Measuring impact is a big challenge in SEO. When rules of the game are put in place, we configure and manipulate our touchstones in the internet to match the optimal reach of the algorithms to ensure we max-out our reachable revenues. Once these rules change, we scramble to find a baseline and start over again. Queue that circus music.
Today you will read a list of steadfast SEO recommendations. This list has produced wins for a number of companies that had an impact and were able to recognize and quantify results. All may be applicable to your line of work but several should ultimately be tailored to your specific needs.
1. Structured Data Matters
Structured data is important because it tells crawlers what matters on your pages. Here is a Structured Data guide to give you a bit of clarity about this.
- Here are a few additional steps to help you get a good start:
- Follow Google’s recommendations on SD
- Try the SD testing tool
Snooping is a good thing – look at your competitor’s pages and structured data info to take note of what is successful and what is bad.
2. Page Freshness
Sounds like something out of an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bellaire but it’s real – Google actually measures page freshness by multiple factors. Start by simply having a date on a page to indicate to Google how fresh your page is. This is applicable to blogs, news and directly relevant for product pages related to dates.
From a user perspective, page freshness is important because of relevance. When you return search results with old dates, they are usually considered less relevant than if they had a recent date unless you are specifically looking for aged information. Crawlers are aware of this.
3. Internal Linking – It Still Matters
The right balance of internal linking does not have a formula. Not having a saturated page with links everywhere can make a positive impact. It might be tempting to link to all categories from your homepage trying to provide a user- friendly experience or the fastest way for crawlers to discover your pages. But this will also impact the amount of equity the page is sending to all the pages it links with. If all of your category pages are crawled and indexed, it would be more advantageous to link from the homepage only to specific categories or services.
Balancing internal linking is definitely an important ranking factor because it will dictate how users and crawlers discover your pages. If you are revisiting your site’s internal linking, here is a helpful guide on the subject that covers all the various aspects of balancing internal linking for SEO.
4. Title Tags
Changing your title tags and finding out if they made a positive impact can be a difficult task. How you change your title will depend on your page type, so there is no absolute rule on what to change a title to. In my client’s case, we’ve positively tested the following changes:
Include the year in the title, which also signals freshness.
Here is an example:
Original title: “Book a Trip to Hawaii Now | [brand name]”
Changed title: “Hawaii Trips 2019/2010 | Book Now | [brand name]”
Include the lowest product price of the page, for example:
Original title: “Cheap Flights to Hawaii – [brand name]”
Changed title: “Cheap Flight to Hawaii from $400 – [brand name]”
What you change your title to will depend on many factors, so a year or price might not help in your case. However, if some of your category pages have seasonal products or your industry competes heavily on prices, adding the year, date or a price in the title could work.
5. Obtain Backlinks
Creative pages tend to obtain external links — this should not be shocking. Exciting articles or campaigns related to your business end up gaining quite a lot of coverage from different sources and, subsequently, external links. BOOM.
Constructing successful and creative pages is not easy and does not necessarily guarantee an increase of backlinks, but it’s one of the safest ways to obtain organic backlinks. To keep this as inexpensive as possible, find an in-house superstar to create these masterpieces. Stay on trend. Get group feedback before you post. Keep on top of the-know by posting often.