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Here’s the hard truth: An SEO checklist to prioritize your search engine optimization issues won’t do the trick.
To really improve your position in search engine page results, you need an effective strategy. It can only happen if you blend the technical issues you spot with an actionable plan that fits your resources.
SEO technical mistakes can impact your content ranking negatively. It’s crucial to have clarity when it comes to what needs addressing first. In other words, prioritizing your SEO issues is key.
SEO issues can be technical mistakes on your code, bad judgements when it comes to tagging your content or even indexation problems. These matters may seem small at first, but they add up and can send your rankings spiraling down, dooming your page to a SERP limbo.
SEO issues can sometimes:
SEO task management is a delicate aspect of your marketing you shouldn’t overlook
because you can spot all the technical problems, but if you don’t apply a realistic strategy when it comes to time management you won’t fix those issues.
Before learning where to look when it comes to technical aspects of your SEO, it’s crucial to know that nearly 51% of all Google searches result in zero clicks, according to SparkToro.com.
That means there’s plenty of room to create pieces of content that users find relevant. Or to optimize existing content so it can rank high. High SERPs are a “make it or break it” factor to anything you upload to the web.
Now, let’s get technical.
When we talk about technical SEO, we refer to updates on your website or server that you can implement which impact, directly or not, on search rankings. Keeping an eye on technical SEO issues is a core task of your SEO actions.
Map out your SEO objectives in detail with these 7 points:
Spammy traffic is usually caused by bots.
It means that there are no real people visiting your site, just false automated users that bounce back almost immediately from your site, since they are created with the sole intent of picking your curiosity and making you click back on the source of all that increased traffic that your analytics show.
Keep an eye out for ghost referrals and block them. Do this frequently. You can do this by accessing the admin tab on your Google Analytics page and activating the bot-filtering option.
Keep in mind that even though blocking referral spam will prevent it from showing on your future analytics and influencing the way search engines judge your content, you can’t erase their influence from previous posts. Updating, retagging and resharing them may give them a popularity boost, but bot damage isn’t reversible.
Even though Google doesn’t actually penalize duplicate content, unless you use it to manipulate SERPs, it can take a toll on your ranking by occupying the crawlers.
If you lose crawler cycles on irrelevant data, you will miss out on the chance of showcasing fresh content that would bolster your rankings.
You don’t need to search through all your webpage’s code, since there are several SEO website crawling and auditing tools that will do just that for you. Some are Botify, Screaming Frog and Deep Crawl.
Quality backlinking is a confidence vote for your page on Google’s eyes. The same way, toxic backlinking will be highly detrimental for your Ranking. Here’s how to do a comprehensive backlink analysis.
If you want search engines to understand your site structure, just give them a map. Sitemaps also make it easier for crawlers to find links. So, keep your sitemap up to date and remember to check it periodically. Add new and relevant content to your site periodically.
According to Search Engine Journal, an XML sitemap “will speed up the process a bit more because Google Search Console tells the crawler exactly where to look for the most important pages on the website and even ranks them in priority order (if you choose).”
Speed loading time matters, especially for mobile searches. With that in mind, talk with your programmer to keep your site optimized. Sites such as GTmetrix or PingDom can help you measure your loading speed to know where you need to focus your efforts, be it image sizes, code, design or anything else that might hamper speed.
It should be clear by now that paying attention to your analytics data is fundamental for an effective SEO strategy. But it’s not enough to just take the occasional look at your analytics when planning your marketing strategy.
Take a weekly look at your Google Analytics to make sure you’re making the best of your efforts. If you want to know about the most important SEO ranking factors, read this article.
Use Google Search Console to see which pages are indexed. Pages that aren’t indexed are not noticed by search engines, so they can’t rank.
Increasing your website’s speed is a good way to get indexed faster. Also, posting and updating often will get the attention of crawlers more often and make the indexing of your page more of a priority.
You can check how often Google crawlers search your site via the Search Console.
It’s also useful to keep in mind that blog posts get indexed more often than webpages, so a blog may be the best way to upload your content in an SEO-friendly manner.
Managing SEO projects is time consuming and can be taxing without a clear north.
Planning and executing correctly is as important as checking for technical SEO issues first
Here are 7 tips to make the most of your time while managing an SEO venture:
You should ask yourself these questions:
The answers will affect how you´ll implement your SEO strategy and you should plan accordingly.
If you want to focus on selling a product or service, try focusing on quality search data. Schema markups will be your best ally in informing search engines what your product is about.
If what you’re looking for is to establish your brand, be it personal or commercial, you should implement a strong and effective marketing campaign. Working on a strong backlinking strategy will also increase authority to your site.
If you’re facing the daunting task of reputation management, generating quantity of content that focuses on the upsides of your brand may help to bury unflattering results on the SERPs.
Remember to still keep your content relevant, indexed and tagged to increase your chances of better rankings.
If your goal is to generate traffic, you should focus on unique content specially designed to your niche audience. Researching your target audience beforehand is key to plan a successful SEO strategy. This is especially useful if your content doesn’t require transactions and your main source of income is advertisement.
Once you’ve set your goals, break them into small steps. You have analyzed your site’s data. You should know by now which areas need more work and which are your strongpoints. Plan how to fix what isn't working and how to bolster what is.
Be methodical and patient. Make sure each step of your plan is reaching your expected results before implementing the next. If things aren’t working, go back to analyzing your data and adjust your steps.
There are lots of time management tools out there. It’s key to find out first which suits you best according to your needs and team. Asana, for example, allows you to work with 15 users for free. What’s essential is that your time-management tools have integrations with widespread services such as Dropbox and Google.
Linkio offers useful tools, such as Keyword Rank Tracker and Backlink Monitoring. It has several packages starting at $19.99 a month. A little more expensive, but with far more time on the market to back up its credentials, Basecamp offers great tools not only for SEO tasks but for remote working groups for a flat rate of $99 monthly.
It’s important to coordinate your team efforts with a clear SEO strategy that everyone on the team is aware of. The only way to do so effectively is by implementing internal communications and managing them on a personal level.
Remember that for your teams to communicate smoothly, you must be the first to do so.
If you think your communication skills are lackluster, don’t be shy: Seek help. From online classes to YouTube videos, there’s bound to be a way to better your communication skills. It’ll save you a lot of time and misunderstandings.
Without content there’s nothing for users to search. Quality content is the first step for good SERPs. Also remember to tag said content with meta tags or schema markup. Also keep good use of keywords.
Don’t forget that pre-generated and spammy content is penalized by Google, so keep your content fresh and relevant.
Hire a content marketer or 2 to create interesting content that’s likely to rank well. Also, check your ratio of quality and quantity, since they don't always go hand in hand. Posting regularly is important, but posting good content is as important.
Take a look at both when your posts perform better to have an idea what’s a good schedule for your traffic and also which posts performed better.
Checking your older posts, 6 months or more, and updating them is a great way to stay relevant in searches.
You can ask yourself some questions to see if a post or article needs updating:
If the answer to any of these questions is no, then you should update that aspect of your content and make some tweaks.
Having a content calendar planned for each month is a cornerstone on your organization. By mapping when to publish new content, it’ll be easier to prioritize your time and resources, guide your teams and delegate accordingly.
Make sure the calendar includes all relevant information, such as who is tasked with what and when are projects due, and available to everyone.
Using online calendars such as Trello can simplify this, especially in remote groups.
Now that you have a clear idea of how to prepare an SEO daily work schedule ready to go, remember that getting to the first SERPs is difficult and delicate. However, keeping yourself organized will save you time, effort and can increase your ranking.
An overall balanced and focused SEO strategy may seem hard to plan, but fixing the damage of overlooked SEO issues is much way harder.
Reach out to the Kantaloupe team for help with your SEO challenges. We can devise a plan according to your goals and budget.
Some of the services we provide are:
About technical SEO, we comb through your web content and code structure to spot issues that are impacting search performance negatively.
We’ll outline the problems we find, recommend actions and highlight opportunities for growth. Don’t miss them.
Ines Da Pieve is a business-to-business copywriter from Buenos Aires, Argentina. She writes about technology, education and digital marketing.
