Improving
SEO performance
Learn SEO in five steps
Step five - improvements
A smart approach to SEO won’t focus on SEO in isolation but will use each channel within the wider digital strategy to improve overall SEO performance:
Integrating other digital channels
to improve SEO performance
How SEO can be improved by:
Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads can bring additional highly relevant and targeted traffic to your website for a lower cost than traditional Google search ads. This medium provides the perfect avenue for promoting new top-of-funnel SEO content marketing pieces. When new content is published on a site, it will take time to tank in Google Search results.
Facebook ads can provide a large amount of initial traffic, at a low cost and with the possibility of building backlinks (if website owners/content publishers are targeted with ads).
Once website visitors have viewed one piece of top-of-funnel content, retargeting ads can be based around promoting mid to lower-level content (which users will eventually become interested in as they continue on their purchasing journey). By using this method, not only will SEO content provide value and guide users throughout each stage of their journey but the website will be able to reach a greater number of potential customers through paid Facebook ads.
This Facebook traffic will be highly interested in the products/content of the website (hence why they clicked on the ad) and therefore the user experience signals such as time spent on site, bounce rate, total pages viewed etc are likely to be positive. This provides Google with an initial indication as to the content quality and may result in the web page ranking higher within the search results due to usefulness indicators.
Sometimes people will see an ad on Facebook and, rather than clicking, will choose to search Google for the brand name first. This may be due to the user wanting to know what additional products the brand sells (i.e. they see an ad for TV’s but want to know if the brand also sells audio equipment). This can lead to an increase in branded searches providing Google with an indication as to the strength of the brand (Google often gives priority to larger brands over smaller websites/businesses).
Google Ads
Similar to Facebook Ads, Google Ads can attract highly relevant traffic to a site which will likely provide positive user experience signals due to being engaged with the content (hence clicking on an ad). Google Ads can not only be used to promote content pieces (i.e. incentivising users to click by offering value, rather than a hard sales push) but can also be used to retarget past website visitors to make them aware of newly released content pieces.
Google ads can also provide data and insights into which headlines and copy perform the best (i.e. attracting the most clicks and conversions). Similar copy can be used to create engaging meta titles and descriptions for each web page and SEO content pages. A higher click-through rate for organic pages can help those pages rank higher in future.
Finding keywords which result in the greatest number of conversions (i.e. high commercial-intent keywords) can help act as a guide for creating SEO content aimed at bottom-of-funnel users and searches. You can also view the search terms report within the ads interface to develop further SEO content ideas.
A/B split testing different Google ad headlines and descriptions can help find winning headlines which can be used for future SEO content article titles.
Social Media
Having a strong Social Media presence may not be a direct ranking signal for SEO but some claim Google does take it into consideration as it shows a brand is active within the digital community. Social profiles can also help boost the trustworthiness of a website as it shows a personal and more relatable side to the business rather than simply a corporate website.
Social profiles (and resulting media types – such as YouTube videos) can also show within Google search results when users are searching for keywords relevant to your brand. This helps your brand take up more real estate (i.e. space) within the search results.
Facebook, and other platforms, can act as their own search engine. People search for content through the use of keywords and hashtags. When sharing SEO content across Social channels (i.e. by creating a page post), keep this in mind and use hashtags as people may come across your content when searching within the platform and can be directed back to your website.
Social Media can also provide a free organic medium to promote newly released website content. Posts promoting SEO content can be structured in a way that promotes engagement such as comments and shares which can help the Social algorithm extend the organic reach. This means not only do your page followers view the content but so do other Social users who may be interested.
Social can also be a good place to create collaborations and PR partnerships with other relevant websites as a means of building backlinks and a stream of referral traffic.
eDM’s
eDM’s also provide a platform for promoting new content and attracting relevant engaged users back to a website. By maintaining email list cleanliness (e.g. removing unengaged subscribers), you can ensure those who do visit your website will spend a decent amount of time engaging with the content and other pages on the site (i.e. positive user experience signals).
Analytics
Analytics help determine user experience metrics and can be used to find strong performing content pieces. Lessons from strong content (e.g. page structure/word count, use of media, topic choice etc) can be used to help improve underperforming content. You can also find pages which used to attract a large amount of traffic which has now dropped off.
Most likely, competitors have created similar pages with better content. By updating and improving your existing pages, you’re able to gain additional traffic without needing to start from scratch.
Analytics also provides interest and demographic data as well as affinity and in-market audience insights. This can provide further insight into who is visiting your website which impacts on your writing style, tone, focus etc.
You can also use the internal site search function within Analytics to see if people are searching for content which isn’t yet on your website.
Improving keywords:
Not all keywords need to be researched and created from scratch. You may already be ranking for certain keywords, however your website may be ranking on the later pages of Google.
You can find these keywords/search terms in Search Console by reviewing the Performance tab and sorting search terms by positions. Keywords ranking in positions 10 – 20 will be on page two (and further back) on Google. You can create new content or optimise existing content around these already ranking keywords to boost traffic.
You can also use Search Console to help improve the overall performance of SEO and content pieces.
Find technical issues in the ‘Enhancements’ section
This can help highlight any technical SEO issues such as slow site speed, crawling issues, poorly performing URL’s etc.
Compare date ranges to find negative differences
In the Performance report, in date range, select compare and choose last 3 months. Under queries, click on filter and select ‘difference’. Click on the Equals button and select smaller than 0 which will show any pages which have had a drop in traffic over the last 3 months. Sort by last column, previous 3 months impressions.
Once you’ve found problematic pages you can focus on optimising the page more, adding new content, keeping it relevant to bring impressions back up.
Track progress of SEO keyword strategies
You can export search queries and set up a comparison between how much traffic each keyword/query is receiving each month to track SEO progress.
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Search Console can also help to determine the quality of meta titles and descriptions. If certain pages are appearing within the search results (i.e. impressions) but are receiving few clicks, this can indicate an unappealing meta description which offers little reason for users to click through.
Ongoing SEO and content maintenance:
SEO is an ongoing process. Creating new content and building backlinks are the two biggest and most influential activities required for ensuring organic traffic continues to grow for a website. Running a monthly technical audit helps ensure no new technical issues have appeared on the website (e.g. after adding or deleting pages).
Siteliner is a useful tool which can help scan your website for broken links, poor redirects, loading time, technical issues etc which can form part of your ongoing SEO maintenance efforts.
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Google places an emphasis on websites with fresh and updated content. Animalz Revive is an online tool which searches your website for older outdated content which can either be updated/revived or removed. Removing old content helps achieve a simpler site architecture and has been shown to improve rankings and visitors.
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Ongoing content audits can help identify under-performing pages which can either be improved or deleted. Google prefers websites to have simple site architectures with fewer pages so removing any dead weight can help improve rankings.
Caution
It’s important to remember, some content may have been created with the purpose of generating backlinks (rather than traffic for the website). Assessing page quality based purely on traffic can result in removing important link-worthy content.
Older content can also be revived by adding title modifiers to keep articles relevant in the current time period (such as ‘article title in 2022’).
By using the SEMRush Content Analyser tool, you can review content on your website via a content audit. By connecting Google Analytics and Search Console, you can also review metrics such as time on page, bounce rate etc). Reports in this section include:
- Rewrite or remove (content older than 24 months)
- Need to update (pages older than 6 months with at least 15 page views)
- Quick review (content from the last 6 months with at least 150 page views)
- Poor content (pages with less than 200 words)
You can ‘create your own set’ which allows you to set your own parameters and metrics to track (e.g. pages with x number of shares, bounce rate, time on page etc). You can find poorly performing pages and send these through the on-page SEO checker to find ways to improve the content on those pages.
Webris have put together a useful automated content audit spreadsheet which uses Supermetrics and Ahrefs to analyse existing website content. This spreadsheet provides insights in to:
- Which pages can be left as is (receiving organic traffic with a low bounce rate and a high conversion rate
- Those pages which need a quality review (receiving organic traffic but have a high bounce rate and a low conversion rate)
- Those pages that should be deleted (minimal organic traffic and no backlinks thereby providing little value)
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Aleyda Solis, an international SEO specialist/consultant, has created an excellent roadmap if you would like to learn more about specialized aspects of SEO.
The roadmap provides resources to learn more about keyword research, mobile optimisation, link building, site migrations, international SEO, use of SEO tools etc.
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This concludes step five of learning SEO (improving SEO performance). In the next section (Facebook Ads), we’ll cover how you can start using paid mediums to attract even more traffic to your website.
Learn digital marketing in five steps
