There is no magic in SEO. It's just work.

Here's the awful truth about search engine optimization:

There is no magic bullet.
There is no magic keyword list.
There is no secret code.
There is no meta tag trick.

There is only hard work.

I get asked a lot about SEO by prospective clients. Everyone wants a magic bullet, but the answer is unappealing. Unless you are willing to fork over bucketloads of cash every month to snake-oil ”SEO consultants“ that make their living with blackhat techniques like article spinning, keyword stuffing and link farms, you'll find the only reliable way to optimize your site for search engines is to optimize it for humans.

The rules today are the same as they were fifteen years ago.

Use the same language as your audience.

Write simple, clear headlines.

Write clearly.

Explain yourself on the very first page.

Hire an editor (like this one); they're worth every penny and then some.

Don't use jargon.

Write content worth reading.

And finally, do some research, identify and prioritize your key phrases, and write them into your content. Don't stuff; use ordinary, natural language — that's what Google and Bing want, because that's what humans want.

It's a lot of work. It's very hard work. And it's the only thing that works.