Actionable SEO Tactics You Can Use Right Now4 min read

You’ve come out of audit phase and need help with what you need to improve your SEO. This list of SEO tactics will help.

I’m aiming to keep this list up to date so check back soon.

Update & Improve Underperforming Posts

Identify posts which are out-of-date or under performing and improve content to better engage users and satisfy Google.

• Needed: Content
• Traffic Performance: Medium to High

1. Jump into analytics and look at popular blog posts which you’ve published over 1 year ago.
2. Identify posts which are out-of-date or trending down.
3. Jump into your search analytics within Search Console and identify the top 3-5 keywords people are using to find those posts.
4. Update the post to make it more useful, engaging and SEO-optimised. Don’t forget to add to your word count.
5. Republish the post with an updated publication date.

Add Modifers To Your Title Tags

Did you know that up ~80% of searches come from long-tail searches (3+ words). If you’re running with some default <Page Name> – <Brand Name> titles. Jazz things up a bit, improve CTR and keyword targetting with some popular mofiers.

• Needed: Technical/Content
• Traffic Performance: All

1. Jump into analytics and look at pages getting the most traffic from organic search.
2. Review opportunities to improve titles by adding additional keywords. Some popular examples include: buy, online, australia (or the country you’re targetting), 2017, for sale, best, guide.
3. Update your title tag to include 1-3 of these modifiers.

Remove Thin Content

Identify URLs on your website which aren’t providing any value (or shouldn’t be indexed by Google) and remove from the website and/or Google’s index.

• Needed: Technical
• Traffic Performance: All

1. Crawl your website using a tool like Screaming Frog and append Analytics & Search Console data (so we know what sort of traffic or value the page currently has).
2. With an understanding of how many pages, posts & products you have on your website, compare against a site:domain.com search of your website. Any large inconsistencies between the two sources indicates a problem.
3. Identify pages (and page types on the website) which don’t provide value to a user and/or search engine by way of ‘traffic levels’ and gut-feel. This may come in the form of tag pages, media files, facets & filters, out-dated blog posts and more.
4. Action these pages using one or a combination of the following methods (sorry, you’ll have to figure out what’s best for your situation):
   • Apply the noindex,follow tag
   • Add the nofollow attribute to links to these pages
   • Delete and redirect these pages
   • Merge with other pages
   • Block via robots.txt

Improve your URLs

Identify URLs on your website which are not optimised and not search engine friendly and improve them.

• Needed: Technical
• Traffic Performance: All

1. Crawl your website using a tool like Screaming Frog and append Analytics & Search Console data (so we know what sort of traffic or value the page currently has).
2. Identify URLs which are too long (100+ characters), include unecessary folders or lacking proper keyword optimisation. Common examples include:
   • An unnecessary sub-folder like /shop/ or /index.php
   • Date permalinks within posts/2016/12/06/
   • Include junk words like ‘the’ or ‘a’
3. Update these URLs to include only the keyword your targetting for example /jute-rugs or /rugs/jute (If you’re going down a category tree)
4. 301 Redirect your old URL to the new one.

Please be careful or consult a professional before changing URLs which already get a lot of traffic. A range of factors could cause traffic to slide considerably.

Update & Improve Underperforming Posts

1. Using your own keyword tracking software, ahrefs or SEMRush identify keywords which have high volume and are ranking 3-10
2. Review title tag, headings and content and ensure the page is optimised (at a basic level) for that keyword
3. Review Google’s top 10 for the query, identifying areas where your own page can be improved. Sometimes just adding 300-500 words will do the trick.
4. Implement changes to your page.
5. Identify relevant and high-value pages and add keyword optimised internal links to your target page. Ways to find high-value pages include:
   1. Top pages from a site:domain.com operator
   2. Top pages by links or URL rank (ahrefs)
   3. Top ‘inlinked’ pages from Screaming Frog