3 Ways to Revamp Your SEO Strategy For the New Year (That Gave Our Client a 40% Boost)

Search Engine Optimization is a fluid concept, with algorithms consistently being adjusted by the major search engines to improve search results. As new technologies emerge and new data is released, search engines are able to provide better answers to the queries submitted. And, the faster they can answer user questions, the more likely they are to come back to those websites with new queries. 

If you haven’t updated the SEO strategy for your website lately or you’re not seeing the search results you were hoping for, there’s no better time than the beginning of the year to start anew. 

In September of this year, we implemented SEO changes for a client. By November, we saw a 40 percent increase in total organic keyword rankings on Google Desktop. Below are the three major changes we made, that you can use to update your website and improve your search rankings:

1. Implement Schema Mark-Ups

Schema mark-ups refer to rich snippets of data that show on the search engine results pages (SERPs), with the name referring to schema.org (a collaboration from the top search engines). When built into a website properly, these rich snippets will allow the search engine to display important information such as review ratings, phone numbers, and prices. It may not seem like much but they’ve been shown to increase click-through-rates, user dwell time, and trust, which then goes on to improve the ranking for the website. 

2. Optimize the URL Structure

The URL of your website is the first thing a search engine crawler ‘sees’. Since that’s the case, the way your website URL and sub-page URL’s are written is important. Within your URL you have the main part (i.e https://after5.io) and you have the slug that comes after the main URL (i.e. /developers). For each sub-page within your website, customize the slug to include the most important keyword (or two) for that page. These shouldn’t exceed four to five words. An example of this for our company would be https://after5.io/phoenix-area-developers-for-hire for our page that talks to potential After5.io clients. 

If you’re feeling overwhelmed with the thought of updating all of your website pages, start by focusing on converting pages, like your product/solution pages and the individual blog posts/articles. 

REMEMBER: Make sure to include redirects from the old URL to the new, corresponding one. 

3. Refresh Your Content

With Google’s latest algorithm update, user-friendly content is now more important than it has ever been in the history of search. Read through your website content (or have a third-party read through it) to identify any areas that sound robotic or unnatural. If you’ve heavily stuffed keywords into each page, it may sound awkward and cause Google to ding you on your search engine placement. You really only need target keywords included two to three times on a page with a few paragraphs of content. The more natural these keywords blend in, the better your results will be. 

When you decide to make these changes, keep in mind:

• Website code can be finicky and easily break. Working with a master developer is a great way to minimize website downtime.
• Results from SEO changes can take six to eight months to fully hit their stride. Be patient if you don't see your website shoot to number 1 overnight.