10 Quick Tips to help your SEO in 2014!

1. Only optimize for 1 keyword/phrase per page/post
2. Use said keyword/phrase in your title, first and last paragraphs, if possible. By “if possible” I mean, don’t jam keywords into somewhere it wont sound natural if read out loud.
3. Use your keyword/phrase for your picture alt titles and descriptions.
4. Aim for your keyword density to be around 3%-5%. (if you’re using wordpress and a plug-in like Yoast SEO, this is really easy to measure)
5. Utilize good backlinks – The best method to do this is honestly by not focusing on backlinks at all. If your content is captivating and has worth, you will get quality backlinks. 
6. Produce good outbound links
7. Keep your XML Sitemap up to date
8. Don’t structure your content for a crawler, structure it for your tentative audience. 
9. Always produce high quality content with atleast 300 words.
10. Use a good serp tool like SERPs.com or something similar. (serps.com is more geared towards an SEO business with their base plan at $500/mo) 

5 common mistakes that wont help your SEO… ever…

1. Not using keywords correctly – Many webmasters are concerned about keyword spamming or stuffing so they limit the use of keywords on their web pages. As long as your content sounds natural and reads easily, the chances are you have not overused your keywords. Make sure your keywords are included in the first and last paragraphs, in your headings and in your title and meta tags. You’re ultimately shooting for 3-5% keyword density. 
2. Trying to trick the “Google bots” – Search engines are a lot more sophisticated than most of us would care to realize. They recognize, and penalize, hidden text, keyword spamming, and cloaking, which is showing different content to the search engine bots than to your visitors. All of these practices only serve to hurt your page ranking and can in fact cause your website to be banned or flagged by the search engines as spam, which means no one will find you, and no traffic means no revenue.
3. Using Your Website Name, and Only Your Website Name, As a Title –  Your website name shouldn’t be the only element in your title tag. Feel free to include it, however it’s also important to use your primary keyword for each webpage title tag. This is more useful for your customers and helps the search engines identify the various pages on your site.
4. Forgetting about meta tags and descriptions – Every picture you upload to your website should have an appropriate alt-tag and a “description” utilizing the keyword you are targeting. 
5. Not thinking about your audience – It’s easy to get into the groove of impressing the search engine crawlers, or the Google Bots as I like to call them, and completely forget about who you’re writing for! If your audience is hypothetically males between the ages of 25-35, you might want to rethink how someone of that generalization might talk, and rebound that speech back to them. 

Check out even more tips to help you amaze the search engine bots here!