Long-format articles in excess of 1000 words are the prescription for getting the search engines to see your content as something trustworthy. As long as you’re playing by the rules, there’s no significant danger that you'll earn a penalty or damage your reputation in the process. Despite all the changes, the fundamentals of search engines remain the same. Think about what happens when you type a query into a search engine. The results you get back are simply a series of page titles and descriptions.

Build backlinks

Make sure your website is optimised for mobile. When someone is searching for something on a mobile device, Google will now promote websites which are mobile friendly ahead of ones that aren’t. Blog comments are a great way to promote content, diversify anchor text and build out a natural link profile. Think of SEO as one small part of a much more cohesive marketing strategy. Long tail keywords might not have the popularity or perceived importance of regular keywords but they can be very effective when utilised correctly. Using long tail keywords can give you the edge over your competitors and there are numerous benefits to using them. Keep in mind you will rank faster for long tail keywords and these often result in higher conversions.

Real results you say?

Back in 2011, you could use blog commenting to get 200 backlinks and quickly skyrocket your rankings on search engines. But, in today’s algorithm for search engines, the focus is on quality over quantity. Try to ensure the key phrase is an exact match to what the searcher will type into a search engine. This means phrasing your keywords in a conversational fashion if you want to optimize for natural language search queries Arguably, one of the most crucial aspects of on-page SEO is tags. Whether it’s title tags, header tags, meta tags or blog post tags, they have been demonstrated to increase traffic and boost engagement. There is no exact word count when we talk about the “long content.” There are studies showing 2,000+ word articles dominating the SERPs’ top for many competitive keywords.

Make it more likely that other websites will link to you

SEO practitioners, before deploying any given tactic, will ask first, “Will this increase my rank in the SERPs?” And if the answer appears to be yes, then the tactic is executed. Search traffic is among the best quality available on the Web, primarily because a search user has expressed a specific goal through her query, and when this matches a product or brand the web store carries, conversion rates are often extremely high SEO measures can take some time and effort. But what is the point in investing time and effort if you cannot see the fruits of your labor? Luckily, there are numerous metrics that you can check on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis in order to keep your SEO plan on track and to measure your success. Gaz Hall, from SEO Hull, had the following to say: "Local businesses can’t be fully evaluated on the basis of links."

The most important part of SEO is link building

The problem with directories: A good directory’s intent is to categorize the internet into different categories/subcategories, while providing links to good websites in those categories. Although there are legitimate directory websites, many were built solely for the purpose of building links back to webpages without consideration of link quality. This is the wrong way to build links. Make sure that your website is structured in a way that is friendly to search engines. If it’s tough for a search engine to crawl your site and index everything properly, you won’t get the SEO love that you deserve. More and more we are seeing the use of keyword clustering from sites that are making it beyond the scope of mediocre search results and traffic margins. Instead of willy-nilly linking to pages from site-wide elements, like the top navigation or the footer, consider the value of the pages that you intend to throw in the navigation. Try to limit your sitewide links to only the 20 percent of your pages that are the most valuable, and pages required for a good user experience.