Any blogger or business that relies on the Internet as a source of
revenue should spend some time, each week, on search optimization.
SEO
changes all the time. Bloggers and small businesses that want to stay
on top of search optimization need to keep tabs on search industry news,
latest techniques, analytics, and more.
Weekly SEO top 5
This SEO list for bloggers and small business will show you five things you should do at least once a week in order to ensure that your blog or website is driving as much Web traffic as possible.
In many cases, the SEO or search optimization related tasks mentioned in this list should be performed more than once a week.
1. Create content
Add content to your site at least once a week.
If you rely on revenue from the Internet then it is definitely
worthwhile creating content on a more regular basis, as a high
authority, highly ranked niche website can bring great ROI (Return on
Investment) online.
New content must be original and relevant
to your blog or business niche. In addition, you might consider doing
some SEO keyword research to further enhance the rankings of your
content in search.
2. Monitor analytics
Analytical data, provided by a service like Google analytics,
can tell you a great deal about how a blog or website performs. In
particular, it is important to pay close attention to the following
aspects:
- Overall traffic volumes: This metric can provide strong evidence for how well or poorly various marketing and SEO efforts are paying off.
- Traffic originating from organic search: This provides insight into how well your blog or website ranks in the SERPs( Search Engine Results Pages).
- Top content: This can tell you which posts bring the most traffic and allows you to tailor advertising or marketing on these pages, or work to help other pages move up in the rankings.
- Conversions: If you have set goals, analytics can provide data about how well your blog or site is converting traffic to meet predefined objectives, such as newsletter signups or product purchases.
- Bounce Rate: A high bounce rate may indicate poor or confusing web design, or poor quality content. A low bounce rate is a good indication that your blog or site is engaging readers well.
3. Check Webmaster Tools
While
analytics focuses on providing information about visitors and traffic,
Webmaster Tools provides information that Google knows about webpages,
site structure, content, and even you, as the author.
In particular, the following metrics are very useful:
- Crawl Errors under Health can indicate if Google is accessing your site correctly
- Malware under Health can alert you to the presence of malicious, foreign content or code
- Search queries under Traffic provides insight into what search keywords Google ranks your blog or site on
- HTML Improvements under Optimization highlights many of the most common webpage structural problems that can affect the user experience
- Author stats under Labs gives great insight into how your content is shared and viewed online even if it is published on a different domain
4. Check & interact on social networks
One of the most important metrics that Google uses to determine site and page rankings in search results is the number of natural backlinks a site or webpage has.
Social
marketing and interaction via the major social networks is the best way
to build up a following, trust and authority (collectively termed influence).
The more people talk about your content, blog or site, the higher
Google will rank that content, leading to additional exposure and
visibility in the search results.
Be careful to share content only
where appropriate and relevant to do so. Many social networks are
inundated with spam and don’t look kindly on “self promotion“. There is a comprehensive, and growing, list of social network bookmarks that are freely available on seo entrepreneur’s dashboard.
5. Check Google blogs and forums
Last,
but certainly not least, it is important to find and follow Google’s
major sources of news and information. Often, for example, Google
employees will forewarn the public of impending algorithm updates
through blogs or social media like Twitter.
If your blog or
website suddenly drops out of the search results, and you are already
aware that there was, say, a Panda algorithm refresh at the same time,
you can save yourself a lot of time and effort finding out what went
wrong, since you already know the likely culprit.
Do
you regularly work on SEO? What SEO tips and tricks can you suggest to
help other people stay on top of Google search results, drive quality
traffic and keep their businesses thriving online? Share your thoughts
and experiences in the comments or join me on Twitter, LinkedIn or
Google+ to continue the debate.
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