Search is a forever changing beast of algorithms, tips, tricks and fads all to obtain the “holy grail” page one search rankings and traffic to boost one’s business.

For local business owners, search has definitely been taking many zigs and zags with the dismissal of Google Authorship, increased focus on Mobile search, and now semantic search with Google Hummingbird.

All of the above mentioned concepts have directly and indirectly impacted the SEO efforts of local business owners.

For local business owners seeking to gain ground in local and mobile search, it’s best to ensure that your website’s design and architecture is one that is responsive, both search- and user-friendly, to the variety of devices viewing your website.

Responsive design and architecture is only a start in addition to creating a sound content marketing strategy that engages and educates your customers.

One SEO area that’s worth mentioning for local business owner’s to focus on is semantic search.

Subdomains have been around for a long time, but it’s only quite recently that internet marketers learned how invaluable they can be. In fact, there was a time when using subdomains was thought to be ultimately bad for SEO.

However, with every cat, dog, and bird update constantly changing search engines, many small business owners and internet marketers are clamoring for anything that can even remotely increase views and ranking.

This has given birth to loads of white-hat, grey-hat, and black-hat SEO marketing tactics.

One marketing tactic many use to boost their rankings is using subdomains.

Once considered gray hat, making use of subdomains for the sole purpose of manipulating search rankings for specific keywords or keyword phrases is now considered black-hat SEO.

But don’t lose hope just yet, as subdomains can be ethically and effectively used via white-hat SEO tactics and strategies.

Don’t believe me? Just check out such sites as Tumblr, Blogspot, WordPress, and Shopify, to name a few.

These popular mainstream websites offer services that allow users to create their own websites using subdomains instead of subdirectories.

So take a step back before we venture too far down the path of subdomain SEO. Let’s take a moment to define domains, subdomains, and subdirectories.

It’s been a while since we’ve covered a few search ranking factors for boosting one’s website search results across major search engines.

Well, today, we’re going to address the top 20 SEO tips that website owners can implement and execute to ensure that their website’s search rankings remain highly visible or boost your way into page one search rankings across major search engines.

Here are my top 20 SEO tips for small businesses to boost their website’s search rankings.

Before we get too far down the path on this post on social signals, let me start by saying do not attempt to take anything from this post as the law of the land for manipulating search rankings.

In the last few days, I’ve received a few emails from potential customers in regards to certain SEO strategies they stumbled across on this blog not *working*.

Of course, not *working* is a vague term with wide boundaries depending upon whom you speak with.

As for the emails, potential customers had read a few blog posts making mention that social signals are important to search rankings for websites.

They then took to Facebook, Google+, and Twitter, and began posting content in an attempt to boost their website traffic and search rankings.

After a few posts and only days within their first couple of posts on each social network, potential customers were a bit frustrated by the following:

• Their website traffic did not increase
• Their search rankings decreased instead of increasing
• Their numbers on each of the social networks didn’t increase in any aspect

I mean, they had a few likes and a couple of followers, but they expected a monsoon of activity to boost their social signals and in return, increase search rankings for their website.

And of course without hesitation and not acknowledging the part they played, potential customers wrote me to inform me that I was fake and imposter SEO professional by their standards.

Let me start by saying that as much guest posting and blogging craze that there is all over the web, I’m not real big on guest posts and blogs, period.

I’ll tell you why, but first a customer story.

If only I could rank #1 on page one of Google…

This long time customer once had stellar SEO rankings for multiple money keywords and long tail keywords in their industry.

For years, they owned search rankings with well-optimized pages and website in general.

In fact, this customer ranked so well across search engines that they didn’t have to participate in pay-per-click advertising although it would have been a benefit.

That all came to end after experiencing two failed SEO efforts and relationships with other companies.

In truth, all this customer wanted was establish their web presence as the number one spot in search rankings.

But is this not what we all want for our websites?

I receive a wide range of emails and phone calls in a given week questioning how to generate content that increases website traffic.

From business owners, website developers, and even other SEO consultants posing as potential customers, everyone wants to know what the secret is when it comes to content marketing that increases search ranking and website traffic.

There are plenty of resources, whether newsletters, websites, blogs, ebooks, etc., telling you the bare bone SEO basics and principles, such as creating content:

• Written with a focus on customers and not search engines
• That is more than 600 words in length, ideally 1000-1500 or more
• That is relevant and specific to your industry and target market
• That educates, informs and solves problems for customers
• That customers will share with the masses
• That is easy-to-read content consisting of short sentences and containing every day layman terms
• Using specific keywords and keyword variations in moderation
• That includes the use of header tags with keywords within header tags
• Containing moderately supportive external and internal links, images, and videos

And the list goes on with other value-add content marketing strategies and techniques to help increase not only your website or blog’s search engine ranking, but also increase the likelihood your content is shared with the masses and increasing overall website traffic.

Today’s post on content marketing will guarantee you success should you religiously understand, comprehend and flawlessly execute each aspect.

Let’s get started.

Welcome back to second post of Page one search engine ranking and the rest.

In our initial post of this series, we discussed the importance of taking your time to select your niche, keywords, register or acquiring keyword-specific domain names, and creating unique and value-add content.

All are equally important, but I’ve found it most important to have selected the correct niche and keywords long before a domain name and content ever came into consideration.

In today’s post, I’ll continue discussing the wide variety of SEO actions I’ve taken that have led to successfully ranking websites in the top spot across major search engines, and led to increase traffic, conversions, and revenue.

In addition, I’ll share a few tips and tricks for what not to do too.

Let’s continue our search engine ranking discussion.