If your website has some outdated content, broken links, or missing images, these are relatively quick and easy fixes that can impact SEO in a big way. Also, being aware of the basics helps you prevent issues that can have a negative impact on your website performance such as creating broken links or 404 pages by deleting pages or posts without putting redirects in place. You’ll also want to analyze the content you add to your website to make sure it’s as complete as possible. “Thin” content isn’t helpful to human visitors looking for help or answers, and it isn’t what search engines are looking for either when they decide which websites to serve up in results to people searching.
If you’re not an SEO professional, but wondering how you can make some improvements to your site’s visibility we’ve got some tips for you. SEO encompasses a large variety of approaches, strategies & tactics to help improve site traffic and user experience. While there are a many different items you can tackle, there are some relatively easy SEO improvements you can make or request of your website/online marketing partner. And ALWAYS view these as an ongoing process to continue working on and circling back to on a regular basis:
Moz’s definition of SEO is universally recognized, “which is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. They offer some great graphics to understand some of Google’s ranking factors, which are reviewed in some of our tips below.
Impact SEO: Simple Improvements to Make
- First and foremost, make sure search engines are allowed to crawl your site.
- Check for broken links. If you have any, make sure to fix them.
- Don’t inadvertently create 404 errors on your site by deleting (or unpublishing) website pages or posts, without putting a redirect in place.
- Does your site have any 404 errors? If so, make sure to put appropriate permanent 303 redirects in for them.
- Do all of your pages have meta titles & descriptions? Make sure to include your page’s focus keyword within them.
- Do all of your images have alt text?
- Do you make regular updates of any kind to your website such as new products, website content updates, events, blog posts? If not, make changes as frequently and consistently as possible.
- Is your main page content engaging & up-to-date? Generally speaking, each page should have at least 300 words of content when possible.
- Does your page content actually contain your focus keyword?
- Take some time to build internal links. If the “About” page mentions a specific product on your site, link to that product page.
- Has your sitemap been submitted to Google Search Console? If yes, what about Bing Webmaster Tools?
- Take a peek at Google Search Console console errors. What does it say you should fix?
- Is your Google My Business Listing up to date? Make sure your phone number, address, and any other information is current.
- Does your header or footer contain your key contact information including a physical location and is it all up to date?
- Does your key contact information on your website, match your Google My Business listing, and other directories and social media profiles EXACTLY?
If you need help with any of these or want to take your SEO to the next level, contact us today or call (320) 587-8974.
