I know, terms like “quick fix” and “SEO” are rarely put together.
It seems that in search everything should take time and effort.
And yet, there are some small tweaks that can improve your website’s performance.
Sure, many of them don’t work on their own. But combined with your main efforts they can make a difference to your rankings and traffic. Here are over 20 of them.
Technical SEO
Check your sitemap in GWT
You already know how crucial a sitemap is to your site. It tells Google what pages are on your site. But if you use a plugin to create and update your sitemap, go and check if Google Webmasters Tools doesn’t report any errors.
Run an SEO Audit
A thorough SEO audit will reveal potential errors (such as duplicate content, meta tags etc.) or warnings (pages with not enough content, load speed issues) on your site.
If you don’t subscribe to any SEO audit software, use MySiteAudito’s free trial to run a check on your site.
Run a Crawler
Grab a copy of Screaming Frog and let it crawl your site. Screaming Frog will crawl 500 URLs in a free trial and report on the following:
- Missing or duplicate meta title and description tags
- Missing or duplicate H1 and H2 tags
- Missing ALT tags on images
- Duplicate pages
- Crawl problems
And many more.
Test your site on mobile devices
We live in the era of mobile. And there are signs of it anywhere you look. 52% of all US internet traffic on Thanksgiving came from a mobile device, for instance. And according to the same source, Black Friday’s mobile sales grew 28.2% over 2013.
Not to mention that Google has already started displaying mobile friendly labels in search and even started testing mobile friendliness as a ranking factor.
Therefore, test how your website displays on mobile devices, correct any problems and install a responsive theme if needed.
Test and improve page load time
According to Backlinko’s Google ranking factors list,
“Both Google and Bing use page loading speed as a ranking factor. Search engine spiders can estimate your site speed fairly accurately based on a page’s code and filesize.”
Page load time can also affect conversions. According to Kissmetrics, a 1 second delay in page loading time can result in up to 7% reduce in conversions.
So, test your site load speed with Pingdom tools (free) and apply any recommendations the tool might suggest.
Add schema markup
Using Schema won’t improve your rankings, true. Google already stated that microdata is not used as a ranking signal.
But including schema will help a search engine to better interpret information on a web page, serve better results and increase your visibility and CTR.
Content
Check your site for duplicate content
Google defines duplicate content as: “substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar.”
And as Backlinko points out:
“Identical content on the same site (even slightly modified) can negatively influence a site’s search engine visibility.”
But not every instance of duplicate content is a result of a malicious action. Your site might have multiple URLs pointing to the same page for instance. This could simply be a result of URL being dependant on variables such as size, color or other sorting filters.
You could have unresolved domain and subdomain issue. Google will consider www.mysite.com and mysite.com as two different URLs.
Your mobile and desktop websites might have different URLs too but the same content.
Use tools like Siteliner to find duplicate content on your site. Sometimes a simple canonical tag is enough to rectify the issue. But you might also have to restructure or rewrite portions of your website.
Update your content calendar
Review your content plan for the coming weeks. See if you didn’t miss any opportunities to create thematic for instance (Halloween, holidays, special occasions etc.). Or if there aren’t any current issues in your industry you could newsjack on.
Use Buzzsumo to find evergreen content ideas
Find out what’s popular in your industry. Run a search in Buzzsumo to find the most shared content for instance.
Brainstorm list of people to interview
Interviews offer you a chance to raise your brand awareness by piggy backing on a well-known name in the industry. This content can get you links and mentions. But the key to doing it well is knowing who to interview.
So, make a list of your industry’s influencers and come up with a hook for an interview.
Link Building
Check for your new links / mentions
You should do this for two reasons – to monitor your link building activities but also, to keep an eye for unwanted / low quality backlinks. Trackbacks, scraped content and many others might send negative ranking signals to Google.
Similarly you should monitor for any mentions of your brand. Use Ahrefs Alerts to find if there are any:
- Negative reviews of your products / brand.
- Content scraped from your site.
- Other mentions of your brand that might hurt your reputation.
Research competitor’s backlinks
These days, building links is risky. It’s no longer links but quality brand mentions that matter. And analysing competitor’s backlinks can help you uncover:
- Quality opportunities to get your brand referenced
- Your competitor’s backlink strategies
Search engine watch ran a great tutorial on how to analyse competitor’s backlinks to find obtainable opportunities.
Local SEO
Set-up Geo Targeting in Google Webmasters Tools
If your site has a generic top-level domain, such as .com or .net but targets users in a particular country, you should define it in Google Webmasters Tools. This way you provide Google with an information to what audience you want your site to appear.
To set the country target:
- Log in to Your Google Webmaster Tools account
- Choose International Targeting section and click on the Country tab
- Check the Geographic target checkbox and choose country to target from the list.
Ps. If your site has a country-coded domain (i.e. .co.uk or .de), you don’t have to do anything. It is already associated with the domain’s geographic region.
Check if your directory listings have consistent NAP information
NAP (Name, Address, Phone) is the most important information to include in your local citations. Through it Google identifies your business and assigns the value of a citation to your local efforts.
But if you operate a business with many phone lines, addresses or even subbrands, it’s easy for your NAP information to go all over the place. This is also true if you have a number of people working on your directory listings. Therefore, take some time and go through your listings to check for NAP information consistency.
Ensure your information on G+ page is correct
Users can suggest changes to your G+ pages. And they often do. The same might go for your competitors.
I have seen hotels pages where someone suggested that they have closed down. Or changed their name and phone number.
Unfortunately even if your listing is verified, Google will often act on a suggestion and push the change live. This means that your local business page might contain misguiding information.
Review your pages and see if the Google’s team hasn’t updated them. If so, revert those changes.
Ask a customer for local review
Even a single review can mean a difference to your local rankings. Make an effort to ask one customer for a review. Do it daily or weekly until that review lands on your profile.
Then repeat.
You’ll be surprised how quickly you’ll gain plenty of reviews.
Improve your categories
Categories are one of the most important aspects of Local Search. Select a wrong category and you might not even show up in search engines at all.
Check and improve your categories and make them as relevant to your business as possible.
Optimise photos
Upload high-quality photos to spice your profile up. With our brains processing visual information 60000 times faster than words, it’s more important than ever that you present your company in the best visual way possible.
Update your listings in local directories
Getting listed in local directories is a sure-fire way to improve your local SEO.
At the same time, even a slightest name change, hyphen or abbreviation can make a difference between your listing help you in search and not.
Revisit your local listings and ensure all information is correct.
Create local landing pages
This is especially handy if your business operates in few locations. Create a landing page for each of your locations and submit them to Google Local to get them in front of relevant audience.
Creative commons image by Harry / Flickr
Last updated by at December 10, 2014.
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