SEO is something of a 'dark art' to many people outside the industry and that's why getting professional input for your online campaigns can really reap rewards. However, like most things in life there are some top tips that can help make sure your digital marketing features as high in the search rankings as possible.

Everyone knows the importance of having your brand terms as registered domains so that people can find you easily online.

Google rankings are the holy grail for anyone involved in SEO work, and although keywords and keyword groups are still vitally important, being able to assess user behaviour is vital in order to get things right.

A 31st July Google hangout between John Mueller and webmasters brought the issue of Google’s new Panda 4.2 update to the fore. Panda 4.2 began rolling out over the course of the weekend of the 18th and 19th July, although it is more of a refresh than an actual update. The previous refresh, Panda 4.1, came in September 2014. Panda’s first release came in February 2011. The Panda algorithm changes have represented good news for those providing quality content, such as article writing services, given that Google’s objective is to boost the ranking of higher-quality sites.

Link building is seen as a useful component when developing a successful website in SEO terms; however, no less a figure than John Mueller, webmaster trends analyst with Google, is questioning the focus on link building at the expense of other essential elements in SEO. That having been said, many other experts feel that links are still very much a major component in any SEO strategy.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) professionals – and, by extension, website copywriting providers – need to start preparing for a future where voice will have a big impact on SEO. In the future, online queries will originate with voice input features on mobile devices. In order to accommodate voice – as well as text – queries, Google will turn increasingly towards what is known as “direct answers.” Having tweaked its algorithms over the years, Google has shifted towards an approach where specific user searches generate direct answer results, otherwise known as “rich answers,” rather than returning a variety of links to other websites. Bing runs specific search returns on the same basis, though to a lesser extent.

A quiet revolution is underway in the world of search engine optimisation (SEO), and at long last it seems that it will favour good quality content writing above those dodgy tactics deployed under “old SEO” to manipulate crumby sites to rank better with search engines.

Google Authorship is dead. Long live Google Authorship. That may sound like pure flapdoodle, but claims of Authorship’s literal death may be premature.