SEO has changed over the last 12 months. Some things that would help you before can now get you penalised, while other aspects have come back into fashion and will really benefit your rankings once again.

Anchor Text You have to be even more careful with your anchor text these days. Back in the good old days, you could use your money phrase 30-40% of the time without getting penalised. Today your anchor text should be predominantly your brand with less than 5% given over to money phrase terms. Directories Local businesses can gain a great deal by getting a number of listings in local directories such as Yelp and Yellow Pages. There are a number of local business directories in your area which showcase local businesses and often different trades have directory style sites that you can submit to. I would highly recommend submitting to as many of these sites as possible and getting a backlink to your website where ever possible.

Social Media It is also very important to claim your social real estate. I tell all of my clients to claim their main social listings such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube and Google Plus. Along with a backlink from each of these sites, they can also be used to drive traffic to your website and social signals are now a ranking factor in the search engines.
Keyword Density Finally, from an on page perspective 'less is more' in 2016. Stuffing keywords into meta tags and worrying about keyword density is pointless now. Of course, keywords still need to be used, but much more subtly now. Using your keyword once in your meta title is fine but after that I recommend using synonyms or like phrases on the rest of your web page. As the search engines get smarter they can detect when a page is over optimised by someone doing bad SEO.
This blog was written by Chris Hines, Digity's SEO Consultant. We hope these top level tips help you to improve your SEO on-going. If you'd like some expert help, please contact our team for an informal chat contact us.