Improve Your SEO Without New Content

SEO

Jun 3

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When you think about SEO I bet you get a super overwhelmed feeling? Amiright? Yeah, I thought so.

It sounds so dang technical and boring and no body wants to work on that!

Plus you have to have an endless stream of content to create and maintain SEO. Who has time for that??

I hear you lady. That’s why I wanted to go over a couple of ways to boost your SEO that don’t take tons of time and don’t require you to write new content. Let’s go!

Refresh old blog posts

This one Is pretty simple. Go back through your blog posts, find the ones that send the most traffic to your site now, and give them a boost. What does a boost look like, you ask? I’m so glad you did!

1. Update the pin image

Our brands change over time. It’s a natural progression. (Just look back through my blogs!) So if you have a blog that’s still bringing people to your site, update the pin image. This keeps it current with your brand so someone doesn’t land on it and this “woah this has to be outdated!” and bounce. It also gives you the chance to make sure the pin image’s meta data is correct and current. Check the alt text and image name to make sure they describe what’s in the picture and what’s in the blog.

2. Update the blog content

Does the blog cover something that needs to be updated? I write a lot of tech tutorials and we all know how much tech changes. So I have to periodically pop in to update some posts. This is AWESOME for SEO because if you have a post that gets a lot of traffic and you update it, Google will start to favor it because it’s been updated. This helps your SEO over all as well. All you really need to do here is add an UPDATE section to the post and write out whatever the updated info is. No need to rewrite the whole thing. And I would definitely update the original post rather than writing a new one. If Google is already sending people to that post, it will continue to after it’s been updated, rather than starting over with a new one.

3. Update the blog footer and sidebar

This goes along with refreshing the post overall so Google sees updated content. I know when I started, I had no idea about sidebars and footers or what should go in them. So a lot of my old posts don’t have them. But as we mentioned already, Google loves updated content. So if you have some old posts that need refreshing, add a footer and/or sidebar. They don’t need to have a ton of content, just things you think your readers will find helpful. I like to include links to blog categories in the sidebar, and links to recent blog posts in the footer.

I’ve got a free guide that breaks down SEO and Pinterest! Grab it here!

Check SEO for main menu pages

If you haven’t made SEO a priority, or started focusing on it for your website yet, this is a beautiful place to start. Check the SEO settings for your main menu pages. This includes Page Titles, Page Descriptions, SEO Titles and Descriptions (these are separate from page title and descriptions in Squarespace), making sure any images on the page have proper image titles and alt text, and checking the headers.

Page/SEO Titles

These are super important as they tell your reader and Google what the page is about. Keep it simple. I like to use the name of the page (omg duh lol) the vertical divider | and what I do. So for example, my About page looks like this:

My Story | SEO | Pinterest Consultant | Delana Simmons

Or my Work with Me page looks like this:

Work with Me | Squarespace SEO and Pinterest Services | Delana Simmons

Page/SEO Descriptions

This is what shows up when your page shows in Google search results. It’s important to use keywords here but also keep them short and concise. Anything over about 300 characters will get cut off.

Alt Text for Images

The alt text is what tells Google what’s in the image. In Squarespace, it’s the image name and caption. I typically hide the caption once I’ve added my alt text. Even though you can’t see this information when an image is on your site, Google can!

Headers

Often overlooked but very important! Headers work double duty to both tell Google what’s on the page and guide your readers through the blog or page. There should only be one H1 (header 1) line on the page and it better have your keyword for that page in it. You can then use multiple H2 and H3 lines throughout the page to break up the content. Just take a look at this blog post 😉The title is the H1 header. The bold sections in the body are H2 and indicate a new topic. The headers in the sections are H3 to break it down a little further. They all contain import words regarding the topic at hand.

I’ve got a free guide that breaks down SEO and Pinterest! Grab it here!

Now, once you’ve made all these amazing, super quick updates, it’ll take Google a little bit to pick up on them. SEO is a long game, it doesn’t work overnight. So be patient.

You can also request that Google recrawl your site after you’ve made changes using Google Search Console. It still doesn’t happen immediately, but it should update quicker than leaving Google to it’s own devices.

Happy updating and see you on Google!

xx,
Delana

PS: Just in case you missed it, I’ve got a free workbook all about SEO and Pinterest! It takes you through all the key SEO steps and introduces you to Pinterest too! You can grab your copy here!