Whenever a new clients calls me, I usually do a quick SEO site audit while I’m on the phone with them. I usually start with the very basics and more often than not, there’s a lot of room for improvement right off the bat.
So rather than calling me for some SEO consulting (seriously?) run through these five quick SEO checks and the answer to improving your search results might be right under your nose.
1. Page Title Tags
Make sure they are relevant to the content of the page.
Make sure they are different for each page.
Make sure they match the page title on the page.
Make sure you have the most important keywords at the start of the tag.
2. Keyword friendly URLs.
Make sure you’re URL structure is clear for both users and search engines.
Does the path make sense or are your users and the search engine spiders going to get lost, pack their bags and leave? Chances are if it has a whole bunch of numbers and letters that makes no sense, then you should think about changing them.
3. Internal Linking.
Do you have any? I presume the content on your site’s pages is based on a particular subject? Therefore it’s highly likely that it would be useful and relevant to link to other pages within the copy to provide a superior user experience. Using keyword specific anchor text is a great way to show the search engines what pages you consider important.
4. Alt Tags
About 50% of the sites I see have not touched the alt attribute for images. Use it, it helps your site visitors get a better site experience and it’s one more option for you to show the search engines what your content is all about.
5. Sitemaps.
How many times do you need a map when you’re going some place you’ve never been before? Probably quite a few, so help out the search engine spiders by offering them a map and they’ll be more than happy to crawl your content. Leave them hanging and they’ll probably pass you right by.
If you’re reading this and are thinking, “ah, I’ve done all this” just take a quick look over the site again as I bet there will be room for more optimisation if you look closely enough.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Gareth, thanks for the tips, I’m reviewing my site now.
Your last paragraph rings so true:
“If you’re reading this and are thinking, “ah, I’ve done all this” just take a quick look over the site again as I bet there will be room for more optimisation if you look closely enough.”
Even old experienced SEOs miss things all the time (like me), so it’s always a great idea to go back through at least once to make sure nothing got missed. (A checklist can be handy for that). Thanks for the reminder.
Oh, and one more thing, Gareth – a good thing to do while going back through looking for things that were missed – is to also check for old broken links, so they can be fixed while you’re at it.
Hi Donna, thanks so much for visiting. Bring your friends next time! And, yes, you’re right about broken links.