche” “this guest post is contributed” -/category

“broad niche” “this guest post is written” -/category

Replace broad niche with your niche and get targeted blogs to guest post on.

You can again simplify this process by using Rank Cracker software. It extracts contact emails from the target websites.

Then use canned responses in Gmail to send emails to the respective webmasters and pitch them your offer. Add some links back to your website (Tier 1).

This helps in getting a good backlink from a niche related website.

Even though the page has zero authority as it is fresh, be sure to promote it on social media to give it some traction and backlinks to further strengthen it.

Neil Patel

NeilPatel.com // @NeilPatel

~ Entrepreneur who likes to blog. Started two SaaS analytics companies, @CrazyEgg and KISSmetrics with @hnshah. He loves all things business.

The 3 SEO changes that had an impact on my rankings, in order of importance are:

1. Cross linking – I have so many pages and backlinks, but my pages aren't always linked together. By adding links to my most important pages within my sidebar, I have been able to increase my Google rankings for head terms.

2. Optimizing meta tags – by logging into Google Search Console and continually optimizing my click-through-rate, my traffic has gone up.

3. Improving speed – when I reduced my load time by roughly half, my traffic went up from Google by over 20%.

Matt Banner

OnBlastBlog.com // @BlastYourBlog

~ Blogging blogger

Sometimes the most vital techniques in SEO that move the needle is going back to the basics.

We've had SEO fundamentals drilled down our throats by experts and various media outlets for years now, but many marketers often overlook the very foundation that got us involved in this space to begin with.

When I teach my students how to start a blog, I make sure that from the conception of their website, I instill the core fundamentals that every new blogger should have in their back pocket.

1. Optimize your title tags for people, rather than just search engines

When your page is ranking amongst a sea of competitors, tap into the emotions of searchers in order to elicit clicks to your page, rather than your competitor.

The CTR of your website on the SERPs are critical for search engines to understand if you're delivering what a user is actually searching for.

2. Study your competition, but don't emulate them to the “T”

Carve out your own individuality by understanding what works for your competitors and then plan on how you can do it differently.

Create content (in the form of articles, infographics, custom images, podcasts, courses, etc.) that touches on what your competitors have done, but go the extra mile and blow their work out of the water.

Add your unique take on the topic matter and you'll be sure to stand out amongst the sea of competitors.

3. Listen to your audience

Why not mine the best possible insight into your niche by tapping into the voice of your potential customers.

Use surveys & polls by asking the right questions to your audience base to really narrow down the pain points and other areas of concern they have over your product/service.

A friend of mine, Aaron Ramsey of Eapplicants did this with his audience and it helped him restructure his primary pages to better suit and answer the questions and concerns his audience had.

As a result, his bounce rate decreased by 20% and his time on page increased by over 1 minute!

Maxime Rauer

@Mrauer

~ Manager Natural Search at eBay. Internet Marketing Strategist

1. Internal Links

Search engines are still giving a lot of importance on links.

Major sites can rank for pretty much any terms by artificially adding a lot of internal backlinks on the pages that they would like to be ranking on search engines.

The quality check of Google seems to be a separate process that is triggered months after the page surface on the top of the SERP.

If you haven't been able to cover the intent of the Google users for instance (high bounce rate, but high rankings), then your page will quickly say goodbye to page 1.

To give a concrete example, our site used to rank for the term “time” (#2).

The page wasn't really relevant as it was the time of our servers… but because we were linking this page from millions of pages, the search engines were considering it as an important page.

Identify your “money” pages, and make sure that they are correctly interlinked within your site.

2.Cannibalization

Each page that you have on your site must be unique.

If you build two (or more) competitive pages, you are going to dilute your potential rankings and waste resources.

Imagine what you would get if you were able to consolidate a page for “tire”, a page for “tires”, and another one for “tyres”. First you will save resources (content, crawl budget, etc.), but you will also combine the backlinks/internal links.

3. Sitemaps

As surprising as it could sound, sitemaps are still playing a major role, both for small and large sites.

Sitemaps helps you first to “buy” time: Google for instance will near immediately start crawling the pages you are submitting in your sitemap.

The list(s) that you submit can help boosting the discoverability of your site, and I would suggest to particularly pay attention to these pages.

The pages you submit must return a 200 response all the time, not be redirecting to another page, have descent content (ie: if you submit a search page with no result, then you will rank but eventually get a penalty), be mobile-friendly, and also be unique (see technique #2).

Refreshing your sitemap frequently is a good strategy, especially if you build pages that are time-sensitive.

Rick Ramos

RickRamos.com // @RicktRamos

~ Online Marketing Expert With 18 Years Experience. Blogger.

I won't cover the basics but I'll give you a few tips that might be a little different and insightful.

(1) Page Speed

Making sure your website is fast is something people overlook. They spend so much time trying to make their site look pretty, they forget that speed is so important.

For every second your site takes to load, a small percentage will leave your site. It adds up over time. A few things you can do to speed up your site:

Test Your Site:

Google's Page Speed: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Pingdom's Test: http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/

These will give you a good baseline on how your site is doing and if you have any big problems.

If you're running WordPress, maybe the theme you picked is slow. Try and see how your site runs with another theme.

If you don't have a developer, head over to www.UpWork.com and find someone that can speed up your site.

CDN

Are you using a content delivery network? It's a service that helps to speed up your website. If not, research it!

Some hosting providers package them with their service offerings, other's you need to have a 3rd party solution.

Before I moved to my existing host, I used www.MaxCDN.com for my CDN

Get a better hosting provider

If you are starting out, you might look for the cheapest hosting solution available. As with most things, you get what you pay for.

I use https://kinsta.com to host my site but you can find a lot of premium alternatives.

(2) Become Mobile Friendly

More than 50% of traffic is mobile these days, if your site doesn't look good on mobile, your dead. Not only will Google rank your lower, your conversion rates will suck. Always test and design with mobile FIRST in mind.

(3) Blog Often

If you want to crush your SEO, beyond the basic on-page SEO techniques, you need to put in the hard work and blog often. How Often Do You Need to Blog?

I would say if you really want your website to grow, at least two times a week. The data shows that Google won't even take you serious until you get to 50 blog posts.

Rob Bertholf

Rob.Bertholf.com // @Rob

~ Marketing Technologist. #1 Google Ranked ‘Search Engine Optimization Expert'

Over the years this answer to this question would be a very short one however for me in 2015 there is no longer a short answer.

I view ranking factors in three groups: relevance, trust & performance.

1. Relevance

The techniques to increase relevance start with creating great content based on search queries with high search demand ensuring that the searchquery intent is satisfied.

Next ensure that the site content is viewable from the visitors device.

Bonus points for optimizing multiple content types (images, video, etc.) based on the types shown in the SERPs and updating the content frequently

2. Trust

Improve Page Authority through internal linking and external link signals.

Make it easy for users to share your content via widgets to increase social signals.

Pay attention to the content infrastructure to improve site speed & optimize delivery while monitoring the site for malware/hijacking and add SSL.

3. Performance

Increase rankings through the newest category of tactics around user signals. Start with ensuring an optimal content experience by cleaning up broken links and images.

Improve CTR by optimizing the title and meta description.

Diversify the page content formatting to include images and page headings to better engage the visitor preventing bounce/pogo sticking.

Leverage email and remarketing to bring return visitors back to the site.

Add clear CTAs to satisfy query intent.

Sort of a mouthful but a summary of the three buckets of SEO tactics.

Rob Cubbon

RobCubbon.com // @RobCubbon

~ Dogsbody turned entrepreneur.

1. Use Google Analytics to discover what your audience is thinking. You can actually see what people are typing into the search engines before they land on your site.

In Google Analytics, go Acquisition > Traffic > Organic Search or Acquisition > Campaigns > Organic Keywords (it's the same).

Here you can see if people are searching for something that you don't have an article on yet.

Quite often Google will send people to your site when they're searching for stuff you don't offer. This is a unique opportunity.

Not only does this show you what your audience demands, it also shows you that no one else is satisfying that demand – if there was content already catering to these keywords, Google would not send traffic to your site that's not yet supplying it.

So create content around the keywords you're already ranking for (as long as it's something you want to offer) and you'll get even more traffic.

I found that I was getting a lot of organic traffic for an old article that offered free calendars so I created a better more up-to-date version of that article and it exploded:

Free 2015 Calendars as PDF, Illustrator and InDesign files for Download!

2. Use Google Trends to decide on future content. I have been selling courses on Udemy for over two years.

I have also been seeing the search term “udemy” rising in Google Trends during that time.

This shows me that more and more people are hearing about and are interested in this platform. It is likely that this trend will continue over time.

So, what have I done about this trend?

Two things: I have created as many high quality, long articles about Udemy and I've forged relationships with influencers and helped them get started on Udemy and they have returned the favor by linking to me and the Udemy articles.

Now, not only do I have good content about Udemy, I also have good links to that content.

3. Create great content and great relationships.

For me, this is the most important SEO tactic. I am more creative than analytical. I enjoy writing for human beings rather than machines.

If you're like me (or even if you're not) great content and great relationships is the way to go.

Great content will always create a great audience – however small.

Do everything you can to meet people who are doing similar stuff to you online. And, when I say “meet” I mean meet in real life if you can!

Go to as many conferences and meetups as you can. Some of the best links I've received have been from people I've actually got to know personally.

Otherwise, do exactly the same thing online. Engage with people who interest you – not necessarily the most advance experts but people who are maybe a bit further along the journey than you are.

Ask questions, compliment and help these people out of a natural curiosity and interest in your subject.

Never ask for a link but, if you help people, the links will come.

Robert Ryan

RobertRyan.ie // @RobertRyanDotie

~ WordPress Development, Social Media Management, SEO and a truckload of bananas!

Here are the 3 techniques that have had an impact on my rankings:

1) Pen Some Quality Content

It's that old chestnut again, the go to trump card of everyone who has ever done anything online and so I thought it frustratingly fitting to lead off with it as, to be honest, it's true.

I've been fortunate to get to no.1 on Google for some of my keywords and one of the key reasons for success was earning backlinks via quality content that people have shared, reblogged and linked back to.

This has helped generate a favorable backlink profile from other sites within my niche which in turn strengthens my site in the eyes of Google (guilty by association).

2) Be An Onsite SEO Pedant

When adding any new page make sure that it ticks all the right onsite SEO boxes, make it part of the mantra and routine that if you're adding a new page or post that is properly SEO'd from an onsite SEO point of view.

This becomes a force multiplier then when people share or link back to your content and is one of the key pillars of a successful site.

As SEO is continually evolving with different character (and pixel) limits on TaDs for example it's important to do an audit of your older content on a somewhat regular basis to ensure that it all stays tuned up (although admittedly when you're busy with client work it can be hard to find the time to go back and update).

3) Be An Index Hawk

Ensure that Google only indexes what you want it to index.

You don't want to have a bloated index and if you're sitemaps are unwieldy.

If you haven't been putting in 301 redirs for old/dead pages etc then you'll start to suffer index bloat – especially if using a CMS like WordPress (which as a WordPress developer I'm a huge fan of but…)

Why?

Because each tag, category, post type etc can be indexed and 99% of time you probably don't want them in the index as can create duplicate content and just dilutes the overall value of your site that Google has bestowed on it.

Keep you index lean so that the pages you want to rank for have a chance of being ranked.

As for a case study the one mentioned above details how I went about getting my site to rank (granted it's almost 2 years old but a lot of it still holds true today).

In the post I outline what I did but to try distill it down to 3 important techniques I'd say the above can't be overlooked with the caveat being that you need to have the underlying site structure right.

If the technical SEO foundations aren't there then the best of content with the best of onsite SEO will struggle to rank.

Ryan Stewart

Webris.org // @RyanWasHere

~ I build web experiences.

To me, it's been less about techniques and more about evolving my understanding of SEO as a whole.

1. Understanding the true role of content.

Google doesn't care how many times you update your blog, it's not about proving “fresh” content, it's about creating a valuable experience that you can then promote across the web.

Understanding how to create both important (value added) and linkable content has really exploded my success.

2. Understanding how to promote content. It's about so much more than just links.

While yes, links are still critical for rankings, there's a number of other channels you need to hit as well.

Finding ways to promote your content through social, groups, email to build your website into a true online brand is huge.

Very few SEOs understand how to properly promote content – it's the most valuable skill an SEO can have right now.

3. Understanding how UX interfaces with keyword research.

Keyword research isn't what it used to be. It's really not a good use of your time to spend hours putting together massive spreadsheets of keywords based on search volume.

What's more important is digging out the intent behind those searches and creating a valuable on site experience.

I'm working with a learning company that has locations across the US. They came to us and said “why aren't we ranking for XYZ?

We found the most searched keywords, put them in the URL, the title, 2.5% of the body text, and then we build white hat links. WTF?!”

People aren't searching for keywords – they're searching for information.

We're in the process of redesigning their entire website to incorporate that – what are people looking for when they're looking for your business?

Prices? A phone number? Detailed information? Answering those questions are a far better use of your time than building out spreadsheets.

Sean Malseed

CircleRank.com // @SeanMalseed

~ Digital marketing consultant, public speaker, and sometimes programmer.

Thorough technical SEO audit

It's where I got my start in SEO, and it's still the most single most powerful thing you can do for your website.

I haven't had a client yet where I haven't gotten fast results with technical SEO fixes – sitemaps, code errors, duplicate content, structure, URLs, and more.

Keyword opportunity analysis via ranking difficulty

It's easy to pick keywords based on relevance and search volume, but that's not nearly the whole story.

Analyzing your competition in SERPs is just as important.

You'll get way better results targeting a lower volume keyword with a weak top 10 vs. a keyword with hard-to-beat competition.

It's so important to me, I even built a custom tool to crawl Google top 10 ranked pages for a given keyword.

Write to your audience, not to keywords

This is not easy to do. In fact, CircleRank had to hire full in-house in Philadelphia to do it

Keyword research and analysis is fun for someone like me, but I don't work with churn-and-burn affiliate sites – I work with brands and businesses.

We don't just plan content based on keywords, we create content schedules based on keywords + audience.

It's very valuable to take keywords from straight keyword research, and search them in Twitter for example to see how people *actually* use those terms in conversation.

Target the keywords, but write to that conversation.

Sean Si

SEO-Hacker.com // @SEO_Hacker

~ CEO and Founder of SEO Hacker and Qeryz. Speaker.

Linkbuilding

SEO is naturally a competitive business. It's a zero-sum game. When someone's ranking up, someone's gotta rank down.

As it is, linkbuilding is one of the most important ways to rank competitively. Almost all of what I'm doing in linkbuilding is outlined in this tutorial.

Keyword Placement

You can't rank without keywords. That's true. You also wouldn't be able to rank well if your keywords are at the tail end of your content. That's just the way it is.

Keyword placement is still a factor. My keyword placement practices can be learned from this entry.

Content Marketing

Content can sit on a dark, lonely place unless you tell people about it. Relevant people. And, if possible, influential people.

That's the essence of content marketing – getting your content out to the world. I wrote an extensive tutorial on how to do content marketing right.

Check it out here.

Seth Williams

Retipser.com // @Retipsterseth

~ Real estate blogger. Real World Guidance for Part-Time Real Estate Investors.

There are a couple dozen blog posts on my site that have consistently ranked #1 on Google for some key search terms while drawing in thousands of organic visits each month.

Each of these blog posts have a few things in common:

1. They Include High-Quality, Content-Rich Videos

Videos are an incredible communication tool.

Back when I was getting started with my blog, some of the most helpful content I ever saw online was in the form of video, and knowing what a great medium it is, I've always tried to include videos at every opportunity.

Even though good videos can be very time consuming to create, they have this innate ability to tell stories, answer questions and explain solutions in a way that the written word can never quite pull off.

Most of the videos on my blog posts are videos that I've created myself, which means I can explain my points very specifically, in a way that lines up perfectly with my blog post (rather than relying on an existing video from a third party to match up with the points I'm trying to communicate).

Example: 10 Rock-Solid Reasons Why You Should Be Investing In Land

2. I Write Like I Talk

When I started blogging, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I didn't have to use big words, flowery language or abide by the writing rules I learned in college.

It was perfectly acceptable for me to write in a conversational tone, just like how I talk.

As long as readers didn't have to strain to understand what I'm saying, I can write in whatever way works for me.

The point of my blog posts ISN'T to make myself sound smart, the point is to explain things in a language people can understand.

Example: SOLD! How to Write Real Estate Ads That Sell Properties Fast

3. I Try to Ignore SEO Metrics and Focus on My Reader's Experience

When I'm creating new content, I try not to obsess over how to make search engines happy or “checking SEO boxes”.

My goal isn't to hit a certain word count, get hundreds of incoming links or game the system with some other SEO gimmick.

My goal is to simply give my readers the best possible experience when they're on my site (and this is a journey of continuous improvement that never ends).

The results of this kind of dedication and hard work don't come instantly, but when I see readers sharing my content, emailing me to say “Thank You” and the eventual snowball effect of the traffic that comes over time, I know this approach is working.

Example: The Truth About Land Investing: 15 Warning Signs to Look For When Buying Vacant Land

Thomas Smale

FeInternational.com // @Thomassmale

~ Co-founder of FE International, brokering the sale of online businesses to clients all over the world. Columnist at http://Entrepreneur.com

Despite what many people claim, being successful in SEO is largely dependent on your ability to build great links.

My three favourite link building techniques are:

Guest posting.

A great way to build authority and trust in your niche and at the same time building a quality link. The key to good guest posting is to keep it relevant and network with other authorities in your industry/niche.

Use SEMrush (use this SEMrush coupon to get started) to find what your competitors are ranking for and then reverse engineer their links.

Once you know who is linking to them, approach the relevant sites, introduce yourself (do not ask for anything in your first email) and then ask them to link to you too.

Building links from forums.

Often neglected by SEOs, but being active on relevant industry forums is both a good way to meet people in your niche, drive traffic directly to your site and build links.

Some forum threads will rank well in search results so you can get the added bonus of getting extra traffic off the back of those if you have links back to your site in the thread.

We normally deal with local moving companies, so I will be giving an answer more focused on Local SEO. There are a number of things that can have an impact but 3 things that stand out:

Local citations – making sure you are properly listed on data aggregators, the top directories, local directories and industry directories will really help rankings in the local maps section.

This area just got a lot tougher though with all the packs dropping down to displaying only 3 listings on the first page instead of 7.

Authority links – local links aren't that hard to get, and you don't need that many to really move the needle.

Putting together a scholarship and offering it to local colleges and universities is a great way to earn powerful links.

Sponsoring local events is another great way. This is where the link building should start for local in my opinion.

Relevant content – everyone is producing “content” but I'm talking about putting together content that your readers will benefit from.

One thing that's been helping drive some long tail rankings is having our clients customers provide feedback that can be turned into a blog post.

If you structure it properly you can get relevant locations, zip codes, and keywords in the proper area every time, helping to drive rankings for locations and zip codes that may not be providing much.

Todd Bialaszewski

TractLeads4Movers.com // @toddbiala

We normally deal with local moving companies, so I will be giving an answer more focused on Local SEO.

There are a number of things that can have an impact but 3 things that stand out:

Local citations – making sure you are properly listed on data aggregators, the top directories, local directories and industry directories will really help rankings in the local maps section.

This area just got a lot tougher though with all the packs dropping down to displaying only 3 listings on the first page instead of 7.

Authority links – local links aren't that hard to get, and you don't need that many to really move the needle.

Putting together a scholarship and offering it to local colleges and universities is a great way to earn powerful links.  Sponsoring local events is another great way.  This is where the link building should start for local in my opinion.

Relevant content – everyone is producing “content” but I'm talking about putting together content that your readers will benefit from.

One thing that's been helping drive some long tail rankings is having our clients customers provide feedback that can be turned into a blog post.

If you structure it properly you can get relevant locations, zip codes, and keywords in the proper area every time, helping to drive rankings for locations and zip codes that may not be providing much.

Tom Nguyen

MrTechnique.com // @MrTechnique

~ Freelance web designer

Left a Customer Spotlight Story for a Vendor

I left a detailed review on ElegantThemes about how their themes helped me get on the first page of Google for Atlanta web design and related keywords

Although the spotlight story contained nofollow links to my website, my monthly visits doubled because of that, and I even picked up a client in England to boot.

Before the story was published, I was on the bottom of the first page of Google for the terms I wanted to rank for.

Shortly after the story was published, I moved up to the middle of the first page of Google.

Moved My Business to the City I Wanted to Rank For

It only made sense that if I wanted to rank for Atlanta web design that I needed to be located in Atlanta, so I moved my business in to the heart of Atlanta.

Regularly Added Blog Posts

Adding blog posts adds pages and text content to your website, and Google reads text. In my blog posts, I provide valuable web design and local SEO tips that people would like to link to or share on social media.

Zac Johnson

ZacJohnson.com // @ZacJohnson

~ Entrepreneur, Internet Marketer, Blogger and Super Affiliate by Day, Super Hero at Night!

Three important SEO techniques I use to grow my reach and rank higher in the search results are…

1 – Having a podcast.

Through my Rise of the Entrepreneur podcast I get to interview industry experts and share their story and advice with others.

In addition to building my personal relationship with my audience beyond just text and blog content, it's also helping me rank for every person I interview as well.

While the concept of starting a podcast might be way too overwhelming or stressful for most people, these same techniques can be used through text based interviews as well.

For an example of this, be sure to check out my blogger interview series.

2 – Create high quality tutorial guides.

I have a lot of web sites and thousands of written articles.

The best ones are the guides, tutorials and walk throughs that I put together and give people a dead-simple path for whatever it is they are trying to accomplish.

My latest tutorial on how to start a blog has been doing extremely well and I hear back from new bloggers on how it helped them get started on a daily basis.

3 – Writing guest posts

In addition to writing content on your own site, contributing high quality articles on others sites is a great way to not only get your name out there to new audiences, but to also bring incoming links back to your site or social networks as well.

One of my recent articles on Search Engine Journal has over 6,000 social shares!

THANK YOU!

For reading so far.

Isn't it awesome to have to many expert SEO rank boosting tips in one place?

Information you can instantly implement to your pages and blog posts to rank better in Google?

Is there anything else you'd like to add or maybe a question you'd like to ask the participants?

Leave your comments below and we'll definitely answer to you.

The post 45 Experts Share Their Best SEO Ranking Boosting Techniques appeared first on Serped.com.