August 11, 2016

Spring cleaning your Website SEO

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Michael Jenkins
Michael Jenkins

CEO - Shout Agency
[email protected]

Overview

Spring is around the corner in a few months, we thought it would be a good time to do some spring cleaning on your website search engine optimization (SEO).

Below we have some strategies you should use on a regular basis to ensure your site is in tip top shape.

5 Ways to Clean up Your Website SEO

1. Start with your Web Analytics

The first thing you need to do when cleaning up your site SEO is to check your analytics. Do not go blindly into fixing your site.

Understand what works and does not work on your site before you fix it.

To do this, you need to use quality analytics tools like Google Analytics and Google Webmaster to evaluate your site.

Google Analytics helps you see where your traffic comes from online, as well as the demographics of who click on that content. The more information you have about your traffic, the more you can replicate that traffic in the future.

Google Webmaster organizes your website SEO into organic search queries (see keywords below), crawl errors, and website indexing. Webmaster looks at the technical side of your website SEO to ensure your site conforms to Google search standards.

2. Keywords

One of the first things you check on Google Webmaster Tools is how your keywords are performing on organic search.

Keywords still play a significant role in the amount of traffic your site receives. While other methods are cropping up, Google uses the keywords to understand what traffic would be relevant to your information.

This helps you understand how to create more targeted content to generate the most organic search. While you look through this information, you should also review how much social media traffic comes in from these articles.

The more time you spend improving your understanding of the keywords that drive in convertible traffic, the more concentrated content you can produce in the future on your website.

3. Optimize website pages

For every page that you want to receive organic search, you need to have a few components in place.

If you have a WordPress website, then it is simple to implement. Use a plugin like Yoast SEO. With Yoast, you do not need to know SEO coding, and can easily include these elements.

  • Meta Title– The most important element on any page is the meta title. This is the main topic for the page. You should include your primary keyword in the meta title, but make sure it does not look spammy to Google.
  • Content– Do you have at least 400 words or more on your page? Is your keyword included in the content without plastering your keywords in every sentence or paragraph? Is the content relevant to the title? These are a few key elements to optimizing your content for search traffic.
  • H1-H5 Tags– Usually the H1 tag is your Meta Title. Most people are not aware of this, and use it in the article. The H2 are your headers and H3-H5 are sub headers for your articles. They make your website page easier to read, and provide Google with a clear outline of your content.
  • Image Alt Tags– Finally, do you label your images with alt-tags? Alt-tags make your images searchable on Google Images. They read the tag like a keyword to understand the purpose of the image.

4. Site Index

Every site has an index that allows search engines to spider their site quickly to ensure they are found on search engine results.

It is important that you have a solid index of your site, so Google does not get confused where your content pages reside. That can seriously hurt your results.

For example, we worked with the Complex Institute of Education on how to move their site over from their previous site to their current location.

Part of that process involved URL mapping and redirects from the old to the new site, in order to ensure the website did not lose search engine traffic with the switch. The site map provided Google with the overview of the site, so they understood that this was the same content on a new site.

5. Speed

Google is obsessed with speed. That is the reason why they implemented Google AMP to ensure that all mobile devices load pages at ridiculous speeds.

However, AMP alone is not the answer. Your site also needs to have the right hosting and accessible content to ensure your site loads quickly.

Bonus: Broken Links– Nothing worse than a series of 404 errors on your website. If you want to reduce them, use the 301 redirects to ensure your broken links go to active pages.

Linking is still a vital part of displaying your websites’ authority. Therefore, you should focus on finding quality links to your website. If those links break, it is your responsibility to fix them.

Final Thoughts

Keeping your website design and SEO in tiptop shape is something that requires continual refining. By doing a little spring cleaning now, you can prevent more extensive work in the future.

The key is to continually monitor your results and update your content to ensure it fits in with Google search standards.

If you need help implementing your website SEO spring cleaning, contact us at Shout for a Free discovery session today.

Book a free 45 minute consultation today.

    Book a free 45 minute consultation today.

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        Shout logo in grey

        As Founder and Director of Shout Web Strategy, Michael Jenkins is at the forefront of digital marketing. Since it’s inception in 2009, Shout has built a strong reputation as one of Australia’s leading strategic SEO agencies, assisting online businesses to formulate, implement and track successful marketing strategies. Michael is a respected thought leader and digital strategist, specialising in online strategy, corporate SEO, Google retargeting, email and conversion rate optimisation, and online reputation management. Follow Michael on Google+, connect with him through LinkedIn or visit the Shout Web Strategy website.

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