Not every SEO fix takes weeks to prove itself. 4 tactics you can test now and get a real answer in days, from site health to conversions.
Enjoy the episode!
🧰 I love me a good digital marketing tool. This week’s recommended tool is Fathom Notetaker.
Love this tool! Having a notetaker lets me be more focused on the conversation without the fear of potentially forgetting something or not writing it down correctly. I like that it has various methods of recapping the meeting, you can ask questions about the meeting, and it even has some ready-made lists like what questions came up. It’s rare I have to correct the summary, which is super convenient.
🎧 This week’s recommended podcast episode is The Neuroscience of Overthinking and How to Finally Stop on the Em on the Brain podcast.
I appreciated the tactical actions to help move out of overthinking.
If you listen to the episode, let me know how you like it!
Find other recommended episodes here.
Other Resource Links
Listen on Spotify
tbdListen on Apple
tbdThis started out as an episode on what weekly seo metrics to watch. As I started outlining this, I naturally veered into tactical information. I just do that. I give the how. Far be it from me to stop my creative flow. So you are getting 4 organic tactics that can show success or failure in a relatively small amount of time. You don’t have to wait 2-4 weeks to see if these changes you make work or not.
Now all this comes with a disclaimer, while you don’t have to wait 2-4 weeks, sometimes it can take some time. And sometimes, still, you have to go with your gut about whether or not something is worth changing and testing.
Let’s get into the tactics…
[1] General Site Health Check
Pretty generic advice, everyone says it, because it’s a core foundation in your search visibility strategy. AHrefs has a free checker. And it provides how to fix things you find. Depending on what you find, it’s possible that your search visibility will improve fast.
The most common issues in a site health check is poor image optimizations, redirects, broken links and slow site loading.
I had a case once where the website was intentionally, by accident, being hidden from Google Search and the person didn’t even know it!
One way to check is do site:yourdomain.com and see if your website comes up. If not, there’s a problem somewhere.
[2] Get More Traffic From The Pages That Are Already Ranking
This is measured by the Click-Thru Rate (the CTR) in Google Search Console. To affect this, modify the SEO page title and description on the pages.
Pro tip: look for the pages that are ranking higher first to potentially see faster results. Seems a little counter intuitive if they are already ranking high, but likely they aren’t ranking #1 so there’s room for improvement. Focus on pages that rank 2-10 first, then do 11-30. Anything beyond that, the page needs other work.
[3] More Conversions From The Traffic Already Landing On The Page
Think about if you have 1000 visits to a page. Let’s say currently only 10 of them are taking the action your CTA calls for, whether that’s a newsletter sign up, a call or download.
Change something on the page that could get the visitor to take the action.
This might be the ever so popular button color change, it might be adding more of the CTA throughout the page… Like if you add it after the first paragraph, and throughout, you’re subliminally prepping the visitor to take that action at the end. Hell, just add a CTA. There are lots of blog posts and pages I’ve seen that do not even have a clear CTA.
To increase conversions, It might be adding images. This might seem basic or like a no-brainer, but I’ll have you know, I have seen a LOT of blogs that are big walls of text.
Also to increase conversions, It might be to change the messaging or refreshing the copy. I mean if the conversions are low, it can only be one of two things… they are turned off visually and not engaged with the page or the messaging didn’t hit the mark and the visitor didn’t connect with the message. They aren’t convinced that whatever is being offered will resolve their problem that got them to the page in the first place.
Here’s an example…
If you’re doing some kind of people photography, whether that’s family, branding, what have you…
A lot of the time, people are like, oh I have to lose some weight first. I’ll book this in a couple of months. So they didn’t ingest why they shouldn’t wait. That wasn’t conveyed on the page.
Not that you have to scare them with urgency like a discount (which doesn’t always work for photographers.. that’s a whole other story) but rather conveying compassion about why now is the time, and not waiting.
Something like… We constantly wait for the “right moment”, when work slows down, when we lose ten pounds, or when our calendar frees up. But time doesn’t wait for life to be perfect before it moves forward… yada, yada, yada.
I think you get the point on this one.
[4] Improve Engagement Or Decrease Bounce Rate
Generally speaking, if a page has higher than a 20% bounce rate or lower than an 80% engagement rate, the page should be reviewed. It’s not always the case, the exceptions sometimes being a map or directions page or other pages where the CTA encourages an offsite action.
To lower bounce rates, look at the skimmable parts of your page. The stuff that gets seen before the scrolling starts. It’s either they’re visually turned off or the reason they visited the page doesn’t match the page copy.
Here’s The Takeaway
There’s so many things we want to do to our websites to improve the search visibility. Hopefully you were able to latch on to one here that can help move you along a little farther a little faster.
Realistically, you’re not doing all four of these this week. So which one first? Good question. I have no idea, because I haven’t seen your site yet.
So here’s what I offer: a Clarity Call. Ninety minutes, just the two of us, looking at your site together to figure out what will make a difference.
About This Show
The Get More Website Traffic Podcast covers the strategies, tools, and tactics that help small business owners get more people to their website and turn that traffic into leads. Host Barb Davids breaks it down in plain language every week, with bonus episodes featuring other business owners sharing their expertise on topics that matter to running a small business. Produced by Compass Digital Strategies.
