Every year we host the Forum, an annual customer event where we share insight into the latest SEO, digital marketing, and web design and development trends. Americaneagle.com SEO experts Tony Stehn and Dan Drucker presented “Foundational SEO Tips that Yield Quick Results.” Here is a recap of their presentation, which explores the following foundational SEO elements in detail:
- Google Search Console
- SEO trust factors
- Site structure
- Technical content fixes
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Intro to Google Search Console
Google Search Console (GSC) is a free tool offered by Google that allows you to monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your website’s presence in Google Search results. If Google can’t properly crawl your site, it won’t be able to index new pages or detect changes to old web pages and consider the content for ranking purposes. Using this tool will give you a report on multiple things: Total Crawl Request, Total Download Size, Average Response Time, Host Status, Crawl Responses, File Type, Crawl Purpose, and Googlebot Type. All of these factors give you a clear view of how Google is crawling your site and what aspects of your site need to be changed in order to be more successful.
Indexing
Google Search Console can also be used to understand how many pages on your site Google is crawling, which will allow you to see which pages are not being indexed and why they are not being indexed. You can create a summary report and perform live tests that will give you a clear picture of what is and isn’t being indexed by Google.
Rankings
You can also use this tool to measure performance and rankings. You will have access to a full performance summary report that includes impressions, clicks, average CTR, and average position. This report can be filtered for even more insights and to isolate specific issues that are happening within your site.
SEO Trust Factors
There are multiple SEO credibility indicators, including https, backlinks, privacy policy, NAP, and onsite and offsite factors. All of these are taken into consideration by Google to determine the credibility of your business.
HTTPS
HTTPS stands for “hypertext transfer protocol secure” and is the secure version of HTTP. This is a significant factor as Google (and tech-savvy customers) favor secure websites, so if your website isn’t secure, it won’t rank on Google and therefore, be indexed.
Privacy Policy
Having a privacy policy is required for Google Analytics and helps build trust between not only your site and the user but also between your site and Google.
Backlinks
Backlinks are treated as a “stamp of approval” between two websites by Google. In SEO, backlinks are links form external websites to your own. Backlinks are seen as a sign of credibility by users and Google, particularly if the site linking to yours has authority. On the other hand, toxic backlinks, which appear unnatural or come from sites with poor reputations, can significantly hurt your website’s SEO.
NAP
NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone and this is an important ranking factor for local SEO. Ensuring that your contact information is accurate and consistent across the board can boost your rankings on Google’s results pages.
Offsite
Offsite tactics include claiming and optimizing business listings across the web, including Google Business Profile, Bing Places for Business, Yelp, Facebook, and industry-specific directories. It’s important to not only claim these pages but to make them as user-friendly as possible and keep them updated on all fronts.
Onsite
Finally, connecting your location pages to corresponding Google listings will allow Google to better understand the connections between your business and profiles. It’s also important to make sure all the phone numbers on your website are clickable. Make sure the footers of your website include a contact email, address, privacy policy, and social links. If you include social icons, ensure that the social profiles they link to are built out and credible.
Site Structure
Site structure is the organization of your website and its content. Good site structure makes it easier for users to navigate and search engines to crawl, digest, and index the information. When it comes to site structure, it’s important to have a strategy so that when new content is implemented, it’s organized. This also reduces internal content competition and improves the UX (user experience).
Site structure is the organization of your website and its content. Good site structure makes it easier for users to navigate and search engines to crawl, digest, and index the information. When it comes to site structure, it’s important to have a strategy so that when new content is implemented, it’s organized. This also reduces internal content competition and improves the UX (user experience).
Action Items
In order to improve your site structure, there are three main actions that can be taken.
- The first is to evaluate and improve the categories on your site. Make sure that there is a balance between the size of categories and supporting content and that no category is more than twice the size of any other category. It’s also important to leverage silos and hubs for a better overall structure.
- The second is to improve the internal linking structure on your site. This includes creating links to the most important content on the site and leveraging links to connect relevant content.
- The third is to complete a content clean-up, which can be done by removing old content and setting up re-directs in order to ensure that your content is clean and updated.
Technical Content Fixes
Improving technical content on your website is one of the easiest ways to improve SEO value and keyword performance. There are multiple places on and off a website where content comes into play, but below are a few places to start your technical content-fixing journey:
- Remove duplicate content and obsolete pages
- Ensure title tags are keyword-optimized
- Write unique, customer-focused meta descriptions
- Use keyword-optimized headings
- Include alt text for all images
Improve Your SEO Today with an SEO Optimization Agency
Improving your search engine optimization strategy may feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to. At Americaneagle.com, we are experts are at helping customers develop data-driven strategies that truly move the needle forward. Through in-depth keyword research, an SEO audit, consulting, and more, we have the tools to ensure your digital success. Contact us today to learn more about how our SEO team can help you.
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