What is the single best piece of SEO Advice?

What is the single best piece of SEO Advice

 

Hello Mahmud Azmani,

The best SEO advice would be to concentrate on long term results.
In other words, you shoud focus on your content and on-page SEO.

As a matter fact on-page SEO is the only type of whitehat seo.

Anything you actually do outside your website (e.g. building backlings) involves greyhat tactics at least.
So if you wish to have a robust website, capable of ranking high on SERPS and staying there,
try having useful, regular content and proper website design.
In the long run, you will thank yourself for doing quality work.

 

Above all else, make sure the user gets the answer they want for the keywords you want to rank for. The best advice I can give for SEO is to pretend that you are a user going to your site searching for a given keyword. Did you provide the best answer out there for that keyword? If so you got a good shot at the first page. If you didn't, then every backlink in the world won't keep you on the first page.

 

SEO is a never ending process, always learn how to adapt to changes.

 

As I understand it you want to build a useful site and that over time you add links with anchor text that point to content on your site that is relevant.

 

The <title> ... </title> section of a page is one of the signals with a very high weight in calculating the ranking. If you only had a single option to optimize your page, go for the title.

 

I would suggest to avoid over optimization this is one thing which can really hurt the ranking.

 

So far, I've seen some great answers. I don't believe there is one single best piece of SEO advice since you will need all the ingredients to bake your SEO cake along with all the pitfalls you will need to avoid. My best advice would be to learn everything you can about SEO and take action and monitor your results and be ready for change as Google will implement new ones a lot.

 

Simple, don't be lazy.

 

Constantly create unique relevant quality content...
Unique: one of a kind
Relevant: on topic
Quality: something of purpose and worhy
Content: clean and simple, yet useful

And keep up with the ever changing world of SEO both onpage and off page technics...

 

That's not necessarily true.

You should really only spend 20% of your time creating content.

Look at Backlink.com - Brian only has about 30 articles on his entire site, he doesn't have a problem ranking.

Google doesn't care how many articles you write, whether it be 1 or 100 - each have an equal chance of ranking if you choose to target the proper keywords.

 

If you listen to Brian and Neil they both will tell you that creating Unique Relevant Quality Content will earn you positive backlinks -

 

Of course, but you made it seem like writing articles should be the main focal point of an SEO campaign.

 

It all depends on what you are trying to do. If you are running a business and have built a web site as part of an ongoing plan all you need to know are the basics. And to then concentrate on ensuring that the content on your site is what your prospective clients are looking for. It is Googles job to find it and present it to visitors who are looking.

If however your business is your web site then you are going to need to do a little more than the basics. This is where it gets complicated and you have to decide whether you really want to be tweaked every time Google twitches.

I have got a basic understanding of how Google works. Enough to understand that there is a lot to learn and a lot more bad advice out there. Hopefully enough to engage someone to do it for me if the need ever arises.

 

We all should understand that there is more to SEO than creating written content but

Rob you are absolutely correct on plenty of bad advice out there.
And Matthew if creating Unique Relevant Quality Content was the Almighty Secret to Success in SEO then we could all be billionaires. But here is the kicker...
Over the years so many sites are either built on and around scrap content or created with scrap content. Rarely does anyone, including search engines, discover Unique Relevant Quality Content.

 

People didn't really know what are the valuable tricks of SEO and rarely they set the things Search engine looking for.
Its really matter how you publish a create good links for a quality content.

 

I see too many people focusing on SEO, but then they don't write much. I'd rather have 100 interesting articles written with the reader in mind, as opposed to 2-3 high-end SEO articles that read like mushed cheap crap.

SEO is very important, but if your not adding much content it doesn't really matter. My number one piece of SEO advice is to write interesting articles and do it regularly.

 

Write for your customers/members/subscribers, not for the search engines.

The latters' algorithms change more frequently than the weather and if you focus on dancing to the SE's tunes each and every time Google and others choose to have a re-jig, then be prepared to see your site disappear into ether and also spend yet more money and time trying to regain ground.

If your content serves a purpose - ie has relevant content, it's original, visitors stay on your site because you have something worthwhile to offer, then you'll have quality traffic that converts well which is, after all, the main objective.

You can buy targeted traffic. You don't need to be a slave to the search engines' algorithms.