5 SEO Tweaks You Can Make When Updating Your Website

Every day we work with bloggers, marketing coordinators, and receptionists, providing effective SEO tweaks they can do themselves when tasked with the job of keeping their company’s website current and updated.

Companies are constantly updating website pages, adding new products, blogging about events, and even running social media. While they have an intimate knowledge of their brand and products as well as excellent writing skills and aesthetic prowess, there are still some simple SEO tweaks to be made to further improve the website and user experience.

That’s why we’ve put together this quick article with 5 simple tips for better SEO to make your work stand out and get even more visibility. It’s these simple SEO tweaks you can integrate into your work to help you get ahead!

Write Unique and Interesting Titles, Descriptions and URLs

Many website platforms such as WordPress use dashboards that make it easy to add a new page – much like working in a Word Document. However, when you add a new page the Meta Title and Meta Descriptions are often auto-generated based on a template. This is ok but you could do better! What do we mean?

You can SEO tweak your Meta Title and Description tags, since they are what gets shown in Search Results most of the time. It is crucial to make these unique and interesting in order to get searchers to click on your website rather than a competitor’s website.

Meta Title: Make it interesting, capture the searcher’s attention and make sure it includes the main keyword or topic of the page at the beginning.

Meta Description: Describe what the page is about and the benefits the person will get by visiting the page. You should also take the opportunity to add your brand name, city (if you are local) and maybe your phone number. Don’t forget to restate your target keyword here.

URL: Many websites will create a URL for your page based on the Title, especially in WordPress. You can easily override this before you publish the page to make the URL more concise and reflective of what is on the page.

The problem with using auto-generated meta tags is that they don’t give the best first impression to the public and don’t usually give the Search Engine the information to base a query referral on. Based on your experience with using the Internet what type of Search Results do you tend to click on?

In our article on Local Optimization we give tips for writing awesome Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions.

Write Search Engine and Reader Friendly Content

When writing a new page or blog post, pick one central theme or idea and make sure you incorporate that theme (which can be bases on the target “keyword”) naturally throughout the text. Try using some of these SEO content writing tips:

• Use different variations of the keyword in the text and even go to Google Search, start typing your keyword and use their AutoSuggest feature to see what other related topics come up.
• Try to incorporate the keyword into the heading and at the beginning of the text, as well as your meta title and description, as outlined in #1 above.
• As you write optimized content don’t forget about your reader. Write for the customer in customer lingo but refer back to proper industry standard for credibility.
• When writing new content or if using industry references or instructions, write in your own words and check that you have not copied any content. Try using a tool like Copyscape.

For more SEO tweaks and tips on writing great content check out our Guide to Writing Search Engine Friendly Content and Keyword Insights page.

Don’t upload just any image – take the time to prepare the image.

Image files take up a huge amount of space and time! More Bytes slow down your load time. Here’s what we suggest:

1. Rename each image file to describe what it is. The camera assigned JPG name does no one any good – even you when looking for just the right picture. Search engines can better understand images based on a file name.
2. Crop and resize images to fit your layout. Avoid any stretching or shrinking that can make your site look unprofessional.
3. Compress before loading the image to your website. The less bytes the faster your site will load.
4. Don’t forget to add the Image Alt Tag, which is what is shown when the image is broken or won’t load. Image alt tags also help Search Engines understand the image.

For more SEO tweaks including a detailed how-to on image file set up, check out our Optimization Image Tips.

Keep your website running fast.

A slow site can annoy your visitors to the point of abandonment! Slow websites also take longer for the Search Engines to crawl, acting as an inhibitor to all of your pages being properly viewed and indexed.

If your site takes more than 2 seconds to load, you are probably losing potential sales! You need to improve your site load time as soon as possible. Check your speed with our helpful tools or find out more about improving site speed here.

There are many factors that can be causing the slow load times. Here are three easy SEO tweaks you can do right away:

1. We just mentioned images affect site speed and how you need to decrease image file size for optimization.
2. Check your site for JavaScript. It does slow down load times. Try to find alternatives.
3. Sometimes it’s simply an inadequate service provider. Check for a new host provider that can handle your content delivery more efficiently.

Finally, get trained help when you need it.

1st on the List has a great Resources section on our site that is sure to guide you in many of the areas you need. And there are thousands of other SEO tweaks to bee found on other resource sites.

However, sometimes it just takes a bit of coaching to get through the coding and uploading and writing and updating to make a difference. That’s where we come in. If you are having problems larger than you can handle, we can offer you several options:

1. We can provide SEO content training for your staff members responsible for keeping your website updated.
2. We can perform a SEO Site Audit to determine just what is missing on your site.
3. We can provide an SEO quote for the cost of ongoing SEO on your website.

For an initial consultation to determine your needs call us at 1-888-262-6687 or just drop us a note at [email protected]a.

Chris Genge

Chris Genge is the Founder of 1st on the List. For over 25 years he helped hundreds of companies across North America with his technical expertise and practical upfront approach to Search Optimization and Digital Marketing. Chris was a true pioneer in his field and mastered the skill of helping clients set goals and achieve results all while fostering growth and teamwork amongst his incredible team of SEO experts and Web Designers located in Abbotsford and throughout British Columbia. Learn more about Chris's legacy.

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