What do you do if your search engine optimization performance needs improvement?

1 Audit your website

The first step is to conduct a comprehensive SEO audit of your website, which involves checking various technical, content, and user experience aspects that affect your ranking and traffic. You can use various tools, such as Google Search Console, Google Analytics, or third-party SEO software, to scan your website and identify any errors, warnings, or opportunities for improvement. Some of the common issues to look for are broken links, duplicate content, slow loading speed, mobile-friendliness, crawlability, indexability, and security.

3 Optimize your content

The third step is to optimize your content, which is the most important factor for your SEO performance. Your content should be original, informative, engaging, and useful for your audience. It should also match the search intent and expectations of your keywords. You need to optimize your content for both humans and search engines, which means using your keywords naturally and strategically in your titles, headings, body, meta tags, images, and links. You should also update your content regularly and remove any outdated or irrelevant information.

4 Build your backlinks

The fourth step is to build your backlinks, which are the links from other websites that point to your website. Backlinks are a signal of trust and authority for search engines, and they can boost your ranking and traffic. However, not all backlinks are created equal, and you need to focus on quality over quantity. You should aim to get backlinks from relevant, reputable, and authoritative websites that have a high domain authority and a low spam score. You can use tools, such as Moz Link Explorer, Ahrefs Backlink Checker, or third-party backlink analysis tools, to evaluate your backlink profile and find opportunities for improvement.

5 Monitor your performance

The fifth step is to monitor your performance, which involves tracking and measuring the results of your SEO efforts. You need to use various metrics, such as ranking, traffic, conversions, bounce rate, dwell time, and click-through rate, to evaluate how well your website is performing in organic search results. You can use tools, such as Google Search Console, Google Analytics, or third-party SEO reporting tools, to collect and analyze your data and see how you are progressing towards your goals. You should also compare your performance with your competitors and industry benchmarks.

6 Test and adjust your strategy

The final step is to test and adjust your strategy, which involves experimenting with different SEO techniques and tactics and seeing what works best for your website and audience. You need to be flexible and adaptable to the changing trends and algorithms of search engines, and always look for ways to improve your SEO performance. You can use tools, such as Google Optimize, Google Tag Manager, or third-party SEO testing tools, to run and manage different tests, such as A/B testing, multivariate testing, or split testing, and see how they affect your SEO performance. You should also seek feedback from your audience and stakeholders and incorporate their suggestions into your strategy.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?