Effective SEO Techniques

The techniques that still work are the boring ones

SEO advice ages badly, so here's the filter for everything below: it only makes the list if it has survived every algorithm update we've worked through and still shows up in the results when we do it for clients. No hacks, nothing clever. The clever stuff is what gets sites penalised.

Match the title to the intent

The title tag remains the highest-value line of text on any page, and most businesses waste it on their own name. Look at what ranks for your target phrase and notice what kind of page Google is choosing to show, a guide, a product page, a list, then be the best version of that kind. Fighting the intent is unwinnable. You can't rank a sales page where every result is a tutorial, however good the sales page is.

Internal links are free authority

Every page on your site can vote for another, and most sites leave the votes uncast. Link related pages together in the body text, with anchor text that says what the destination is about. When we audit sites, orphaned pages, pages nothing links to, are among the commonest finds, and reconnecting them is among the cheapest wins. We found a pile on our own site this summer, which was humbling, and fixable in an afternoon.

Do the crawl housekeeping

Google has a finite appetite for any site. Spend it well: fix broken internal links, redirect dead URLs properly, stop thin near-duplicate pages competing with each other, and keep the sitemap honest. None of it is visible to visitors, and all of it changes how thoroughly the pages that matter get crawled and ranked. Search Console shows most of these problems for free, which makes ignoring them a choice.

Refresh before you create

An existing page with some history ranks more easily than a new one. Before writing post number fifty, improve the ten that already earn impressions: a sharper title, current numbers, a section answering the follow-up question people search next. We rebuilt our own back catalogue this year on exactly this logic.

For local businesses, be locally obvious

If you serve a place, say so like you mean it: a proper page for the area, your Google Business Profile claimed and active, reviews asked for and answered, consistent name, address and phone everywhere. Local rankings run on these signals more than on anything exotic. Our Essex SEO work is mostly this, done patiently.

What to ignore

Buying links from strangers' emails. Keyword-stuffed footers. Spinning out dozens of near-identical location pages, and we'd know, having culled hundreds of our own this year because quality beats coverage. And any technique whose pitch involves the word loophole. Rankings built on loopholes are rented, and the eviction always comes.