You can start improving your website’s SEO by taking care of a handful of critical tasks grouped in three areas that search engine algorithms pay a lot of attention to. However, most people tend to neglect this to varying degrees.
When done right, your site´s coding and formatting, content and data analysis improve SEO stats overall. Let´s see these three elements in detail.
Improvements to your Site’s Coding and Formatting:
This is one of the most straightforward areas to fix if you want to improve SEO indicators. Given that it requires at least some understanding of the technical side of things, most people tend to have websites with subpar coding and formatting. This ends up playing against them with search engine algorithms.
This area is all about making sure that the nuts and bolts of your pages are all tight, and in a way that will help algorithms understand what your content is about, and that your site is healthy and current.
Checklist:
- Optimize page titles and metadata descriptions
- Use SEO friendly URLs
- Customize your 404 page
- Have a mobile-friendly version of your site
- Create an XML and a User sitemap
- Fix broken links
You can find in-depth guides on how to take care of each of those tasks for your site. Some require a bit more of technical know-how than others, but every single one has a considerable weight when it comes to staying on algorithms’ good graces.
Improvements to your site’s content:
Content is paramount.
It doesn’t matter how much optimization you make, at the end of the day people visit sites for their content, and yours needs to live up to their expectations.
Quality content is the most reliable way to increase your website’s prominence in SERPs over time organically, and the best way to ensure that once someone sees your site, they’ll want to come back.
Checklist:
- Use proper heading and formatting to make your content more appealing to readers.
- Optimize your images titles and metadata.
- Get backlinks from other sites.
- Include internal links and backlinks to other content in your website.
- Upload only quality content that adds value to your viewers.
- Update consistently and regularly.
When you work on your site’s content, endeavor to please your viewers and provide things they’ll find valuable.
SEO improvements in data analysis and planning:
Lastly, let’s discuss metrics and data analysis for a second.
When most people set out to improve their sites, they neglect to take a deep, honest, look at their initial metrics (sites visits, content response, social media engagement, etc.) What’s even worse, they fail to keep a close track of how their changes affect (both, positively or negatively) their website’s overall performance.
Keeping an eye on your site’s metrics, and implementing changes based on what those numbers suggest is the only reliable way to grow your website’s popularity consistently.
Checklist:
- Keep track on page-speed load times and improve when possible.
- Use Google webmaster tools and analytics
- Keep close track (journal, file) of relevant metrics: which days you get your most views, which topics see more engagement, etc. And let those number informs the tasks and content you should implement next.
Once you start working these fixes on your site, you’ll begin seeing the improvement you want.
Do keep in mind that SEO is all about growing your site’s prominence and exposure over time, not overnight. Give time for these improvements to take hold and be patient, once you have fixed everything that was broken on your site, and begin putting out content and campaigns to attract new views, your site’s prominence and popularity will start increasing organically.