SEO Triage
It’s that time again kids when we get to review someone’s site for SEO. If you want your site reviewed just follow me on twitter @jimboot In this week’s video I take a look at a site that has just been inherited by a viewer. If you ever inherit a site you really should triage the site for SEO. You need to get the site out of danger and stabilise it before it can become healthy again. Today I will attempt to break this metaphor 🙂
1. Stop the SEO bleeding
For SEO, this is the loss of traffic from the ongoing drop in your rankings. Usually if your rankings are dropping there is an identifiable cause of the bleed. You are looking for a cause, a telltale sign that happened just before the ranking plummet began. Watch this SEO video I did a few weeks back to see what I mean. Usually it’s something that Google has already detected and is telling you about in webmaster tools. You just have to look carefully.
2. Stabilise the SEO patient
When a site has a major issue I like to fix it and then wait a few days to a week before I do anything else to the site. During this time I’m checking the site’s vitals which includes rankings, load times and any errors. If the site continues to plummet there is probably still a bleed there that you haven’t seen. The stabilisation period is important because if you march headlong into more optimisation and there is a nick in a main SEO artery it could lead to catastrophe. You need to watch the vitals for a little while before you perform the main SEO operation.
3. The SEO Operation
Once you are happy that the site is no longer on it’s last legs you can go in and do some real optimisation. I would liken the SEO operation to cosmetic surgery or Botox treatment. You are in good health but you want to look better. Don’t worry I’m not going to move into SEO self esteem analogies. In the case of today’s video, the SEO operation would be looking into the navigation structure and categories.
Next week, The SEO Mechanic 😀
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
