Where does your website rank in the search engines? If it’s not showing up for your target keywords on the first page, you should check out the following optimization strategies from the SEO Denver experts.
Check for Broken Links
Broken links can and will have an impact on your site’s search ranking. When a visitor clicks a link, he or she expects to be taken to a working page. If they see a 404 error page instead, it may deter them from using your website in the future. Furthermore, most search marketing experts will agree that broken links can hurt a website’s ranking. Search engines can easily spot a broken link, factoring into their search ranking algorithm.
The good news is that you don’t have to click each individual link on your website to ensure they work. Just visit http://www.brokenlinkcheck.com/, enter your URL into the box, and it will reveal whether or not your site has any broken links, along with the location of those links.
Perform a Backlink Analysis
One of the most important to search optimization strategies is to perform a backlink analysis. As the name suggests, this is an analysis of all the links pointing back to your website. There are dozens of tools and services designed for this very purposes, although you can also perform a backlink analysis from within your Google Webmasters Tools account (which is free). After logging into your account and selecting your website, click Search Traffic > Links to Your Site > and click the “More” button at the bottom of the list titled “Who links to your site the most.” Go through these links to ensure they relevant and not spam. If you find any spam links, add them to Google’s Disavow tool so they won’t negatively impact your site’s search rankings.
Beware of Duplicate Content
The Denver SEO experts also recommend checking for duplicate content. It’s not uncommon for certain content management systems (CMS), such as WordPress, to publish content in multiple locations. When this occurs, it can lead to confusion among the search engines, as they don’t know which URL to index and which one(s) to avoid. Small amounts of duplicate content is perfectly fine and should cause no reason for concern, but if the bulk of your site’s content is published in multiple locations, it could result in lower search rankings. Try to publish your content in a single location to prevent this from happening.
