Start the year off with your website in great shape and enjoy the benefits of your great setup throughout 2015.
Start at the very beginning
Ensure you’ve got the basic covered. Here’s what you need:
- Google Analytics
- Google Webmaster Tools
- SEO tools for WordPress like Yoast
- An XML Sitemap: Create a Robots.txt file and submit it to Google and Bing Webmaster tools
- A mobile friendly website
If it’s built right, they’ll come
Maintain a solid foundation by throughly checking your basic site infrastructure.
- Check site indexation using Webmaster Tools, or do a site search
- Ensure your titles are unique and optimised
- Make sure descriptions are on brand
- Include key USPs and CTAs to entice click through
- Sanity check navigation and usability
- Validate your HTML
- Optimise site speed and loading time
- For paginated content use this: use rel=”next” and rel=”prev”
- Ensure menus and headings are crawlable
- International audience? Check that the correct version of your site is being delivered to them
Gain momentum with great content
Follow these best practises to get the most from your content.
- Identify duplicate copy
- Ensure there’s sufficient content on all pages
- Establish whether it offers value and serves users first
- Make images and videos more discoverable
- Update headlines
- Check that you have more content than ads
- Ensure your site facilities easy sharing
- Mark up your content using rich snippets and social meta tags
Study your site’s architecture
Running a few basic checks and fixes makes a world of difference to usability
- Ensure your URL are descriptive and the hierarchy of your site is easy to understand
- Remember that shorter URLs are better for visibility and readability.
- Use heading tags to segment content. Make sue there’s an H1 for every page
- Ensure internal page links and breadcrumbs use natural and informative anchor text
Fine-tune for maximum performance
Service your website to increase stability and keep it running smoothly.
- Correct any 404/500 errors
- Ensure any temporary 302 redirects are not meant to be permanent 301 redirects
- Find broken links using Screaming Frog or Xenu Link Sieuth.
- Make sure that your backlink profile is squeaky clean to avoid being hit by Penguin
- Have a storefront? Use Google Places for Business to verify your physical location and secure your spot on Google Maps
Start discovering
Use the data at your fingertips for great insights into harnessing your site’s potential.
- Use Majestic SEO for insight into computer inbound strategies
- Stay updated on Google Knowledge Graph and Google Answer Box developments
- If you’re still focusing primarily on traffic, stop!
Manage your brand
Extend your website’s reach by reaching out to your audience.
- Claim or create social profiles for your brand
Sit back and relax but not for too long
After an initial run through, check the health of your website regularly to keep it running smoothly. Use tools like:
- Majestic SEO
- Screaming Frog
- Deep Crawl
- W3C Validator Tool
Don’t forget off-page optimisation
Spend time constructing a solid, multi-channel, promotional plan. If you’re not sure where to start, read these articles by our digital experts:
- Integrated Digital Marketing – Setting Achievable Goals
- Digital Marketing in 2015 – What to Expect
- A Step by Step Guide to creating an Effective Content Marketing Strategy
- Reasons why your Content Marketing Campaign Failed
- Social Media News jacking – 5 Easy Steps
- Digital PR and it’s Tactics
Source from Mediavision
