Last week, I gave you 3 SEO quick wins that you can implement on your website while working on a longer term SEO strategy. Here are 3 more SEO quick wins that are just as easy to implement and will have some positive impact on your online visibility.
1) Add a sitemap.xml file — this file is a guide to the search engine crawlers to help them understand how the content on your website is organized. It also gives them an inventory of all pages included in the sitemap.xml file so it reduces the time it takes for a crawler to figure out what pages your website contains. Once you have a sitemap.xml file, you can submit it to the search engines so they immediately know what pages are available to crawl.
2) Redirect any 404 errors to the proper pages — 404 errors are the pages you see when you try to visit a web page and the server cannot find it. Not only does this bleed traffic on your website, but it incurs some penalty from the search engines because it causes your website to be considered “unmaintained”. Using Google Webmaster Tools, you can see which URLs are causing 404 errors on your site. Fix these errors using 301 redirects, and you’ll help your website visitors as well as eliminating this penalty from the search engines.
3) Register your domain for more than one year — while not a major factor in determining your website’s ranking, a domain that is registered for more than one year in the future indicates to the search engines that your website is legitimate and not something spammy that’s going to be used to exploit search. The only thing you need to be sure of is that your domain registrar allows you to register your domain for more than one year. If they do not, you may want to consider a new registrar that will give you that level of control.
Are there other SEO quick wins that you’ve implemented that had positive results on your website’s online visibility?
Free Inbound Marketing Plan Template
Online presence optimization is a key ingredient in your inbound marketing plan. You want to clearly identify your target customers and how they are searching for your services online.
If you don’t have one already, here is a free template that will help you make sure you have clearly identified and aligned your business objectives and marketing activity.
