SEO is an important part of every business and how it works online. Unfortunately, SEO changes constantly and companies need to adapt in order for you to be able to continue to use their practices. Even with years of experience, it can be difficult to fully understand the inner workings of search engine algorithms. This often leads to company executives missing crucial opportunities to improve their SEO practices. In this article, we discuss SEO tips for leaders to help them improve their SEO practices and close the gaps that let opportunities slip away.
Use Google Search Console
It is nearly impossible to successfully manage your company's SEO without a way of easily tracking performance metrics and identifying the appropriate keywords for your business. Fortunately, nearly every search engine has a built-in system to make this process easier. For Google, you can use Google Search Console to manage the company's SEO.
Google Search Console is all of the built-in tools they need to manage your company's SEO. It can provide you with detailed reports on which keywords are most appropriate for your company. You can also use it to research your competitors to see what works for them.
Perhaps the most useful way that Google Search Console can help you is by identifying problems that prevent Google's crawler algorithm from indexing certain parts of the website. If the crawling algorithm experiences any problems, it is programmed to bypass the issue entirely and move on to a new page. This can lead to serious problems in indexing your website. Use Google Search Console to identify these problems and address them as soon as possible.
Give Crawlerbots a Roadmap
Every time you put new content on your website, search engines need to index it for it to be included in your ranking score. Companies do this on a regular basis to make sure that their score stays as up-to-date as possible. You can send a request to Google to have new pages indexed as soon as they are available. However, Google will do this automatically for your entire website periodically.
While it is a good thing that Google will try to re-index pages that already exist, it is not the most effective way to manage your SEO. This is because every website has pages that should not be indexed. They do not contain content that is meant for the public or for search engines. Even more important, you may want to prevent older pages from being indexed as a part of your score if you significantly change how you manage SEO. There is a way to do this using the robots.txt file on your website.
When search engines go to index websites, the first thing they look for is a robots file. You can use the robots file to tell the search engine specifically where to go. Plan a path through your website that highlights all of the best pages that you want to have indexed and avoids the pages that you do not. This will help refine your score and can significantly improve it if you have a lot of pages with sub-standard SEO or are not meant for indexing.
Embrace Secure Domains
Search engines are taking security into account as it grades websites. If your website does not have a secure domain, it is likely to be ranked lower than websites that do. It is easy to tell if your website is secure or not. If the URL begins with HTTP, then it is an unsecured URL. There is a secure version that you can use instead, HTTPS, which creates an encrypted connection between the two computer systems so that any information that you send or receive is protected.
Switching to a secure domain means that it is encrypted when the data is sent. That means that it will be much harder for anyone to intercept and steal any information that you send to and from the website. For users, this means heightened security and less of a worry about malware. Search engines are becoming increasingly focused on providing a better experience for users. This includes improving security wherever possible.
Technical Performance is Essential
Businesses focus a lot on trying to put new content on their website as a means of improving their SEO. However, there are technical issues they should focus on to make sure that customers are getting the best performance possible. Search engines take into account how websites perform in different situations.
For example, mobile devices are the primary method of shopping online now. If your website is not performing well on mobile devices, search engines will lower your ranking and focus on pages that perform better, especially for those mobile devices. That way, they can ensure that mobile users are getting the best experience possible.
Take the time to check the technical performance of your website to ensure that nothing is preventing you from ranking higher. Your pages should be optimized for mobile devices and as many other devices as possible. That means pages are designed to be used well on mobile devices, they load quickly, and they use reasonable amounts of data. Fixing these types of issues is one of the most overlooked ways of improving SEO rankings.
Start a Partnership to Improve SEO
Making improvements to your companies SEO ranking is not something you have to do alone. Companies are rediscovering the joys of working with agencies who can help them not only improve their SEO but help them maintain high scores. At KitelyTech, our teams are up-to-date on the latest changes to the major search engines and how to keep your scores high. Call us at (800) 274 2908 to learn more about how we can help you resolve issues related to your company's SEO scores.
