Every spring you hear that this is the time to clean up your home, your desk, and even your car. Have you ever considered spring cleaning the SEO for your business? Though you may have an SEO strategy in place, sometimes it may need some polishing up, as it can be easy to get off-target during the year. The same concepts apply to spring cleaning your SEO as they do for anything else: cleaning up clutter, optimizing it for better use, and getting rid of what you are no longer using.
What should you be looking for and asking yourself when spring cleaning your SEO?
- Is your web site mobile responsive? Throughout the past year, you have probably made a number of changes on your web site, especially if your web site has a blog. Have you looked at your web site on a mobile device recently to make sure the design and content are still responsive? Remember that a mobile responsive web site impacts SEO and Google search results, such as which web sites display at the top of search results. Even though you should review your web site on a mobile device any time you make a change on your web site, it’s still a good idea to review it periodically as well.
- Is your web site utilizing a modern platform? Because web technology and SEO are ever-changing, make sure the platform that your web site is built on is utilizing current technology on both the front end and the back end. An older platform might not only affect the speed of your web site, but search engines can detect if your web site is using older technology and could in turn negatively impact your SEO.
- Is your web site utilizing video content? Search engines love video content, and with YouTube being one of the largest search engines in the world, you should definitely consider adding some video content to your web site if you haven’t already. When a search is performed in Google, YouTube videos display in the search results. Therefore, it’s vital that the description of your video contain keywords and be optimized for SEO.
- Does your web site have standard SEO elements built into the back end? Examples of standard SEO elements include friendly URLs that are descriptive of your web pages, relevant and descriptive blog titles, site maps so your web site is indexed properly, and ALT attributes for images on your web site.
- Is your web site optimized for local SEO? If your business relies on patients who live in the local area, then it’s important that your web site display in local search results. Therefore, make sure your business name, address, and phone number are displayed prominently on your web site – this allows the search engines to find your web site easily. Online reviews of your business (both positive and negative reviews) can also affect your local SEO results, so make sure you address reviews left by others in a timely manner.
- Does your web site contain too many keywords? In the earlier days of online marketing and web site design, keyword stuffing (when a web page contains numerous instances of the same keyword) was a common practice. However, search engines do not see keyword stuffing as a best practice. Instead, search engines prefer that keywords be used more wisely in web content.
- Have best practices for on-site SEO and off-site SEO been implemented? On-site SEO is the process of optimizing web sites for speed, reliability, security, and relevancy. It is the essential foundation for having your web site properly indexed and ranked by Google. Off-site SEO is the process of optimizing web sites that involves linking from external web sites to your web site. It helps give your business credibility and is an important factor in determining how well your web site ranks in search engines. Some best practices you can implement include adding more pages to your web site, including blog posts, and inserting internal links to other pages on your web site.
After reviewing this checklist, is it time to maybe set new goals and revise your SEO strategy? For example, you might want to rewrite some of the content on your web site to better utilize keywords and start adding blog posts on a regular basis. Maybe you are not satisfied with how some content displays on mobile devices – this would be a great time to make some changes to your web site. It could also be time to switch over to a new, modern web site platform to improve the speed of your web site and improve your SEO.
If you would like to learn more about how we utilize SEO to help you grow your business, please feel free to contact us at [email protected].
