One day, you're at the top of the search results, and the next, your competitor publishes something new that takes you down a notch. Achieving success in SEO requires a holistic approach; addressing all the elements of your website that can affect your SEO performance. A technical audit should be thorough and take weeks to complete, depending on the site problem. If you have a large website with thousands of pages of content, it's definitely worth doing a content audit.
A content audit will help you identify which pages are performing well and which are underperforming. By auditing your content, you can “eliminate content that generates irrelevant traffic and then focus on optimizing the content that is likely to generate the best results for your business”. After performing a technical audit, a content audit, or both, you'll have a full understanding of everything that needs to be corrected to rank well in organic search. Improving your technical SEO requires a holistic approach; addressing just one item on this list won't really do any good.
You have to consider everything if you want your website to work. The same is true with technical SEO. You must have all of these elements right to have an optimized website. After correcting all the errors, this company recorded a 1.100% increase in traffic.
Keyword research is an integral part of the SEO process. Without keyword research, you'll only speculate about how users are searching for your company, products, or services. Keyword research tools reveal how many users search for a particular term, how difficult it is to position it, and what related terms people also use to find information online. Finally, keyword research helps you discover geospecific keywords to help you localize your SEO strategy.
Keyword research helps you discover which keywords are most valuable to you. Make sure it has an SEO-friendly URL, uses navigation routes and that it is more complete than any other page on the subject (be sure to check out the competitors' pages that are in the top 10 positions). You want to write content that people can interact with and share (and that Google indexes and rewards with great rankings). If you haven't already, be sure to read Ron Lieback's 47 tips for mastering SEO writing.
OK, you can't control the rankings of Google or any search engine. In order to appear in search results, the pages on your site must first be “indexed” by search engines. Indexing basically means that a search engine has crawled a page and recorded its content. Sometimes search engines can rank a page even if they can't crawl it, but this is much rarer.
If you crawled the site with a recommended SEO tool (step 1), it should highlight any major issues that could prevent your site from being indexed. Here are the first seven steps you should take when launching a new website to ensure that it's designed from the start to rank for your target keywords and attract as much traffic as possible from organic search: 1) Perform a Technical Audit: A technical audit should be thorough and take weeks to complete, depending on the site problem. 2) Do a Content Audit: A content audit will help you identify which pages are performing well and which are underperforming. 3) Research Keywords: Keyword research is an integral part of the SEO process; without keyword research, you'll only speculate about how users are searching for your company, products or services.
4) Optimize Your Content: Make sure it has an SEO-friendly URL, uses navigation routes and that it is more complete than any other page on the subject (be sure to check out the competitors' pages that are in the top 10 positions). 5) Check Indexing: In order to appear in search results, the pages on your site must first be “indexed” by search engines; if you crawled the site with a recommended SEO tool (step 1), it should highlight any major issues that could prevent your site from being indexed. 6) Monitor Performance: Monitor performance regularly; track organic traffic over time and compare it against competitors' websites to see how they're doing compared to yours. 7) Keep Learning: Read Ron Lieback's 47 tips for mastering SEO writing; keep learning about SEO best practices so that you can stay ahead of the competition.
If you've created your website and implemented these seven steps described above, you're well on your way to success in SEO. SEO is a long-term process and the results are rarely immediate, but the first steps you take after launching a new website can have a big impact on its potential to rank in Google search based on your target keywords and start to attract traffic, leads and sales.
