Easy and Effective Ways to Improve Your Site’s SEO
As any experienced SEO will tell you, optimization is a never-ending process. This post is for you SEOs who have optimized each page of your site for a specific keyword or query and who know how to get Google to quickly index your new content, but you feel like you’ve hit a wall in terms of your growth and you’ve seen the number of new users start to plateau. Here are some simple ways you can boost your traffic and overall search presence.
Our first step should be no secret to frequent readers of this space: internal linking. Yet, when we talk to new clients this is typically the most commonly overlooked tactic. Think about it this way: if you aren’t linking to your own content, why should Google. This is an effective way to signal the value of pages and the best way to start is by identifying the pages that have the most external links pointing to them, which you can see in your Google Webmaster Panel, and add links on those pages to lesser-performing pages.
The next step is to perform a site audit of all your onsite content. Every page of your site is an opportunity to communicate to Google your pages’ authority and relevance, yet many sites suffer from underdeveloped pages. A rough rule of thumb is to aim for at least 300 words per page. Of course, you never want to write content just to have it there so determine what each page is aiming to accomplish and write content communicates this. While many sites leave their Contact page bare, it’s another opportunity to express why someone should contact you, in addition to adding in any missing keywords.
Next up, take a look at your mets descriptions across your site. Chances are many of them were written before the Hummingbird algorithm went into effect and thus are often just stuffed with keywords. However, these days, you want your meta description to attract clicks and thus you want to state in no uncertain terms exactly what that page’s value is, be it low prices or quality of information.
Now what about link building, that one-time pillar of SEO that the Penguin algorithm has effectively dismantled? While exact match anchor text (linking a main keyword) is a surefire way to attract Google’s spam detectors, links that feature your brand name are a safe bet. So the next time you see a site mention your brand in an article, contact the writer or editor and request that they link that brand mention to your site. In this writer’s experience, sites are far more inclined to give you that link than you might think. And there’s no real harm in asking so consider giving this method a try!
Finally, let’s talk about an SEO’s two favorite numbers: 404 and 301. As you likely know, a 404 error occurs when a page that has an external or internal link pointing to it is no longer operational. This signals to Google that your site’s authority is questionable to say the least. So whenever you remove a page, either remove all links pointing to it, or more practically, create a 301 redirect that sends users to a functioning page whose content is relevant, thus retaining the bulk of the link juice even though the original page isn’t there. Programs like Screaming Frog are ideal for identifying dead pages and links; you should thus do a monthly audit to remove any 404s, especially if you have a content-heavy site.
