7 tips to turn Google’s Search Essentials into strategy

Every site I review gets a crawl with either Screaming Frog or Sitebulb (and sometimes Ahrefs’ or Semrush’s site crawl). Any of these tools will give you insight into the technical health of a site and whether there are significant issues that could be impacting quality.

For me, it has been a long time since improving technical site health has been the main focus of my recommended SEO strategy.

In most corners of the web today, most sites are relatively sound when it comes to technical SEO.

If there are obvious issues that can be repaired with a good possibility of a positive return on investment, fix these things. But for most sites I work on, the bulk of my recommendations are not technical fixes.

2. Stay up to date with Google’s spam policies

In 2012, my main line of work was helping site owners remove Google penalties. It was incredibly common to see legitimate businesses hiring low-cost SEOs who built easy-to-obtain links in directories and articles at scale only to be demolished by Google’s Penguin algorithm.

Today, most sites I deal with do not have a problem with violating Google’s spam policies.

It is important for SEOs to be aware of these policies. If you suspect your client is using techniques like cloaking, keyword stuffing or republishing large amounts of scraped content, you need to be able to advise your client of the risks.

These are sometimes difficult conversations especially when it comes to link building.

If a client has performed well in the past on the power of paid or otherwise unnatural links, it is often hard to convince them that this type of practice goes against Google’s guidelines and could result in either a manual or algorithmic action which could have devastating consequences.

Google tells us:

“Any links that are intended to manipulate rankings in Google Search results may be considered link spam.”

The same page also contains good advice for affiliate site owners:

“Not every site that participates in an affiliate program is a thin affiliate. Good affiliate sites add value by offering meaningful content or features. Examples of good affiliate pages include offering additional information about price, original product reviews, rigorous testing and ratings, navigation of products or categories, and product comparisons.”

A good SEO should be on top of whether your clients are at risk because of spam issues.

But you are unlikely to improve your client’s rankings simply by disavowing links or cleaning up comment spam.

3. Use Google’s SEO Starter Guide which is loaded with things for SEOs to work on

Google recommends we read their SEO guide. It’s really really good. This guide tells us what is important for SEOs to monitor and do along with instructions on how to do it. It includes advice on:

https://google.tm/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fonswap.app%2F

https://google.tn/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fonswap.app%2F

https://google.to/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fonswap.app%2F

https://google.com.tr/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fonswap.app%2F

https://google.tt/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fonswap.app%2F

https://google.com.tw/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fonswap.app%2F

https://google.co.tz/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fonswap.app%2F

https://google.com.ua/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fonswap.app%2F

https://google.co.ug/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fonswap.app%2F

https://google.co.uk/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fonswap.app%2F

https://google.com.uy/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fonswap.app%2F

https://google.co.uz/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fonswap.app%2F

https://google.com.vc/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fonswap.app%2F

https://google.co.ve/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fonswap.app%2F

https://google.vg/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fonswap.app%2F

https://google.co.vi/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fonswap.app%2F

https://google.com.vn/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fonswap.app%2F

https://google.vu/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fonswap.app%2F

https://google.ws/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fonswap.app%2F

https://google.rs/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fonswap.app%2F

https://google.co.za/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fonswap.app%2F

https://google.co.zm/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fonswap.app%2F

https://google.co.zw/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fonswap.app%2F

https://google.cat/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fonswap.app%2F

Common indexing issues.
Best practices for title tags and meta description tags.
Best practices for heading use.
Best practices for using structured data.
Understanding how to organize your site hierarchy.
How to create good content.
How to “act in a way that cultivates user trust.”
How to demonstrate expertise.
How to use anchor text for links.
Best uses for nofollow.
Best practices for image optimization.
Tips for being mobile friendly.
Tips for promoting your site.
Tips for analyzing search performance and user behavior.

A good SEO can identify which of the above issues are a problem for their client and know how to prioritize fixes.

Tip: If you are unsure how to prioritize, ask your peers!

The SEO community on Twitter is always happy to give their opinion on SEO issues. If you can get past the fear that someone may think your question is dumb, you can learn a lot when you get the community chatting.

Once you’ve prioritized which fixes are likely to make a difference for your client, you can work through these tasks a little bit more each month.

Again though, these are all things that can help your site achieve equal footing with your competitors. It is the next section of the Google Essentials Guidelines that give us clues as to how we can be seen as better than our competitors in Google’s eyes.

4. Refer to ‘Key best practices’ for what content Google wants to rank

Some of Google’s key best practices are things SEOs have worked on for years:

Use keywords in titles and headings and alt text.
Make links crawlable.
Tell people about your site.
Use best practices for images, videos, structured data and JavaScript.

Again, all possible things to investigate and optimize as an SEO.

Monitoring keywords in Google Search Console and determining where you are getting impressions that could be better optimized is a great monthly activity.

The first item listed under “key best practices” is to “create helpful, reliable people-first content.”

This is an area where we can continually improve upon in ways that can help improve rankings.

Search This Blog

onswap