You've Just Found the Doorway to Awesome Website SEO Analysis and Optimisation

Adding internal links to your content makes it easier for search engine crawlers to find their way around your website. This helps the indexing process.

It also helps users, when done right.

There are typically two problems here.

Some people either don’t do any internal linking and others do too much to the extent that certain links don’t make sense.

The fix:

Only add internal links when it’s relevant.

If it doesn’t make sense to add an internal link, don’t add one.

Search engines will expect duplicate content to some degree. For example, they know that websites will use similar elements from page to page.

But, the point at which duplicate content becomes a problem is when it holds no value for the user.

A good example of this is how some people try to rank in Google for different locations. They will copy all of the content from one location page onto a new page for another location.

The only content that is changed is where the location appears in the URL, title, meta description and within the page content.

Other than that, the new location page is identical to the old one.

This is a serious issue, adds no value for the user and will cause issues with Google’s Panda algorithm.

The fix:

This is a simple one, if you’re creating a new page, create new content to go along with it.

Sure, it’ll take more time to do but you’ll make a better impression on visitors and search engines.

There are “experienced SEO’s” who still write content for search engines, NOT their website’s visitors.

This often includes keyword stuffing and other nasty tactics.

That’s a huge mistake – people aren’t robots.

And search engines know this, just consider how many people with PHD’s are working at Google (there’s a lot).

When you forget about the human element, you remove all personality from your content and you run the risk of not only hindering your organic search rankings, but also damaging your conversions.

The fix:

Forget search engines entirely when writing content and make it as helpful as possible.

You can optimize certain elements of your content later, but this will ensure that the focus is on your users.

This will lead to higher engagement and Google will notice as fewer visitors will pogo-stick between pages in search results.

A sitemap is just a list of pages on your website, and it helps search engine crawlers find all of the pages on your site, and index them.

Without this, you’re making search engines work harder. Your aim should be to make it as easy as possible for them.

The fix:

Create a sitemap for your website and submit it via Google’s Search Console (Previously Webmaster Tools). Bing have their own version too.

You can create one easily by using this website.

If you use WordPress, there are numerous free plugins available which can help you. WordPress SEO by Yoast is the most popular SEO plugin, it’s free to download and it has this feature built in.

If you change a URL and don’t redirect the old URL to the new one, you’re creating a huge problem for both search engines and users.

This stops users from finding what they need (this will cost you money in the long run) and it stops search engine spiders from crawling your site.

The fix:

Identify whether you will need to add a permanent or temporary redirect.

Permanent redirects are known as 301’s and temporary redirects are known as 302’s.

You will then need to add the correct redirects to your web server.

How you implement this largely depends on your content management system and whether you run an apache/windows web server. It’s best checking with your web host if you’re not sure.

For WordPress users, you can use a free plugin called “Redirection” to setup your redirects. If you change the URL’s of your blog posts, the plugin will automatically add a redirect for you.