Almost four years ago, coronavirus hit us and we had to shut down our main office. Everyone went to work from home and I decided to say goodbye to the SEO world. Yes, I retired, bought a piece of land, and started a new life building a house for my family and raising dogs and horses.

My team, however, kept on doing what they were the best at Google SEO.

However, since I was the main force behind marketing/sales of the company, the rate of signing up new customers fell and the company went into a still-mate mode – not getting new customers means the end of any company.

So, the team asked me to return and I gladly did to help them grow again.

After nearly four years, I was expecting to see a HUGE change in the SEO world. After all, SEO used to change quite a bit with Google’s innovations and algorithm updates. But to my surprise, 99.9% of the SEO remains the same.

To help you better understand the fundamentals of SEO and what works today – as it did four years ago – I’m going to highlight the most important factors that will make or break your website’s online presence.

SEO to Do’s

Content

I’ve said it a zillion times since my career in SEO started in 2003:

Content is the King. 

Google was designed to read, analyze, and sort websites’ content and rank them based on first relevancy, and second popularity. So, it works with content. Originally it read only text (including alt-image text, etc.). However, today, its AI can read not only text but also images and videos. Nevertheless, text remains the most important food for Google’s algorithm.

SEO always included having fresh, high-quality text. It is still the same. Plenty of well-written and relevant text (including articles, etc.) is a must for any SEO campaign.

SEO-Friendly Content

Here are some reasons why you should add content to your website from time to time to improve SEO:

  • Fresh content improves search engine rankings for designated keywords;
  • It will attract more traffic to your website;
  • It will create more backlinks;
  • It makes Google crawl your website more frequently.

An SEO-friendly blog should:

  • Contain enough keywords;
  • Be free of typos and grammatical errors;
  • Be readable for a low-to-average audience;
  • Have integrity and flow for the readers to follow.

Website Optimization

Those familiar with SEO know that without website optimization, SEO means nothing. You’ve got to know what to include and how to include it in a website’s HTML code.
The most important parts of a site’s optimization include Title Tag, H1 tag, and keyword density. The rest are important but not so much.

Importance of Tagging in SEO

It is crucial to include different tags such as headings, SEO titles and descriptions, alt texts, robot texts, etc.

Here are some tips for using tagging practices for an optimized website:

  • Don’t stuff your page with tags and keywords;
  • Use relevant headings to the text;
  • Include the name of the service area in SEO titles and descriptions;
  • Don’t use long texts for tags.

Website Speed

A few years ago, it came to our attention that websites’ load speed was becoming ever-important for Google algorithms. With Google’s investment in Google Page Insights and other platforms, we learned what was important for Google. After all, if a site doesn’t load quickly, its user experience is horrible.

Today, site speed is as important as it was five years ago. Sites that load slowly or have bugs that prevent the page from loading all the way through are problematic in Google’s eyes.

As a rule of thumb, any page of your site must load within three seconds – desktop AND mobile versions.

Mobile Version of Your Site

With smartphones taking over the mobile market, mobile versions of sites became increasingly important for Google. Since 2018, more people have used their mobile devices to access websites compared to desktops. Thus, your site must be first designed for mobile users and then for desktop users.

Responsive and dynamic website design has solved this problem.

Backlinks

As I said earlier, Google ranks a website’s content based on its relevancy as well as popularity. The relevancy of a site is corrected by website optimization. However, for a site to rank well, it also needs to be popular.

Google always measures a site’s popularity based on the number and the quality of links that point to a site. This created a black market for buying and selling links. However, Google’s algorithm is so powerful that it detects spammy and bought backlinks.

So, buying links is not a good idea.

The best way to get quality backlinks to your site is by writing and creating high-quality content (again you see how quality content is important).

Google My Business (GMB)

Small businesses know well that if they don’t have a GMB account for their business they’re not going to rip any benefit from Google.

Creating, optimizing, and maintaining 5-star reviews is a must for any small business that is operating locally.

The importance of GMB has not changed much, but I’ve noticed that in some markets, Google has favored national corporations over local businesses (hair wigs for example).

SEO Don’ts

So far, I discussed the essential tasks that should be done for an optimized SEO. However, there are some practices that should be avoided not to be penalized by Google. These are referred to as SEO Don’ts and should be avoided:

  • Keyword Stuffing: Don’t include more than usual keywords. Keep the content natural and easy to read.
  • Duplicate Content: Make sure you write genuine content for your website. Google can recognize duplicate content and will penalize you for that.
  • Difficult Keywords: Don’t focus on keywords that are difficult to rank.
  • Cloaking: Cloaking is a technique that shows different versions of the website to search engines and visitors. It violates Google’s guidelines and should be avoided.
  • Hidden Texts: Hidden texts use the same color as the background and are used for stuffed keywords.
  • Black hat SEO: Don’t implement black hat SEO strategies like fake backlinks, hidden links, fake reviews, etc.

What Does Black Hat SEO Do to Your Website?

If you use the above-mentioned techniques to boost your website ranking, you will get caught soon and Google will penalize you. You should avoid black hat SEO because:

  1. It won’t drive long-lasting results;
  2. It will affect your website visibility in a negative way;
  3. It will hurt your brand reputation;
  4. It will hurt users’ trust.

Conclusion

What I mentioned above is the basic fundamental and unchanged of any successful Google SEO. We at Top Organic Leads company have been the pioneers of white hat SEO since the beginning and make sure to rank our clients’ websites organically.

If you have a small business and would like to get ranked on Google, our company offers a unique pay-per-lead system that minimizes the risk of your SEO campaign. Contact us and one of our team members would be happy to assist you.