If you want your website to be an engagement magnet and convert visitors into customers, web content is an absolute must-have. But what if you’ve written decent web copy only for your site to land outside the coveted first page of Google’s SERP? That’s a sign that your web content, well-written or otherwise, isn’t SEO optimized, but there’s no need to worry.
As unlikely as it might sound, you can transform your website into a lean, mean, search engine-optimized machine that’s purpose-built for a high SERP ranking. We’re here to tell you how, so sit back, relax, and learn how professional SEO services get the job done.
Table of Contents
Keep the Content Flowing
If you have a blog section on your website, you likely already know how important it is to maintain a steady flow of content. But here’s the thing, web content is no different - it requires regular updating, too, albeit less frequently than a blog. For example, have you used any statistics in your content that might be out of date? You might want to double-check them and update accordingly, or hire expert SEO services to do it for you.
Now, as far as SEO is concerned, you can get quite a bit of mileage just by refreshing your content. Algorithms change, and as recently as March 2024, Google turned the world of SEO on its head with its core algorithm update and new emphasis on EEAT guidelines. As a result, it might be a good idea to go through your web content and update anything that stands out. Do this anywhere from once a month to every quarter, and you’ll be as good as gold.
Having trouble optimizing your content for SERP rankings? Read this blog post about unlocking your SEO potential!
Focus on Keyword Research
This goes for refreshing old content and adding new content in equal measure, but it’s quite common for people to misunderstand what it entails. Back in the days of the Wild Wild Web, keyword stuffing reigned supreme, but now it does more harm than good. It’s best to inject keywords strategically while keeping your content informational and prioritizing informativeness.
With that said, keywords are still essential to your SEO strategy. Any professional SEO services you work with will start here, and you should do the same! Here are some tips to help you with keyword research.
Keyword Research Tips
- Start With Brainstorming: Think about your niche, then try to come up with topics related to that niche. For example, if you run a bakery, topics like “cakes,” “birthdays,” and “weddings” come to mind. These aren’t keywords, but they will help you find relevant ones later on.
- Identify Search Intent: Are you targeting users with informational queries, or those conducting commercial investigation? If it’s the former, you’ll emphasize “how,” “what,” and “why” keyphrases. For the latter, keywords that include “best,” “top,” and “review” might work best. Other search intents come with their own set of optimal keywords, so choose carefully!
- Use Keyword Research Tools: Google Keyword Planner is great because you get information straight from the source, but many SEO services swear by Ahrefs. Whatever you choose, just enter your topic and sort by search intent to get a list of ideal keywords.
Fine-Tune Your Technical SEO
Google’s not just trying to connect users to websites with the most keywords. It also wants to ensure a high-quality experience, one that gives them the information they’re looking for as effectively and conveniently as possible. That’s where on-page SEO comes in, but what exactly does the term mean?
What is Technical SEO?
In a nutshell, technical SEO refers to aspects of your site that relate to search engine crawling and indexing. It focuses on technical areas of your site that play a huge role in determining your ranking on the SERP. You can also look at this in the context of user satisfaction - if they’re not getting a good experience out of your website, your chances of ranking highly decrease drastically. Here are three aspects of technical SEO you should focus on:
- Loading Times: According to Google’s own data, 40% of users will exit a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load, so a slow site will send your bounce rate skyrocketing and wreck your SEO in the process.
- Site Architecture: It’s essential to create a site that’s easy to navigate. Don’t just take it from us, take it from the 94% of people that say it’s the most important feature of all! Search engines need logical, easily navigable site architecture as well to contextualize your content and index it accordingly.
- Crawlability and Indexability: These terms refer to a search engine’s ability to crawl and index your web pages, and site architecture is just one aspect of them. No matter how great your web content is, it won’t make a difference if your sitemap, internal links, and Robots.txt files aren’t up to scratch.
Tips for Optimizing Loading Times
- Adjust Image Size/Format: If your images are too large, use a tool to compress them. As for the format, JPEGs work best for detailed images, while PNGs are suited to simpler visuals.
- Enable Browser Caching: Browser caches can store instructions and resources for returning visitors. Enable caching for static resources like images and strings of code, reducing server strain and decreasing response times in the process.
- Minify Your Code: Your source code might have unnecessary characters (whitespace, newline characters, etc) that increase file size. Use like UglifyJS or CSSNano to minify it and watch your loading times disappear.
How to Optimize Site Architecture
- Add Internal Links: Internal links help search engines rank your pages more effectively. Ideally, each page should link to several other pages and vice versa. The goal here is to make it easier to get from point A to point B, but make sure you’re linking to relevant web content.
- Include a Navigation Menu: A navigation menu organizes the links to each web page, making it a fundamental component of your site architecture. There are a few types of navigation menus you could try, like dropdown, hamburger, and horizontal. If you’re struggling to pick one, agencies providing search engine optimization services can help.
- Use Tools: Tools like SiteAudit can help you see if any of your pages require more than 3 clicks to reach. Pinpoint critical issues and deal with them accordingly by adding internal links and tweaking your navigation menu.
Strategies for Optimizing Crawlability/Indexability
- Send an XML Sitemap to Search Engines: An XML sitemap will help search engines understand your site’s layout and make crawling and indexing considerably easier.
- Optimize Robots.txt Files: Certain pages, such as admin pages and internal search results, don’t need to be indexed by search engines. By using the Robots.txt file to disallow search engines from crawling these pages, you can help search engines focus their resources on web content that’s more relevant and boost the efficiency of the crawl process.
- Remove Broken Links: Broken links can make it a lot harder for crawlers to navigate your site and index your web content. That’s why expert seo services prioritize getting rid of them. You can use a tool to find them and remove them if you’d rather handle this on your own!
Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly
Practically everyone uses their mobile phones to access the internet. That’s 95.8%, to be precise, so it’s absolutely critical to make your website mobile-friendly. Not only will this improve the user experience, it also improves SEO because search engines assess mobile-friendliness during the indexing process. How can you make your site better for mobile users, you ask?
Here’s How You Can Make it Happen
- Use Responsive Design: Responsive design allows your site to adjust its size according to the user’s device and screen size. Dual column formats get condensed into a single column, and navigation menus are collapsed, just to name a couple changes. Try using website builders like Wix or Squarespace to get a responsive layout.
- Get Rid of Pop-Ups: Pop-ups can sometimes be useful, especially considering they can convert 4%of site visitors that read them. But at the same time, they can be a nightmare to deal with on mobile and can increase your bounce rate, ruining your SEO in the process.
- Optimize Fonts: This is another aspect of decreasing bounce rate. Use sans-serif fonts if possible, and make sure they’re large enough to read. When in doubt, just check your website on a mobile phone to get an idea of the user experience.
Need some more help making your web content mobile-friendly? Check out this blog post on web copywriting for mobile!
We’re Your Partner in SEO Success
At Content Development Pros, we understand that writing web copy is part of a larger process of getting you the highest possible rank on the SERP. That’s why we integrate SEO services throughout every step of the web content development journey, and our holistic approach has yielded tremendous results over the past 15 years.
There’s only so much you can do on your own, especially when it comes to the more technical aspects of SEO. That’s why our web content team doesn’t just focus on the words, it also focuses on researching keywords, coming up with topic clusters, and doing anything else they can to get you the results you want.
Contact CDP Today!
Give us a shout at (877) 897-1725 to learn more about our SEO services.