Competition for businesses is becoming saturated, regardless of the industry. At the same time, business strategies across the globe are changing at lightning speed. Conventional strategies aimed at print and electronic media. However, as the exploitation of paper decreases, use of the internet is constantly on the rise.
Businesses have a world of social media channels to run, and keep them updated. Each social media platform comes with its own set of rules, regulations and demands customized SEO strategy. It could be overwhelming for some. It can create a hodge-podge of strategies, leaving you overwhelmed.
However, here is a few steps you can take to execute an effective SEO clean up strategy.
Work Strategically
Often new businesses and even old ones take up several social platforms to generate a following and increase traffic on their websites. However, this could pose a problem for them. Just consider social media. We have Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tik Tok, among others. Each have a similar idea: socialization, but follow different means. Facebook has a wider spectrum and allows users to write, post long videos, start a Live, share every day stories etc. Instagram on the other hand, is highly visual. Its primary function is to allow users to share their photos and videos that should not exceed a few minutes.
A business needs to understand each social media channel and draft a plan that is most efficient for each platform. You cannot post long blogs on Instagram as a caption, but can share your campaign brochures there with brief description. Therefore, establish a strategy that would not devastate you. Take things step by step.
Clean up the Structure of your Website
Your website is an essential part of your business. Its structure can make your business or break it. Consider the order of elements the visitors will most likely interact with and go on from there.
Site menu
The menu is the central part of your website. Do not bombard it with options. Keep it limited, focused to make it easy for navigation. Cluttered menu can be unappealing to first time visitors.
Content
Content is the way of communicating with the people. They assess your content that helps them understand your business goals. Create an overview of the content and categorize it. Split pages into categories such as contact, services, blogs and products.
Splitting the content into pages makes your website orderly, and does not fatigue the eyes. People can easily jump on to the content they are interested in without having to go through each and every element of your website’s content.
What does your data reveal?
Data hardly lies. Make sure your site structure clean-up is driven by data. Assess your performance through your data to get an idea about your website.
Look at the traffic generated by each page, and its root. Also, assess how that traffic behaves when visitors access the website. Then establish whether visitors are able to reach the most important part of your website.
Let the cleaning begin!
After you have understood and compartmentalized your data start cleaning up. Sort the webpages into categories and organize on the base of importance, performance and relevance.
Decide what your page is missing and how the existing content can be enhanced and improved for a better user experience.
Identify and remove Useless Links
What are bad links?
Bad or useless links refer to such link scheme that manipulates links to your sites or outgoing links from the website. Essentially, it violates Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
When link building, we want to stay on top of the websites that are linking to your website. Certain links can get you in trouble and instead of generating traffic can put you at the end of the search engine list.
How to remove bad links
Start by identifying the bad links that are harming your website. Afterwards, search for the websites that are hosting those links and ask them to remove the links directly. If they do not respond, you can disavow the URLs of the domains that are linked to your website. Simply make a request to Google to ignore those links to your website.
Optimize the Visual Data
Visuals are a serene way of attracting visitors. The visual aspect of a website is just as important as the information being shared. Images can boost your SEO as well.
Compress the images on the page to improve the load speed. Load speed needs to be minimum for a seamless interaction. Anything that will take more than 3 seconds to load should be thrown into the recycle bin.
Eliminate Duplication of Meta Data
Your unique identity is what helps you achieve competitive advantage. Therefore, each title and meta data should be unique. Increasing pages might sometimes result in repetitive meta descriptions. It can impact your site quality without you even realizing it.
When conducting the cleanup, get rid of the duplicate data. You can create an excel sheet and mention all these duplicates, and start brainstorming for new titles and descriptions. It can be an arduous task, but can help your SEO.
Pay attention to title tags. Make them original and do not exceed 65 characters. It should reflect the search intent, and end with your brand name. Meta descriptions might not have such a big impact as the title tags. But they do have an impact on the CTR (Click Through Rates) to your website. Meta descriptions therefore, should feature the themes of your keywords, and provide a brief overview of your page within 155 characters
Conclusion
Now that we have established the importance and ways to have a productive clean up SEO blueprint, just remember to work on it. Apply on your website for enhanced SEO rankings. Do not make it a one-time thing. Make sure to keep on visiting this strategy to keep up to date, and eliminate any mistakes that you might have likely made with time.
