SEO Step 1: What is SEO?
Imagine that a search engine (Google) assigns 100 points to each website. If the website has five pages, each page gets 20 points. If it has 100 pages, each page gets one point.
When someone searches for a “keyword,” the search engine finds all the pages that match those keywords and sorts all the hits by score. The top ten pages are displayed on the first page.
The search engine then tracks a lot of other numbers – how many people clicked on which results, how much time they spent on that site, how many pages they viewed, how many – and what kind of – other sites link to that page, the type of content on the page, etc. The search engine is constantly adjusting the rating of each page.
Now think about these questions…
- Q1: What would happen to your 100 points if your site has five very good pages, but twenty pages without much value. How would a low average score per page affect the good pages?
- Q2: What would happen if ten pages on your site targeted the same search term. How could the search engine pick a page with so much competition from your own site?
- Q3: What if many of the pages on your site were duplicates – pages that link to the same content in one way or another – such as a blog post that contains the same excerpt and link in archives by tags or authors?
You get the point, right?
The quality of each page is more important than the quantity. Shallow content, duplication, broken pages and internal fights (for a single keyword) are not good.
“SEO is not a one-time project. It’s an ongoing process that delivers more the longer you do it.”
_ Sam Underwood
Just to be clear – search engines do not really start with a 100-point checkout for each site – but this line of thinking helps us improve a site quickly. So let us start with that.
The first step to improving your website’s search engine optimization is to properly assess the current situation.
There are many tools – most of them paid – that can check your website and give you suggestions. I want to share with you a simple method that you can use to find out what is working on your website and what is not.
Here is what I want you to do right now.
- Open Google Analytics and go to “Behavior – Website Content – All Pages.” You will see your top pages and their page views, etc.
- Change the date range to the last six months – or a year if you like. The list will update as a result.
- Scroll to the bottom of the grid where you will see the total number of pages. Change the number of “Show rows” so that it is greater than the total number of pages you have. This will load all the pages on your site into one long list.
- Observe the list. What do you see? What do you learn? Which pages are working? How long do visitors stay on a page?
- Now scroll up and find the “Export” option – just above the date selector. Export the results to an Excel file or a Google Sheet, depending on your preference.
- add a new column after the URL – call it “Action”.
- Go through your list of pages and decide if you want to keep, delete or improve each item. You can also choose to “redirect” to another page if it is a duplicate. Indicate your decision in the “Action” column.
- Make sure you save this file! We will continue to work with it!
Once you have edited the list, you will have a list of low traffic / non-functioning pages that you want to delete or improve. And a list of pages that are working that you want to keep as they are. Or maybe they work, but you see room for improvement, so you marked them “Improve”.
You can also go to Acquisition – Search Console – Landing Pages in Google Analytics and find a list of pages that show up in search results. You may not see all of the pages on your site here – and this can also give you a clue as to which pages are on the site but not showing up in search results!
Take the time to check this list over and over again. It is a treasure trove of insights!
Next time we will talk about your sitemap.
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