SEO: Search Really Doesn't Change
I’ve been saying this for a long time: Tried and true methods of SEO are eternal. Really. If you’re doing the most important things for good ranking, you’ll find that they’re easy to implement and really, the most important things you can do.
Oh sure, there are little tricks popping up all the time. And the black hat stuff, well… it just doesn’t last.
Here’s a post at Search Engine Land that proves my belief: http://searchengineland.com/search-ranking-factors-shows-how-little-seo-has-changed-24363
Anchor text is primary. You need to have good anchor text for the links pointing back to your site. This will be a keyword phrase, and you should vary the text often. A whole bunch of links pointing back to your fishing blog that say “bass fishing” and nothing else is a dead giveaway that you’re doing most of the posting of those links yourself. Google wants to see “natural,” and want to see other people posting links back to your site, too. They won’t be using the same anchor text all the time.
Keywords in your title tag are just common sense. You need to use your most important keyword up front for the sake of prominence. And you should use your title tag to sell the click on Google.
Link popularity: How many links are pointing back to your site? This is very important to search. The more links back, the more “popular” the search engines will think your site is with the general Web population.
Diversity of Linking Domains: All of your backlinks shouldn’t be from one site. So, for example, not all of your article backlinks should come from Ezine Articles, though it’s a very good place to start.
Keyword in Root Domain: Well… This blog is a cardinal sin. Of course, I started it way back in 2005 when I didn’t even fully understand what SEO was. Always use your main keyword in your root domain. Really important.
And that’s it. I mean, those are the basics that SEOs from all over the Internet voted as the most important elements of SEO, and the factors didn’t change much from one year to another.
One element that was in last year’s survey was “Age of Domain,” which is still pretty important in the scheme of things. Google likes stability, and so, the older your domain, the better for SEO. For this reason alone I never changed this domain. I have almost 4 years riding on it. 
The deal is this: If you’re not going to pursue SEO as a science, do these simple things. You’ll be amazed at how well they work alone. Oh, and add a good keyword-rich, readable META description, and you’ll be in better shape than if you used no SEO at all.
