A thorough SEO audit of a site will cover all aspects that could be optimised and improved and can take considerable time to implement. If you have the time and money you can really improve your site and in turn, its positions in Google when your target audience is searching. However, if you are looking to get a couple of quick wins to boost your traffic we may have the answer for you here.
Over the years we have used several techniques in getting the best SEO results for our clients and we thought we’d share some of our secrets to let you know a little more about getting those quick wins that can help here and now.
First of all, we would always recommend a visual check of the site. It’s probably common sense but we would always look through a site and see if there were any obvious issues that should be dealt with before moving on.
Next up you should do a bit of keyword research to find out what your target audience is searching for that could lead them to you.
Assuming you have your Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools set up we can work out what terms are being searched for on the pages that draw the most traffic on your site. First, click on Acquisition > Source/Median and then click google/organic in the primary data. Then you can click on Secondary Dimension then Landing Page under Behaviour.
You will then have the top landing pages that your visitors arrive at from their search. Having this information allows us to work out the keywords that led them there and the intent behind the searches. For example, if you had a site selling Wellington Boots and your top landing page was for cheap children’s wellington boots you can surmise that keywords centred around ‘cheap children’s wellington boots’ are driving the most traffic to your site.
We can then check out Google Webmaster Tools to find out exactly what the people behind your traffic had been searching for. Just click on Search Traffic > Search Queries and you will get your results.
If you then click on Top Pages and the URLs that are provided you will get a list of keywords. Using Google’s Keyword Planner you can then find other similar keywords, their search volume and also the rate of competition. This is a great tool that is well worth playing about but can also produce some great keywords that you might not even have considered.
Now we have a list of potential keywords what do we do with them? Here’s where another couple of great tools come into play, using Accuranker we can track our keyword positions and generate reports and using Serp Insights we can see who is ranking where for each term as well as find out click through rate, cost per click info, the domain authority, page authority, referring domains and social signals giving you an idea of what it takes to jump up the rankings.
Now we started this by telling you that you could get some quick wins and a great way of doing that is targeting pages you have sitting on the second page of Google, using the techniques we have just told you about to get some valuable information and then using it to push those pages onto the first.
By mapping your keywords against the pages you think are only a few tweaks away from becoming competitive you can then start optimising the page to compete and, by using this information, start moving up the rankings.
It goes without saying that these quick wins are nice and can produce some good results but we wouldn’t recommend relying solely on this tactic if you want to compete on a long term basis across the board.
If you have any questions regarding the suggestions mentioned in this post or regarding larger-scale SEO tactics don’t hesitate to get in touch with us by clicking the button below or calling us on 0141 332 0063.