You may have heard about the tactic for SEO where you “just write great content” and they (users) will come. But what if you don’t want to write content, or you work on a website that is fairly content-heavy?
For one thing, you can make sure that your website’s structure is conducive to being found and ranked by search engines. This means using proper tag hierarchy, ensuring that your site is easy to navigate, and using keyword-rich titles and descriptions.
Another tactic is to focus on external factors such as link building. This means actively working to get high-quality backlinks from other websites. This can be done through guest blogging, social media outreach, and even by reaching out to other website owners in your niche and seeing if they’re interested in linking to your content.
Finally, you can also take advantage of social media platforms as a way to reach a larger audience and generate more traffic to your website. By creating shareable content and engaging with users on social media, it’s possible to reach a wider audience and amplify your content. This will help drive real users (and even more traffic) to your website.
The following includes SEO tactics that you can do on your site (that don’t require the constant production of new content).
Trim the Fat: Remove Low-Quality Content
If you’ve been in the SEO game for any length of time, then you know that one of the most important things you can do is keep your website’s content fresh. But what do you do when you have content that’s no longer useful or relevant?
Content that is not useful or relevant is called low quality content. This kind of content can be removed from your website to make it cleaner and improve your overall SEO.
Removing low-quality content from your website is an essential part of keeping your site clean and tidy. This process is known as “trimming the fat,” and it can be done by identifying pages that are no longer useful and deleting them, or by redirecting them to more relevant pages.
In some cases, you may also want to update old content to make it more current and relevant. This is especially important if your website has a lot of evergreen content that’s always being accessed, such as how-to guides or product descriptions.
Regardless of the type of low-quality content you’re dealing with, it’s important to take action in order to improve your SEO and keep your website running smoothly.
Additionally, you can use tools like social media and link building to increase your website’s visibility in search engines. By doing this, you can reach a larger audience and generate traffic without creating new content from scratch.
Improve Your Site’s Overall Structure
Making sure your website’s structure is logical is a good way to help with SEO. This means organizing your pages using the right internal linking.
It also means using proper tags and ensuring that your site is easy to navigate. You should also focus on optimizing your titles and descriptions with keywords.
When you optimize your site structure, you should be going from page to page to target specific queries and optimize for them.
Re-optimize Content That Is Outdated
It’s no secret that in order to rank well in search engines, you need to keep your website’s content fresh. But what do you do when you have content that’s no longer useful or relevant?
Removing low-quality content from your website is an essential part of keeping your site clean and tidy, and it can also help to improve your overall SEO.
In addition, it’s possible to re-optimize your content by re-structuring your pages.
For example, you could add lists that expand on certain topics where this is relevant. You can add videos as engagement objects (to keep people on your page and increase your dwell time).
You can expand on the existing content (if such an expansion is possible and it makes sense). You can also add more bullet points and additional comprehensive information if this makes sense within the context of your existing content.
There are many ways to re-optimize content that is outdated that will help keep your content fresh and exciting.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Boost Pages With New Internal Linking
Internal linking is an essential part of SEO, and it can be used to improve your website’s content and structure. By strategically placing links within your content, you can help users navigate your website and find the information they’re looking for.
Additionally, internal linking can help to improve your website’s SEO by boosting pages with relevant keywords. By doing this, you can help your website’s pages to rank higher in search engines and drive more traffic to your site.
In order to improve your SEO through internal linking, you should be strategic about where and how you link within your content. This means placing links in the right places while targeting relevant keywords with each one. And by using the right anchor text, you can further improve your SEO.
Anchor text is the text you use to link to other pages on your website. When you add a link, you can choose the text that will be displayed as the link. You can use this text to target specific keywords, which can help your website’s pages to rank higher in search engines.
Don’t worry! You’re not doing anything wrong by using anchor text in your website’s internal links. So long as your anchor text is reasonable, as John Mueller explained, you’re encouraged to use it.
Repair External Broken Links
Broken links can negatively impact your website’s SEO, and repairing them is essential for keeping your site running smoothly.
External broken links are links that lead to pages on other websites which no longer exist. This can happen when a website is redesigned, moves to a new domain, or goes offline entirely. When these links are clicked, users are left with error messages or dead pages.
To repair broken external links, you can use a tool like Screaming Frog to find out which links on your website are broken. Then, you can either redirect these links to new pages or delete them entirely.
Repair Local Citations As Needed
Local citations are an important part of your local SEO. They help to improve your website’s visibility and ranking in search engines, and they also help to increase traffic to your site.
However, if your local citations are not accurate or up-to-date, it can negatively impact your website’s SEO. This is because incorrect or outdated citations can confuse search engines and lead them to believe that your website is no longer active.
To ensure that your local citations are accurate and up-to-date, you can use a tool like Moz Local, Bright Local, or Yext. These tools will help you to find and fix any incorrect or outdated citations, and they will also help you to submit your business information to the correct directories.
Improve Website Content With User-Generated Content
User-generated content (UGC) is any content that is created by users of your website or app. This can include things like reviews, comments, and social media posts.
UGC can be a great way to improve the quality and relevancy of your website’s content. This is because UGC is typically created by users who are interested in your products or services. As a result, it can be more relevant and interesting to potential customers than traditional marketing content.
In addition, UGC can help to improve your website’s SEO. This is because UGC often contains keywords and other relevant information that can help your website to rank higher in search engines.
To encourage users to create UGC, you can add features to your website or app that make it easy for users to submit their content. For example, you can add a review section to your website or a social media feed to your app. You can also offer incentives, such as discounts or prizes, for users who submit UGC.
But be careful. You don’t want to have every single review be a five-star review, because that’s just unnatural. Instead, you want to have reviews that have a wide variety of ratings. This will help keep your reviews looking natural.
Adjust Keyword Targeting for Pages That Need It
If you’ve been working on your website’s SEO for a while, you may have noticed that not all of your pages are ranking equally. This is because not all of your pages are targeting the same keywords.
To ensure that each page on your website is targeting the right keywords, you need to adjust your keyword targeting for each page. This can help you to rank higher for the keywords that are most relevant to each page, and it can help you to improve your overall website ranking.
In order to adjust your keyword targeting for pages, you need to start by identifying which keywords are currently ranking for each page. Then, you can optimize your content with those keywords or re-optimize your existing content to better target those keywords.
Once you’ve identified and targeted the right keywords for each page, you can use a tool like Google Search Console to track your progress. This tool will help you to see how well your pages are ranking for their respective keywords, and it will also help you to identify any new keywords that you should target.
Add a Strategic Silo Targeting Weak Pages
Adding strategic silos can help to improve your website’s SEO.
But what are silos, and how can they help you? Silos are a way of organizing your website’s content into specific categories. This makes it easier for search engines to understand and index your content, which can lead to improved rankings and more traffic to your site.
In addition, silos can help to improve the SEO of your website’s weak pages. This is because silos can help to funnel link juice and authority to your weaker pages, which can help them to rank higher in search engines.
To add silos to your website, you need to start by identifying the main categories of your website’s content. Then, you need to create a separate page for each category. Finally, you need to link your pages together using internal links.
This may seem like a lot of work, but it’s worth it if you want to improve your website’s SEO. And, once you’ve created your silos, they’ll be easy to maintain, which means that you’ll be able to keep your website’s SEO up-to-date without a lot of effort.
Optimize for Page Speed and Core Web Vitals
Almost everyone knows that website speed is important.
But many people don’t realize just how important it really is. In fact, website speed can have a major impact on your business.
For example, slow websites can lead to lower conversion rates and fewer sales. They can also cause customers to leave your site before they’ve had a chance to view your products or services, which can ultimately hurt your sales numbers.
To avoid these problems, you need to optimize your website for optimal page speed and Core Web Vitals. This means minimizing the number of requests that your site makes, reducing the file sizes of images and other files on your site, and making sure that you are loading your content in the correct order.
Fortunately, there are a number of tools that can help you to optimize your website for page speed and Core Web Vitals. These tools include Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool and Pingdom’s Website Speed Test.
Both of these tools will help you to identify areas where your website needs improvement, and they’ll also provide you with specific tips and tricks that you can use to improve your website’s speed.
You Don’t Always Have to Create New Content for SEO
Although new, targeted content can help lead to significant growth for your site, regardless of your niche, on established sites that have some traction and enough content, you don’t always have to create new content for improved SEO.
The key to doing SEO without creating new content is to get creative with the types of content you’re already producing. This can mean utilizing things like reviews, comments, and social media posts. Also, look at other SEO elements that you may not be optimizing for as highly now.
Things like page speed, Core Web Vitals, siloing, improving your broken links, and other SEO tasks can have a big impact with small amounts of effort.
Where do you plan on expanding your SEO efforts next?
