ANNUAL CHECKUP
We all know the importance of personal annual health checkups. The same sage advice applies to companies. With the holiday season wrapping up, now’s a good time to catch a breath as well as to reassess the health of the current SEO framework in preparation for the new year and the anticipation of even more customers and business.
WHAT TO CHECK
There are three major areas that need to be looked at. They are page speed, security, and priorities.
An earlier article discussed how mobile search has overtaken desktop and the need for web sites to be fast, effective and succinct. Having a meeting with the marketing team to look into and discuss ways in which to make the company website slimmer could also result in a faster and healthier experience for customers.
With all of today’s mounting publicity about hackers and scammers, security is even more paramount today among digital users. It would be prudent for companies to re-evaluate their websites and security on ways in which to further improve customer security. If stronger and more efficient methods are discovered and employed, customers should be alerted to this as it would help to build their confidence in the organization and future business as well.
The Pareto principle, better known as the 80-20 rule, has withstood the test of time since it came out in 1895. In fact, it’s as important today as it was back then. When marketers analyze their web sites, they need to consider what 20% of improvement and effort could titivate their web sites by 80% today.
SOME IDEAS
Here are five ideas on invoking the 80-20 rule. The first goes back to being succinct in deference to mobile searchers. Doing so, however, also makes it even more important that this truncated content is relevant. Being aware of customer interest and focus and addressing them with relevant content will also generate more backlinks from satisfied viewers.
With Thanksgiving 2019 gone, throw out the stuffing, including keyword stuffing. Google now recognizes that games and efforts would be better spent on content relevant to the customer.
SEO 101 is still relevant today. With good content, customers will remain on the site. IMPACT, a digital consulting firm, says a page with relevant content will retain a visitor’s interest for an average of 3 minutes and 11 seconds. That dwell time is what counts and Google recognizes that.
Use and leverage tools to diagnose and track metrics. Some, like Google Analytics, are even free. Being free also brings some disadvantages, including the fact that its terminology may be a challenge to many marketers. Advanced features can also be challenging.
ANOTHER FREEBIE
Also free is Google Search Console or GSC. Like a cuff meter measures blood pressure, GSC can not only measure a site’s SEO but also detect any possible security issues on potentially hacked pages. It will also check a site to determine the ease of crawling it as well as any site or URL errors.
Probably the best part of correcting the URL errors and updating the sitemap is that in doing this, companies can also advise Google how they’d like their site crawled and viewed.
