Consider this as a scenario. A prospective customer or partner comes to you but your website is not, at the moment, what it used to be just a couple of weeks back. Nevertheless, you engage him or her, hoping all this while you would be able to do something about it by the time the deal comes close to being close. You have little to no time and want to add immediate value to your website, what do you do? Enter SEO Urgent-action Plan of Attack, a diagnostic process that helps you clear the glitches in a matter of hours. Here are the Top 10 Things you should consider. Quick, the clock is ticking.
Size Up Your Competition
It’s always best to start with knowing what exactly you are up against and sizing up your competitors’ websites is the best way to do that. Pinpoint on what pages are being indexed, how they go about their on-page SEO, their link profile and acquisition strategies, schema mark-ups and so on can take you a long way in a short period of time.
Perform On-page SEO
You need to dial up your website’s On-page SEO several notches above; it is one of the most important initial steps to take while implementing an urgent action plan of attack. Optimized page title, Meta descriptions, keywords used adequately around the page, internal links, and so on can guarantee some quick SEO wins. On-page SEO is all-inclusive in each of our Monthly SEO Packs.
Re-evaluate Your Website’s Link Profile
Bad links are not only bad for the rep but also for the rankings, which is why it is of utmost importance that you re-evaluate your website’s overall link profile and make sure there are no discrepancies. If you do find some and would like not associate with them, use the disavow tool at the earliest. Check Search Console to ensure there aren’t penalties you need to address.
Re-evaluate Your Keyword Targeting Strategy
The one thing that may impact your site’s overall ranking is the keywords you choose to rank your pages for. Those low-volume, low-competition may be easy to rank but they in the grand scheme of things they don’t do you a huge favour. You need to fish in the wider seas and catch bigger fish in large numbers to drive home sizeable profit. We can help you with Keyword Research and Analysis.
Diagnose HTML or CSS Issues
They very pages you are trying to rank may be interfering with crawling and indexing because of critical HTML or CSS issues and thereby leading to pages either being not ranked at all or poorly ranked by Google. You need to locate and fix these issues as soon as possible for Google to find any real value in these pages and rank them as per merit.
Homepage is IMPORTANT
More often than not, website owners fixate on SEO for ‘big money’ pages, so much so that they forget that issues on the home page can lead to a drop in rankings. Speed up your home page’s load-time, look for any JavaScript or coding issues, make your phone number instantly clickable; Google needs to be very clear about what exactly is the home page about in order to rank it higher.
Measure Up Conversion Data
If you’ve had increased conversions in the past then there is a way to manually evaluate the data and see what worked for you and have that re-implemented or executed in an even better manner. Google Analytics reports from that time frame can help you pinpoint what exactly worked for you. While it is an elaborated process, fixing some key issues can help you in a short span of time.
Streamline Your URL Structure
Whatever be your website’s genre, a streamlined and easily understandable URL structure can positively impact your website’s rankings and that too in a short period of time. More so, an easy-to-read, non-confusing URL slug can make it easy Google to understand what the page is all about and for the users who may come across your website in the search results, prompting an instant click.
Core Web Vitals are Vital
In non-jargon terms, issues such as page load-time (LCP), ease of interaction (CLS), and visual stability of a page (FID) play a huge role in how Google evaluates your pages and ranks them. The better optimized each one of the three elements are, the better it is for your website. So make sure they are in accordance with Google’s expectations.
Check for Duplicate Content
It is an extremely common issue that can virtually ghost your website on search engines. First, make sure no two pages on your website have the same content. Second, make sure no other website has the page with same content as yours. If you content has been stolen, you can file a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) with the other website’s host and have the content removed.
