Taking an Onsite SEO Inventory of Your Website

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

How long ago did you last sit down and go through your website with a fine toothed SEO comb and optimize each page? If you’ve been actively engaged in a link building campaign for the last few years, it’s probably been a while, right? On site optimization, in my opinion, should be the first phase in any SEO campaign. After all, what good is an increase in traffic to a site that isn’t prepared to convert? (But that’s an argument for another day!) However, if all your recent SEO efforts have been focused on link building that may mean it’s time to revisit your on site SEO!

First off, take a look at pages you haven’t updated in the last 6 months or so. Is all of the information still accurate and up-to-date? It’s very easy to forget to swap out old whitepapers and other industry resources for the latest versions. Get your site ready for 2012 and make sure all the content is still applicable to your target audience. Have there been any recent developments in your industry that negates your old resources? If you want people to trust your brand as an industry expert, they need to know your site is current and has its finger on the pulse of your industry.

You should also make sure that any offers/specials/deals on the internal pages of your site are still relevant. If it’s almost Christmas and you’re still toting your Labor Day sale, that doesn’t exactly build confidence in your visitors. Make sure you 301 redirect all the links that pointed to those old offer pages to a different page. Better yet, create a new page where you post all your sales/promotions (mycompany.com/sales). That way you can focus on building links to one page and freshen up the content as needed.

You should also look at the conversion rate of your pages, identify which pages are underperforming and try to figure out why. Could that page use a little more content to drive home your messaging? Are the keywords you targeted on that page no longer relevant? Would changing up the call-to-actions have any impact? Remember that each page of your site has the potential to be a landing page. You want to make sure that every page is optimized as best as possible to help your overall conversion rate.

It’s important to remember that SEO is long term process and that it evolves with times. As search behavior changes and the search engines update their algorithms, you want to make sure your site is in the best possible shape so it can succeed. Don’t forget to revisit your on site SEO once in a while and make sure everything is up to par!