10 things you never wanted to know about Search Engines but need to.

1. SEO is not black magic – you can get a long way by following a few straight forward rules.

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2. Research and choose your target keyword phrases carefully – SEO success depends on how well you choose the keywords you optimise for. Think about your target audience, see what your competitors are targeting, find out what is popular and then be realistic – better to go after a less popular term and win rather than a very popular term and be ranked 589th.

3. Page titles. Don’t underestimate the value of a good page title. [the ones in the panel at the top of the browser window]

4. Ranking well in Search Engines is largely a popularity contest. Sites vote for other sites by linking to them – and a vote from a more popular site is worth more.

5. Paying for links or getting paid for links corrupts the popularity contest and is strongly frowned upon by Google. If Google decides a site is selling links, it may disappear from the index and the links will count for nothing.

6. Black Hat SEO is risky – it may possible to quickly lift rankings using techniques frowned upon by Google but if you have a site or a brand name in which you’ve invested time and money don’t risk it. The Google bot is always getting smarter.

7. Nothing that you can do to a competitor can hurt their ranking.

8. Make the most of your rankings by checking how you appear in Search Engine Result Pages and make sure it looks enticing for your target audience.

9. Google loves fresh content – keep your site fresh with new articles, press releases, the latest news or a blog.

10. Make the most of your SEO efforts – ensure that your web analytics is set up so you know what’s working for example which keywords drive the most traffic; which keywords drive the best traffic; where the best search traffic is coming from.