SEO Snack: Week of March 24th

Quick Week Summary

This past week was heavy with working to get everything set up for the next month/quarter (and trying not to think about the snow we got or the snow we’re getting this week…). What does setting all this up mean?? Well it starts with reviewing our quarterly plan meeting notes for what we discussed for clients overall, then finishing up our quarterly SEO content planning docs, setting up the Google docs, doing some keyword research for each piece of content (webpage, blog, resource, etc.) that we’re planning on creating, and then reviewing how the past quarter went one last time. A good amount but something that gives us good insight into how things went, how they could have been better, and where we can improve.

Week Insights

1. What I struggled with: Time Crunch

Not a bad thing by any means but with having some client onboardings wrapping up and a new quarterly process in place, we were a bit down to the wire in terms of getting all of the strategy and items needed for next month/quarter all done. My best guess is we’ll have this tightened up this next quarter.

2. What was a bigger headache than it needed to be: Global Wiget Mix-Up

This was just a mistake that took way more time than it should have. With creating a new page, I wanted to use a global widget in our WordPress but was unsure how unlinking impacted everything else. Let’s just say I spent a good hour “researching” (and eventually needing to ask someone) when in reality if I just would’ve clicked that unlink button, I would have realized that it only unlinks that specific widget, not all of them.

3. What went well: “New” Client Onboarding

This is a client we’ve had for a long time but the services we provided them were a bit different than our “normal” SEO services. What we will be doing that is “new” is a lot more content-focused (rather than just technical SEO) and it’s a good chunk of work.

Overall, we had to go in and identify top impact URLs for them, strategize keywords for them, come up with topic clusters for the loads of content they already have, and a good amount of other tasks. Overall, the work and the meeting went really well and it should be a fun/solid project to work on.

4. What to look out for or tune into: Links Being Less Important?

Read a quick article (linked in resources down below) this past week on how it seems (somewhat confirmed, somewhat hearsay) that Google is starting to lower the importance of links or at least they’re saying that there are other areas to spend your time more effectively. Does this mean they aren’t important? Probably not, they just are pushing for better overall SEO practices.

5. What weird things happened: GA4 Real-Time Reporting Bug

This was an interesting little “bug” that took place this past week that I’m sure had a lot of folks scratching their heads. I know we had one client we were comparing to different GA4 accounts (same website though) to see if the accuracy was improving and let’s just say we were a bit baffled.

Key Takeaways

1. Don’t Change Up At First “Change”

Confusing title of a takeaway probably… but to give you some insight, let’s use the GA4 Real-Time “bug” as an example. If somehow this real-time report was part of your KPIs (maybe you have to constantly track it for some odd reason or I don’t know, report when things are really low in a day) then this small bug could have you making strategy changes when you shouldn’t be.

What I’m trying to say is, that it is so easy to see analytics, data, articles, news, tweets, stories, etc., and take it all to be true. Then you end up changing your strategy quickly based on whatever it is not knowing fully if the data you’re seeing is accurate/true or if the news you just read is real or fake.

This is why I’m a huge advocate for not jumping to quickly to make changes. If you’re seeing a constant, then it likely is time, but if it’s just a one-off or hype piece, give it some time. There’s nothing wrong with being a tad later than the early adopters. 2. Update/Merge Old Content

Old content can be a headache at times, especially if you have a lot of it. To me, it’s important to either regularly update this old content (good SEO benefits here as well), delete it, or merge it to more recent pieces. Think if you’re searching for an answer to a question on someone’s website and you find a blog with the answer, problem is, the blog is 7 years old. You ask yourself if that answer is still true…

Maybe a bad example but you get the idea. Overall it’ll help users locate correct answers and also have positive SEO impact.

2. More Traffic ≠ Good Traffic

I had a brief discussion with a client (and also my pops) on this subject. It might be a bit early level education for some folks but still something I think is important to highlight.

Now more traffic is a good thing but you have to also look at what that traffic is doing. Are they staying on the site? Are they converting? If they’re jumping ship right away, then you’re not finding the right folks.

If it’s organic traffic, well maybe you need to look at what you’re looking to rank for and the type of content you put out.

If it’s paid, well your ad audience isn’t ideal and maybe you need to add some negative keywords.

All I’m trying to say is if you see a downtick in traffic, that’s not always a bad thing. It could be you’re reaching the right people for the right reason and lost the bad traffic in the month/quarter/year previously.

Resources To Look At

1. GA4 Real-Time Short Piece

This isn’t too much of a resource but I still want to help people be aware that “small” things like this do continually happen and if they are frequent enough or somehow tied to your KPIs, that could impact strategy. (A reason to never just jump at first change)

Check it out here

2. Links Importance Article

This is the article diving into the “importance” of links. Again, I don’t think this is 100% true but more just pushing us to spend time on other pieces of strategy.

Check it out here