Entering 2022, brands and companies would want to retain and increase organic search presence. Search engine optimization, or SEO for brevity, can help in the purpose. However, even an SEO company advocates taking a proactive approach to optimizing one’s own website.
Here are some SEO wins that even a non-SEO can do.
1) Monitor and troubleshoot indexing
Being indexed, which means appearing on the results pages when triggered by the target keyword or phrase, is the crux of SEO. Some ways to ensure your website is indexed are sitemap.xml and robots.txt. Submitting the URL through Google Search Console for indexing is another way to ensure indexation.
Do a site search to determine how many of your pages are indexed. For example, type in site:https://www.mywebsite.com/ on Google and hit the search button. You’ll know how many pages are available on Google.
2) Determine non-performing content
Content is another critical element of SEO. Non-performing content are those pieces of content that do not rake in traffic or links. They do not help in conversions whatsoever too. These published content pieces may even hinder your website from attracting organic traffic.
Please note that Google can only crawl a specific number of pages on your website. This is also known as the crawl budget. Such is wasted if your site has too many non–performing pages in exchange for crawling the right pages.
Check each page on Ahrefs or ScreamingFrog to determine if it has backlinks. Delete pages with zero backlinks despite being published for several years. You may also update or repurpose the content to make it more relevant to new target keywords and, thus, target audiences.
3) Publish new blog posts
You need to keep the website relevant and fresh by publishing new content. What’s more, this provides an opportunity to increase ranking keywords.
Think of blogging as a digital marketing activity that attracts organic traffic. But the content has to resonate with your target audiences, answering relevant questions and solving their problems and pain points.
Blog post writing and publishing take time and resources. You can outsource to freelance writers or SEO services providers offering guest post writing. The provider may also publish the blog posts for you, but make sure you have clear branding guidelines on what content you want to be written for your website.
4) Implement internal linking
For each new web content or blog post published on your website, make sure that each has internal links where necessary. Internal links build a well-structured website while also connecting the pages. This is how internal links boost the site’s SEO performance, especially ranking.
If you have Yoast integrated into your content management system (CMS), it will suggest which pages to link to.
5) Optimize the images and other visuals
Google Images is getting more sophisticated. And why not? Google bots cannot crawl images, but they can read the title, caption, and alt text. Thus, visuals are highly valuable in driving traffic and rankings.
Adding visuals enhance the user content experience while browsing your website. For example, an infographic can explain a complex concept more clearly than thousands of words. As such, they connect to the visitors more personally than merely textual content.
So always remember to add a visual where necessary and optimize the said visual.
SEO is not without its challenges. However, there are SEO wins that even non-SEOs can implement to boost organic traffic. Take advantage of these wins to improve your website’s search performance.
