You are a business owner or designer and have a website, but nobody is visiting it That is a pretty frustrating feeling, yet it happens to the best of us.
We find that most people build stunning websites but then they completely neglect their SEO which is not enough. Your website needs to be listed with search engines to attract organic search traffic. Specifically, you want Google search traffic because Google accounts for nearly 78% of all organic search traffic according to Smart Insights.
In this article, we are going to describe to you the best quick SEO fixes that can boost your search rankings on Google.
These will work on other search engines as well, but focusing on Google is the way to win because once you get through the nitty gritty – your SEO work will last forever. Let us get started.
Quick SEO Fixes Create An Optimised Website Which Earns More Traffic
On the surface, the goal of SEO is to improve your website’s rankings in search results. But beyond that, the purpose of achieving high rankings is to attract more traffic — and ideally, to convert that traffic into customers and leads.
10 Quick SEO Fixes for Website Optimisation
Standing out on Google and ranking higher will drive more traffic to your website which is done through these quick SEO fixes. According to Moz, on average, 71.33% of searches result in a page one organic click. Pages two and three get only 5.59% of the clicks. On the first page alone, the first 5 results account for 67.60% of all the clicks.
Therefore by implementing these quick SEO fixes, they work as a long-term strategy rather than a short-term plan, to quickly improve your rankings for your website.
We suggest starting by analysing which tools and resources you have available to help you with the process. There are different platforms to assist with improving your SEO, such as SEMrush, Moz, RankMath, and HubSpot. These tools can help you determine how to improve your website, and how to select and optimise for your targeted keywords. These tools allow you to test your website for free, while others have a monthly subscription service to receive more advanced reporting and analytics.
Here are six quick SEO fixes you can start implementing now to improve your overall search rankings.
1. Improve Technical Errors
We have yet to come across a website that does not have technical errors. To make these quick SEO fixes, SEMrush is brilliant for running website audits and reviewing technical errors and then breaking them down into three categories: errors, warnings, and notices.
Errors tend to be the higher-priority issues that should be addressed first when you are making technical updates. Examples of these errors could include 404 errors, duplicate content issues, sitemap inconsistencies, and redirect changes and loops. SEMrush has collected data on more than 100,000 websites and 450 million pages to determine the most common issues. Findings included that:
- 50 percent of websites had duplicate errors.
- 45 percent of websites had missing alt attributes.
- 10 percent of websites had broken internal images.
We also commonly see technical errors including missing XML sitemaps, missing or incorrect robots, and incorrect rel=canonical issues. Addressing these errors will fix your overall site audit score and help you rank higher for intended search terms.
2. Ensure Website Security
Website security influences SEO hugely. In fact, Google states that if a website does not have an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate then Google will mark it as insecure, which could result in a large amount of traffic lost from your website.
Over time, research has shown that HTTPS sites are favored in search engine rankings over HTTP websites if the two websites have similar content. If you have not already, consider updating your website to include an SSL certificate.
3. Update On-Page SEO
Quick SEO fixes for on-page SEO are the most essential ways to ensure that search engines know how to rank your website. They act as a road map for search engines to select which search terms are most relevant to your web page’s content and match search results accordingly.
To start optimising, each webpage should focus on one targeted long-tail keyword search term. Once you select your keyword (or search term), you will want to ensure that it is in the following locations on your website:
- Page URL
- Page title
- Alt text
- Meta description
- H1 (heading)
- Body copy
If you want guidance for quick SEO fixes then contact us and our SEO experts will get you started.
4. Check Website Vitals
Your website vitals are critical, just like technical errors because they influence your website’s rankings. Google says that website vitals will have an impact on search engine rankings.
You might be wondering what website vitals are. We are glad you asked because they are website components such as page load time, visual stability, and interactivity. You can measure these attributes using a variety of tools but one of our favourites is SEMrush. This tool gives you a high-level overview of how your website is performing for performance, mobility, SEO, and security.
Based on your results, you can dig deeper into what areas of your website require improvement.
5. Mobile Friendly
The majority of the time we search on a mobile device versus a desktop.
Search engines acknowledge this and reward websites that are mobile-friendly. SEMrush confirms that more than half of all searches today are conducted via mobile, and those numbers are growing.
If your website is not already, you will want to choose a mobile-friendly configuration for quick SEO fixes. In addition, you want to ensure that your webpages are ranking for keywords that people typically use during a mobile search, as well as a desktop search.
6. Avoid Duplicate Content
As you add new content to your website, avoid duplicating content or using the same copy on more than one page. These are quick SEO fixes that can make a huge difference. Search engines think that multiple pages containing the same content are trying to rank higher by reusing the same content.
Moz states when there are multiple pieces of, as Google calls it, ‘appreciably similar’ content in more than one location on the Internet, it can be difficult for search engines to decide which version is more relevant to a given search query.
Therefore, when creating an article avoid posting the same content on another page within your website for quick SEO fixes to work. You should also revise outdated content, rather than set up a new webpage that could be flagged as duplicate content. If you need to create a webpage, set up a 301 redirect from the old page to the new one, or set up a Nofollow code to block pages from being indexed. When you use both of these tactics, search engines will know which webpage you prefer to rank for within the search results.
By reviewing your website and making the appropriate updates, you will begin to see the results pay off with search engines. Although, remember: You should think of your SEO strategy as a long-term plan, not a short-term fix.
7. Gain backlinks On Relevant Sites
There are different ways to get backlinks. However, one of the best ways and quick SEO fixes is through guest blogging.
It is how Bryan Harris at Okdork increased his traffic by over 500%. By making guest appearances on reputable websites, you will get an opportunity to shine in several ways while building your overall SEO efforts. Guest posting is media you earn, which is a valuable marketing channel from our quick SEO fixes list.
True SEO success comes from blogging on different websites because reputable backlinks will keep your website relevant to search engines for years to come. Start working on your backlinks straight after optimising your website for mobile.
8. Add Related Suggestions
Your quick SEO fixes will pay off if you can gain returning visitors to really push search rankings up. Remarketing is an excellent tool to use. However, there is no point in remarketing to customers who already found their way through your conversion funnel.
We recommend using related suggestions to come into play. For example, when you are done reading a particular article like this one, you should receive other recommended content below that, there are even more recommendations in the form of ads.
These recommendations are not static and change based on the visitor and page content. Adding these increases your click-through rate. There is a direct correlation between SEO position and click-through rate.It is an even greater increase for long-tail keywords, which are driven by related content suggestions. Try it now by installing the Yet Another Related Posts Plugin for WordPress.
Using this plugin, you can change the layout and look of your related posts. Also, A/B tests a variety of looks and number of posts until you find one that works for your site.
7. Conduct An SEO Audit
To know exactly how your SEO is running and what quick SEO fixes you can make, you should conduct an SEO audit. Our SEO team can assist you with this. Google Analytics reports are helpful, but they do not show the full story. There are ways to improve your SEO Copywriting through tools like SEMrush. You can instantly analyse your organic keywords, organic monthly traffic, domain score, and backlinks.
While all the information from the overview is important, do not stop there. Click “Site Audit” under “SEO Analyser” in the left sidebar. This will take you to a page that shows you your on-page and off-page scores. You can also examine the health of your website which outline quick SEO fixes like a warning, errors, recommendations, website speed, and more.
Site speed is essential to your SEO health, as every additional 0.5s it takes to load your site increases the % of visitors that will leave before viewing any content.
This information will show you how your quick SEO fixes are paying off.
8. Edit And Proofread
Typos are considered unprofessional, and no matter how much you try to edit your own work it is important to get a pair of fresh eyes on your content before you publish. Misspellings and misinformation affect consumer trust. However, they are quick SEO fixes. Consumer trust is not what it once was, with politics and media at war
Proofreading will help correct grammatical errors, remove typos, double-check facts and increase conversions. Moreover, quick SEO fixes like removing passive voice and other grammatical errors also helps your site’s readability.
9. Optimise Your Visuals
Visual content will make or break your search rankings, which is why you should focus on these quick SEO fixes. This is why 55% of B2C content marketers focus on creating more visual content.
Visual content makes your pages more appealing to readers, so they will spend more time on your site. These quick SEO fixes also mean users will be more likely to click and share this content. In fact, infographics are liked and shared three times more than other types of content.
Better yet, Google has image search which means your visual content is accessible to more searches. Try focus your visual content on pictures, infographics, charts, or videos, because users retain the information better. And now with schema integrated into website content, search engines are becoming more interactive. Perform a Google search for a popular topic like “best TV shows of 2017” and all you will see is visual content.
Both of these rows of images for top stories and frequently mentioned TV shows are carousels. That gives users two visual, horizontal searches that take up the entire screen. These are more likely to be used than any text-based answer.
If you want your pages to be seen on today’s Internet, they need visual content.
10. Create A Physical Site Map
A sitemap makes it easier to visualise your website. It is as simple as writing out pages on index cards and pinning them to a bulletin map. If you want to see what your digital sitemap looks like, type in /sitemap.xml after your website URL.
This is the Midnight Monkey Sitemap. However, we constantly update our sitemap because our content changes which form part of our quick SEO fixes. Check out Google’s support page for more information about sitemaps.
And don’t forget to submit your website to Bing, too. It is easy to only focus on Google and forget that Microsoft’s search engine powers Cortana and Yahoo search, among others.
You can submit your sitemap to Bing here. These quick SEO fixes are necessary for search crawlers to start indexing your page. This should be done anytime you make a change to your site, especially after fixing errors.
Fix Errors And Fly With SEO
We see too many websites that do not make these quick SEO fixes, yet with simple adjustments, you can make progress in traffic through organic search. Google and its search traffic are the holy grail of all web-related businesses. If you want to be found online, Google is the way to do it. Whether you are at the top or the bottom, there is always room for improvement.
The internet is constantly changing, and you must remain nimble to keep up. Contact us to get you there!
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