Free tools for a website tune-up

Google Keyword Planner

Keyword Planner is a free tool by Google. It is like a toolbox for creating new Search Network campaigns or expanding your existing ones. You can search for keyword and ad group ideas, find historical statistics, see how a list of keywords might perform, and even create a new keyword list by multiplying several lists of keywords together. It is an invaluable free tool for keyword research.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a freemium web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic over a lot of parameters. It is an enterprise-grade service that is offered for free as well as premium (paid). Simply install it on every page of your website that you want to track and turn customer insights into real gains. Google Analytics is also available for apps and enterprise businesses. You can associate analytics account with Google Search Console (below) to see Search Console data in your Google Analytics reports.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free SEO tool that helps you monitor and maintain your site’s presence in Google Search results. Search Console helps you review your website traffic, optimize your ranking, and make informed decisions about the appearance of your site’s search results. If associated, you can access Google Analytics reports directly from the Links to your site and Sitelinks pages in Search Console. Using this is must as this is one communication channel between your website and Google.

Google PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights analyzes the content of a web page, then generates suggestions to make that page faster. PageSpeed tool is free and it checks your website for both mobile and web browsing. Use this free SEO tool regularly to find and rectify errors on your website.

Google Trends

Google trends work best when used in conjunction with the keyword planner. It is the best tool to generate content ideas that will attract high traffic and links. Use Google Trends tool to map real-time search data to help you gauge consumer search behaviours over time.

Structured Data Testing Tool

Including structured data markup in web content helps Google algorithms better index and understand the content. If you have structured data on your website, structured data testing tool lets you validate and test it. A simple tool to find and rectify out problems that could prevent your content from being usable.

Bing Webmaster Tools

This free SEO tool is Bing’s version of Google Search console. This lets your website communicate with the Bing universe. A lot of data is available here with some pieces of information being better than the Search Console.

GTmetrix

GTmetrix is a free SEO tool that gives you insight into how well your site loads and provides actionable recommendations on how to optimize it. It uses rulesets provided by Google PageSpeed and Yahoo! YSlow. It then displays your page’s performance relative to the average of all sites analyzed on the platform. It is a great way to get detailed information for a perfect website tune-up.

BROWSEO

BROWSEO is a free SEO tool that shows you what your web pages look like to search engines. This lets you optimize your pages so that the content is positioned in an appropriate manner for the search engine to read through.

Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a small desktop program you can install locally on your PC, Mac or Linux computer. This nifty little utility spiders websites’ links, images, CSS, script and apps from an SEO perspective. It also lets you generate XML sitemaps.

XML Sitemaps

This free SEO tool allows you to create an XML sitemap that can be submitted to Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines to help them crawl your website better. The online version is free for 500 pages.

If you would like us to add another free SEO tool for website tune-up to this article, do get in touch.

Use these tools regularly for your website tune-up. These free SEO tools can give you insights into your website’s content, aesthetics, usability and performance of your website. You can also connect with us and request a quote for a website tune-up, especially if you started on the DIY track and got stalled or your website’s original developer is unavailable to assist.

Conducting an SEO audit is key for any business. With Google changing its search algorithm frequently, it is essential that your website complies with its requirements. This is where the SEO checklist comes in handy.

The Off-page SEO Checklist

Webmaster tools

Integration with webmaster tools is a must once your website is about to get launched. It is imperative that you connect with google search console and the bing webmaster tools. Webmaster tools give you a snapshot of the overall health of your website. They help getting traffic to your by being listed in the search results. They also help you understand what leads people to your website that can help you understand what to focus on to increase your traffic.

Evaluate your backlinks

This will tell you how many unique domains are linking back to you and if they can be trusted. In case you are using a link broker to build your backlinks, think again. This is going to detrimental to the health of your website in the longer run and downgrade its “domain authority“. Domain authority is dominated by three key influencers – quality incoming links, social signals and brand mentions.

Eliminate bad backlinks

Bad links are links that do not comply with quality guidelines of search engines. These may be low quality, bought links or spammy links. Links are supposed to be a “vote” for your website so be wise in selecting your link partners. Identify & disavow the bad links through the Google search console.

Build quality links

Quality link comes from a website of authority. For example, a quality link from a niche or a relevant website with a high pagerank (PR) is likely to benefit you more than and newly launched website. This is what is looked at as an editorial endorsement of your content by SEs.

Relevance of anchor text

Link building requires linking back to your website from a quality source with the right kind of “anchor text“. The anchor text needs to vary and not be repetitive. For example, we may take build a backlink to our website using the company name “Interactive World“. However, what works better is “Website Development Company“. You do, however, need to take care that anchor texts are used contextually for different pages on your website.

Deep linking

Deep linking means that your link building exercise links to other pages on your website contextually and not just the homepage. Deep linking just your homepage definitely increases your bounce rate since your visitors do not get to see something new. Deep linking also increases your website authority because the internal pages start contributing to the authority that the homepage already enjoys.

Link mentions

Link mentions depend upon how are you distributing your content throughout the web and how is being absorbed by your readers. Link mentions can come through myriad sources including press releases, the blogosphere, community website like forums, social bookmarking websites or even a website that runs classifieds. You can obtain more mentions via business directory listings and also by questions answered on Q&A websites like Quora. More natural link mentions you have for your website, the better it is for the health of your website.

Social signals

Social media is the buzzword today. All content that you post on social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest or even Instagram are recognised by SEs. If your business publishes video, it’s a great idea to run a YouTube channel and gather social mentions from there too. More interaction on such social media vehicles elevates not just your website’s score but also drives traffic to your website.

Off page SEO is more complicated than on page SEO hence needs more attention. Care needs to be taken to work with these factors organically and not get onto the link building bandwagon and generate a massive amount of links unscientifically. Link housekeeping needs to be done regularly so that bad links do not affect the health of the website in the longer term. This SEO checklist works well as a starter pack for your SEO efforts. If you have more to discuss, contact us for more information. If you have a question or a remark, simply drop a comment below and I’ll connect with you.

In today’s article, I’ll detail a 9 point checklist with major on-page search engine optimization factors that are instrumental in making your on-page SEO strategy a success. My next article will cover the SEO audit factors for off-page parameters relevant for that winning SEO strategy.

Here is the 9 point SEO audit checklist:

1. Are you using title tags?

A title tag tells your visitors as well as the search engines what the page is all about. You must have a unique title for every page or blog post. If your document appears in a search results page, the contents of the title tag will usually appear in the first line of the results. Your page title needs to be contextual and you should always avoid choosing a title that has no relation to the content on the page.

2. Is your description meta tag optimized?

A well-written meta description should inform both search engines and users with a summary of what your page is about. A better-worded meta description always helps generate more clicks from your Google rankings. It goes for title tags, meta tags also need to be unique and relevant to your page’s content.

3. How good is your URL structure?

Simple to understand URLs convey content information in a user-friendly manner. URLs are displayed in the search results by SEs. Descriptive categories and filenames for your products/ documents on your website help you keep your site better organized. It also leads to better crawling of your products/ documents by search engines. Try and use relevant & contextual words (keywords) in your URLs.

4. Is your site structure & navigation friendly?

Your website should be easy to navigate and user friendly. It helps people to find relevant information easily. Always plan out your navigation starting from your homepage. Ensure more convenience for users by using ‘breadcrumbs’. Ensure you have a separate page for the product/ service you want to rank for.

5. Are you using sitemaps?

One should always create two sitemaps – one for the user (HTML) and second for SEs (XML). Sitemaps are a great way of indexing information on any website especially if it carries a lot of content. It makes the process of finding relevant information easier for both users and search engines.

6. Do you create fresh, unique content?

Fresh and unique content should always be a priority. Avoid writing sloppy content or embedding text in images for textual content. This makes it difficult for users to copy and save it for future reference. It also makes it unreadable for search engines. Remember new content not only brings back your regular readers but also bring in new visitors. Write for your users and not search engines. Search engines automatically follow websites with fresh, rich content. If your business exists online, consider writing your blog.

7. Are you optimizing your images?

Use the “alt” tag to provide image-specific information. This component of SEO audit comes in handy when the image is not displayed for some reason or the user is accessing your page from a screen reader or a browser that doesn’t support images. Your image file name should also have the same image-specific information.

8. Are you using heading tags appropriately?

Heading tags (H1, H2, H3 etc.) are visual cues to your website visitors. They suggest the importance of that part of the text. This helps them understand something about the type of content underneath the heading text. Multiple heading sizes should be used in order to create a hierarchical structure for your content. This makes it easier for users to navigate through your document.

9. Is your website is responsive?

The world has gone mobile, with many people using mobile phones on a daily basis for accessing and searching via the internet. Responsive websites deliver a consistent, professional, and enjoyable user experience across devices with different screen resolutions. This encompasses all devices including desktop computers, tablets and smartphones. Google gives a lot of priority to websites that are responsive.

We, at Interactive World routinely conduct an SEO audit before taking on any SEO project. This audit is a key indicator of the factors holding your website back from achieving the organic search rankings it is capable of. Our SEO audit looks at your website holistically viz. different ranking factors, from your website’s loading speed to crawl errors, on-page optimisation and technical elements that you may not be aware of. Talk to us today for a free initial report.

So how is this done? I’ll try to keep it simple with our 5 point practice at Interactive World.

1. Quality “content” is the key: Take this article for example. The purpose of this article is to provide concise information to visitors on how white hat SEO needs to be done. This means your content has to be qualitative, factual and relevant. “Is there a pertinent message that I am offering?” is the question you need to ask before hitting publish.
2. User experience – Put yourself into the user/ audience’s shoes. Create content that allows them to take away learning as compared to gibberish that a lot of online content contains today. A great user experience will lead to a lot of buzz for you in cyberspace.
3. Engagement – Is the content engaging for your audience? Does it add value by way of information? Does it stimulate thinking and drive an interaction? Will it elicit “social signals” from the readers of your article? Sharing it in social media is an easy way to find out. If people share your content, they have found it to be interesting, concise and engaging. Such social media marketing provides a signal to SEs about popularity of content thereby marking it upwards.
4. Go technical – Ensure that the page titles and relevant meta content is used appropriately in the webpage. The navigation structure is clearly laid out for a great user experience. XML sitemaps are present and working. Sitemaps ping SEs when you publish fresh content and provide crawlers with a map of links to crawl and index.
5. Check your servers – Poorly maintained servers with inadequate bandwidth make your websites sluggish. Google has indicated that sites with long loading times would be penalized. Load time is a factor today since a sluggish website will also make your visitors turn away.

In a nutshell, do not build websites or content targeted towards search engines. Practice white hat SEO to focus on the user of a website to succeed. These practices are legit and work for your benefit in the long run. Black hat on the other hand may give you a short term advantage but it won’t last long.

Here is a list of “Don’ts” regarding Black Hat SEO in 2016 that you need to keep in check, if you are aggressive on SEO for your website.

1. Don’t use guest bloggers to solicit business reviews especially to get that all important inbound link. Genuine blogs farewell for any business but the reverse can be quite damaging.
2. Buying or selling links – Both of these tactics don’t work and are considered to be a link scam by Google.
3. Keyword Stuffing – Keywords in meta content may have lost their sheen but some SEO agencies stuff image “Alt” tags with keywords. You got it. This is highly annoying to your visually-impaired visitors and also amounts to keyword spamming. Use alt tags for what the image means than stuffing. This goes for stuffing meta description as well.
4. Link exchange is passé – Search Engines like Google respect editorial endorsements from natural mentions or “social signals”, but link exchange has lost its meat. You’ll simply waste your time doing this in 2016.
5. Article Spinning – So you have an original article written and have paid for it. Fair enough. To have it published on your blog and optimise it for the quality content it is works very well. However, if you spin same article (manually or automated) on every second website you can, you’ll get penalized for duplicate content. This goes for rewritten articles with changed titles as well. The damage will be more than the benefit. So be careful.
6. Abuse of Rich Snippets – Rich snippets are a very powerful tool to garner clicks on a search engine results page. Irrelevant rich snippets can result in a spammy structured markup penalty. When using rich snippets, ensure you choose one that matches the content of your page. For example, you shouldn’t use a recipe snippet if your page doesn’t actually have recipes).
7. Hidden Text – A very old but frequently used technique. This involves keyword rich text hidden by the same colour as the background of the page to deceive the SEs. This works negative on the keyword density and is easily recognised by search engines. Avoid.
8. Comment spamming: Comment spamming uses software to post links in comment sections of selected blogs. This can surely generate a large number of backlinks to your website in a short amount of time, potentially increasing your rankings. However, Google is great at identifying and devaluing these types of links.

There is much more to Black Hat SEO in 2016. However, if you monitor your SEO staff or agency for these tactics, be sure to steer clear. The benefits accrued from such deceptive maneuvers will be temporary, however, the penalties will be long lasting. White hat SEO works better.

Focus on generating good quality content  that engages and generates “social signals” rather than using tactics that can be detrimental for your business.

If you have a link that is on a social platform that is never used or shared, the benefit is next to nothing. Having said that, we cannot deny that social bookmarking creates a true web of resources and connections. Social bookmarking is not limited to individuals and their folders. It represents the interests and judgments of a community as a whole. Now this is something that the search engines really like. A community contributing to a thread of a posted link is looked upon as an editorial endorsement of content on that link. This coupled with traffic flowing to the posted link betters the chances for that link to get better ranking.

Social bookmarking 2016

Infact social bookmarking 2016 is not dead. It simply needs to be made slicker and obviously more engaging.  For example, a recipe on pinterest that is shared, pinned, and used frequently works differently and positively. Google looks for such “social signals” from social bookmarking websites. Actually the link really is not a signal, the usage of that link is the signal for achieving better rankings.

Quality social bookmarking sites are a part of 2016’s social media itself. For example, Facebook and Twitter are great for microblogging. YouTube is not just a video sharing platform but also the second largest search engine. Sites like Pinterest and Instagram are image sharing sites where users can organise and share all forms of images. Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg, BusinessXC are respected social bookmarking sites that helps users to find quality information. However, we have to accept that everywhere effective community engagement makes a big difference to quality content, traffic and thereby SEO.