There are some tasks, such as migrating from HTTP to HTTPS, which are performed once. Other tasks are performed on a weekly or monthly basis, such as content development, and others that can be done quarterly or annually.
No matter how perfectly you have optimized a website, it will always require constant maintenance. This is because, in a figurative sense, like a vehicle, there are many moving parts and many of them have an impact on others.
In other words,SEO never be done. It is a goal in constant movement.
There are some tasks, such as migrating from HTTP to HTTPS, which are performed once. Other tasks are performed on a weekly or monthly basis, such as content development, and others that can be done quarterly or annually.As we approach the end of the year, many traders will start planning for next year. It is equally important to review what we have done throughout the year to make sure that our work did not cause problems inadvertently in other areas. This helps us make the most of our efforts, as well as start next year with an advantage.
In this article, I will delve into the tasks we normally handle quarterly or annually, because frankly, they are often ignored until there is a crisis. Its proactive management will give you a powerful advantage over competitors.
Tracking broken links
The pages are moved or deleted. The images are replaced. External resources move or even disappear.
Over time, these seemingly minor changes can have a significant impact on a website. Often the impact is positive. But when it results in broken links that are not resolved, the negative impact can increase rapidly.
It is easy to fix some broken links at the moment by updating the main navigation when moving or deleting the main pages. It can be more complicated when internal links within the content come into play.
This is where specialized tools are especially useful.
Instead of manually reviewing each page, which is what we had to do when I started SEO, you can simply use automated software to do the heavy lifting. An additional benefit is that, unlike humans with short attention spans, the software will detect all broken links.
Review content for quality and relevance
You should be producing content regularly.
If you are doing that, you will usually find that, over time, some of that content will become irrelevant or may no longer meet your quality standards. It is possible that part of this content should be eliminated or improved.
This is not a bad thing. It's just the nature of content development.
As we approach the end of the year, now is the time of effect for this. Most business owners are very focused on evaluating their performance for the year and planning for next year.
I recently reviewed one of our clients' websites for this reason and found a lot of content, which although useful at a given time, no longer had a purpose.
This happens for a variety of reasons.
For this particular client, in some cases, news related to their industry was no longer relevant. In others, it was content about specific internal events. And in some, fortunately, rare cases, it was the content created by the client's staff that should never have been created in the first case.
Once you have identified the content of your website that does not meet its quality and / or relevance standards, you must determine what to do with it.
It is possible that part of the content is no longer relevant due to changes in your industry or your business. This content can be removed and URLs redirected to the most relevant content that still exists. If there is nothing relevant to a particular page that is being deleted, then you can remove it without setting up a redirect. However, if that page has an incoming link or has received organic traffic in the last twelve months, I recommend that you find something on its website to redirect it.
It is possible that part of the content no longer meets the quality guidelines. Maybe your writing skills have improved dramatically. Or maybe the content is simply too thin.
The solution for low quality content is simple: improve it.
This can mean rewriting the content, adding additional information and even including images, data and links to other external resources. Just remember: it's not always better. You must aim to answer the query of your visitors in a clear and concise manner. Skip the lint. If you can say everything that needs to be said with only 750 words, then nothing will be gained by inflating it to 3,000 words.
Page speed test
We already know, thanks to data from a variety of sources, that the speed of the page has a dramatic impact on the user experience. We also know that it is a classification factor, both because we have seen the evidence and because Google has told us.
In the same way that low quality content can grow over time, small adjustments to your website can also adversely affect the speed of the page over time.
Here is a source file, a JavaScript library and, before you know it, your website is creeping at a slower pace than the garbage truck you got stuck in during rush hour. And I do not even mean the WordPress add-ons.
I can tell you from first-hand experience that this happens on most websites that are regularly maintained and updated. That is why it is so important to regularly test the speed of the page, especially on the most trafficked pages.
If you have a small website (less than 1,000 pages), I recommend that you try all of your pages. The task is not as monumental as it may seem. We'll talk about the execution shortly.
For websites with more than 1,000 pages, my recommendation is to first test the pages that generate 30 percent of your traffic. Next, test the pages that are not included in that dataset that are critical to your business. And, finally, identify the pages in the bottom 10 percent in terms of organic traffic, highlight whatever is in some moderately important way and try them.
The good news is that it is not necessary to manually test each page. You can collect the initial data within Google Analytics.
If a page is normally loaded in less than three seconds, it is ready. If it normally takes more than three seconds, it's time to use a tool like WebPageTest.org or GTmetrics to identify the elements that are causing the problems.
If you are not familiar with solving these types of problems, you can consult a recent article I published on the subject, entitled How to speed up your page to improve the performance of the website.
Test the design and functionality in the main browsers
I explained how incremental changes to your website could affect the speed of the page, but can also affect the appearance and functioning of some pages.This happened to me recently with a client's website.
We made a change in the CSS file to change the appearance of a particular section, but we did not realize until it was active for a few days that it also changed the appearance in another section. It was pure coincidence that we ran into the other section and saw the problem.
Imagine how small changes over weeks or months could inadvertently add up to drastically affect the design and functionality of unwanted elements.
I recommend adopting an approach similar to the one I explained to test the speed of the page. First, identify the pages that drive 30 percent of your organic traffic for testing. Then, identify any page that is not part of this group that is critical to your business. You can omit the pages that offer the lowest 10 percent of your organic traffic.
Unfortunately, to test the design and functionality, you will have to manually check these pages, but in most cases, it should not take more than a few seconds per page.