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Follow UsThe last 18 months have been a roller coaster ride for the SEO industry. If you own a website, work as a consultant or follow Internet marketing at all, you know just how bad it has been.
With algorithm changes, unclear expectations from major search engines and the ever growing belief that "SEO is dead," it has been harder than ever to make sense of the complex world of ranking sites with SEO.
The key to SEO is knowing what signals the algorithms are looking for. Here are the top five secrets of SEO to success for 2014.
SEO Secret #1: High PR links are still relevant
If you think that the days of high powered links are over, think again. Now, perhaps more than ever, the Google algorithm is relying on high PR, relevant links to determine which sites will achieve the highest rankings.
Test this concept for yourself. If you have access to SEO software that provides link profile readouts, search for some of your favorite key phrases and run those reports on the top 10 sites. Almost without exception you will find that the higher ranking sites are the ones with the higher PR links.
SEO Secret #2: Link diversity is key
Whilst high PR links are important to your off page SEO efforts, link diversity is even more critical. Long gone are the days of blog comment spamming, Web 2.0 profile building and automated links. If you want to beat your competitors for rankings, then you need to turn to a varied approach in your link building efforts. Here is a short list of suggestions that you could use to get ideas for where the best links can be found:
* Web 2.0 Sites
* Press Releases
* Article Directories
* Wordpress/Blogger
* Social Media Network Sites
* Social Bookmarks
The best link profiles will have a good mix of links from all of those sources.
SEO Secret #3: Less is more
It used to be possible to automate link building so that a piece of software would build you as many links as possible as quickly as possible. This typically worked in the past. It doesn't anymore.
Take the less is more approach in your link building in 2014. Focus on high PR links and diversifying your link profile. Do this and you will find that you are achieving much better rankings for much less work.
SEO Secret #4: Relevance is crucial
Before you accidentally take the shotgun approach, keep relevance in mind. It is true that you need to keep your links diversified - but the content from which your links are coming needs to be related to your website.
In other words, if you find yourself building links to a site about dogs and your links are coming from sites about chili powder, you will find your SEO efforts diminished. In this example, the best type of links to obtain would be links from other dog related sites.
SEO Secret #5: Multi-Media is imperative
This final secret represents the largest shift in SEO since the early part of this past decade. It is no longer enough to have text-only websites. You will need to have a variety of media - photos, videos, sound files etc. - present on your site if you want your on page SEO to be up to par with what the Google algorithms want.
This requirement isn't just limited to onsite SEO however. In the past two updates, Google has now put increased weight on those links that themselves come from various media sites as well.