Get Ready for a New Year of Search Marketing

The New Year has arrived, and there are some SEO best practices you should incorporate into your website now while everyone is still recovering from the holiday season.

Even if your website had an overhaul last year, or you had an SEO audit, it is time to revisit your site to ensure that it is functioning properly, that every page is displayed as it should be, and that your website is still optimized for SEO. Doing this correctly will also help with your local search.

Start Auditing the Basics

We recommend by starting with the basics. Run a report to see if you have any errors, broken links, redirects, duplicate URLs, etc. With this in hand, go to work on fixing these errors.

You should also check the title for each page, description, and meta tags to make sure that every page has them and that they include the keywords that you are focusing on. Since the focus of the company can change from time to time, this isn’t something that should be set and forgot, but something that must be reviewed and updated on a regular basis. We recommend that your company’s name is included in the page titles and that you include the name of your city as often as possible to increase your chances of being found in a local search.

Identify Past Successes

You should also review what you have done in the past. Start by looking at the content that you posted on your website and your social media profiles. Use analytics tools to find out what performed the best so that you can incorporate components from successful blog and social media posts into your future efforts.

The beginning of the years is an excellent time to research this, and you can get extremely specific. For example, find out if your photos, blogs, videos, or text posts are performing the best with your Facebook marketing while also analyzing what time of day a post gets the most likes or shares. You can also review your blog shares and likes to see which pieces have the most views. By incorporating this information into your 2015 strategy, you can increase your overall marketing success.

Updated Business Listing… Again

It is also important that you spend some time making sure that your business listings and the information on your website is accurate. This is incredibly important for local search since the wrong phone number or address can cost you business. Fortunately, you can use Moz Local to find out what listings are out there so that you can update them now before customers become confused or reach out to your competition.

While simple, these SEO best practices will give you a good start to the new year.