Having worked in the search space for well over a decade, we've had the privilege of working on so many different websites. Massive websites and small websites, it really doesn't matter, at the end of the day there are many consistencies. One thing that we continually come up against is a misunderstanding about technical SEO. I don't know where people are reading, but there's this thought/idea that once you've technically optimised a website you don't need to optimise it again? Utter rubbish. Do we all think we're so brilliant that we can nail a technical implementation first time? Imagine you only have to play cricket once and then considered yourself world class.
Let us tell you why this isn't the case and it's really easy to explain. Website's evolve, additional content is added, previously researched keywords are no longer accurate or other discovered keywordsiscovered are better and search engines continually update their algorithms. These are just 3 really simple examples of how technical SEO cannot be done once and then left, it's a constant requirement if you want your website to perform to its full extent. Don't be fooled any longer.
Here's an example:
HubSpot is one of the most well known companies in the inbound marketing space, with thousands of employee's, thousands of customers that span across 90 countries and a revenue of 115.9 million USD in 2014. Their IPO was in 2014 and they're not listed on the NYSE. Point driven home? They're a big successful company.
Just the other day they published a blog post about technical SEO changes they made on their website which drove up their organic traffic by 50%. Now, trust me, their website was incredibly well optimised, yet they identified 7 things and this lead to their organic graph going like this:
A 51.14% growth in organic traffic for a company that drove a revenue of 115.9 million USD in 2014. Just imagine what effect this will have on their revenue! At this point we believe it's quite clear that technical SEO is not a once off thing and that it should be continually worked on.
When it comes to re-optimising your website, there are of course many ways to do this and it can get quite advanced. However, there are also simple ways and we like to share one with you. A few years ago when Google stopped allowing us all to see what keywords were leading a person to a website for privacy reasons we all became very used to (not provided). Although this was a big hit to the world of digital marketing, it wasn't the end of keywords for everyone. Heard of Google's Search Console (ex Google Webmaster Tools)? We certainly hope so!
Let's get started:
What we've identified here is the search queries (keywords) that people are searching for to arrive at a page on our website about eCommerce in South Africa. Now this is really useful because we may find that we've optimised the page for a specific keyword when in fact there's another keyword that's getting more clicks through to our site or perhaps a keyword we didn't even think about. From here we can update the article accordingly and include the new keywords, we could write additional content on the website and interlink the articles and so the list of possible ideas goes on.
This really is just a simple example of re-optimisation, but it's an example that we believe drives the point home about never assuming that once a website is technical optimised that it doesn't need to be technical optimised again. To have true success with SEO one needs to revisit the technical side of SEO on a constant basis because you never know when you might be missing out of something incredibly valuable!
We hope you enjoyed this!
A 51.14% growth in organic traffic for a company that drove a revenue of 115.9 million USD in 2014. Just imagine what effect this will have on their revenue! At this point we believe it's quite clear that technical SEO is not a once off thing and that it should be continually worked on.
When it comes to re-optimising your website, there are of course many ways to do this and it can get quite advanced. However, there are also simple ways and we like to share one with you. A few years ago when Google stopped allowing us all to see what keywords were leading a person to a website for privacy reasons we all became very used to (not provided). Although this was a big hit to the world of digital marketing, it wasn't the end of keywords for everyone. Heard of Google's Search Console (ex Google Webmaster Tools)? We certainly hope so!
Let's get started:
- Log into your Search Console account and select the website in question's profile.
- Look on the left and click on Search Traffic followed by Search Analytics.
- Click on the radio button next to Pages.
- Select the page on your website that you're interested in.
- Click on the radio button next to Queries.
What we've identified here is the search queries (keywords) that people are searching for to arrive at a page on our website about eCommerce in South Africa. Now this is really useful because we may find that we've optimised the page for a specific keyword when in fact there's another keyword that's getting more clicks through to our site or perhaps a keyword we didn't even think about. From here we can update the article accordingly and include the new keywords, we could write additional content on the website and interlink the articles and so the list of possible ideas goes on.
This really is just a simple example of re-optimisation, but it's an example that we believe drives the point home about never assuming that once a website is technical optimised that it doesn't need to be technical optimised again. To have true success with SEO one needs to revisit the technical side of SEO on a constant basis because you never know when you might be missing out of something incredibly valuable!
We hope you enjoyed this!