Is Your Content in Need of a Refresh?

This is a guest post by Steve Lazuka of Interact Media.

Anyone who is in blogging and business will know only too well that the world never stands still. There is always a new product, an exciting development or an emerging trend. Keeping up-to-date is what keeps a website healthy and competitive. It can therefore be surprising that many professionals have online sites where the website content is stale and in desperate need of a refresh.

Consider your website is a shop window. Just as a department store changes its window displays on a regular basis so as to keep their customers’ interest engaged, so should an online site regularly update its look and content. There are a few different ways you can start to integrate some refreshing changes into your onsite content, but first you must look at the following.

Onsite Components

URL Structure
Do you have your major keywords integrated into the URLs of the landing pages you want those keywords to rank for? Are your URLs short, and less than three categorical levels? They should be.

Meta Tags
Do you have completely unique meta titles and descriptions throughout your site? Duplications are a no-no.

• Sign up for Google Webmaster tools and easily you can see if you have any duplication.
• Download SEO for Firefox and use its SEO XRay to examine each and every one of your pages (by right clicking when on the page you wish to examine).
• Check to make sure your keywords are in your meta title and description, the length of meta title is less than 65 characters, and the length of meta description is less than 155 characters. This tool will also help you look at keyword density.

Heading Tags
Are you properly utilizing heading tags on each page of your site? H1 tags should always be near the top of the page, and should contain your primary keyword for the page. Utilizing H2-5 tags is also a good idea, and integrating keywords into those as well. The Web Developer Firefox plugin will help you easily find heading tags with a right click of the mouse. Using this tool you will see any hiding heading tags, which is always a no-no.

Internal Links
In past experience it seems that many site owners either go crazy with internal links or don’t utilize them enough. Having a proper balance is important. With the SEO for Firefox plugin (and the SEO XRay) you can see the total number of internal links to an individual page on your site quickly and easily.

It’s important to keep this number in moderation, and to also optimize the anchor text of the internal links with your keywords. This important key factor is forgotten by many site owners. And for WordPress blogs, you can use a plugin called SEO Smart Links to create a list of keywords that should be automatically linked to specific pages or posts on your blog.

Alt Tags
Using images? Check out the alt tags. With the Web Developer plugin you can quickly and easily see image alt tags. Google can’t “see” pictures, but they can see what you name pictures. Integration of your keywords (when appropriate) into image alt tags can give your page some extra oomph.

Content

Now it’s time to look at the content component of your web copy. There is a balance you’ll have to find between optimizing content in a way that is best suited for search engines, and writing copy that is suitable to your site audience. Key things to remember:

• Your keyword(s) should be used in the first paragraph of your content.
• Keyword(s) should be used throughout the body of your content.
• Keywords should be used at the end of your content as well.
• Don’t overdo the density of your keyword(s).

Additional Tips

Here area a few more tips when it comes to refreshing your content.

• Research the enemy – To be less dramatic, have a look at what your competitors are doing. This can be a really instructive process, as it will help highlight where your rivals have the edge while also learning from their mistakes. It’s also a superb way to keep a handle on current trends in your sector so you can ensure you respond to your readers’ and customers’ expectations.
• Use a site that is doing particularly well as a case study – It can be really instructive as you can see where you need to adapt and even improve on their methods to add value to your own business.
• Use Google Analytics constantly – Find out how long visitors are on a page on your site, what is the bounce rate, are they leaving your page and going to another page on your site, or is there a page better suited for traffic? These are all things one must consider.
• Consider A/B testing – This is where only a select number of visitors to your site will view a completely different web page. Over time you’ll receive data for the original page, and data for the alternative page. You can analyze the data and figure out whether you have better conversion on the new page or the old page.

Revamping your website is a relatively painless experience, but it needs to be done well and to a highly professional standard. If you don’t tackle this simple task, you run the risk of falling behind your competitors as your blog or business flounders. However, by keeping up-to-date and refreshing your website content, you can help your site flourish.

Your Thoughts

Is your content in need of a refresh? What steps do you plan on taking to making your content for your blog or business more interesting for visitors and more appealing to search engines?

• How Google Handles Duplicate Content
• Google PageRank Update – Internal Pages and Top Content Analysis
• Potential Benefits of Duplicate Content
• 5 Ways to Produce Content Readers Will Love
• 3 Questions to Ask About Offensive Content on Your Blog

This post brought to you by Steve Lazuka

Steve is the owner/operator of Interact Media, a website content and copywriting company with an informative content marketing blog.

Steve has written 1 awesome article(s) for Kikolani.

Kikolani runs on Thesis, but also likes using Genesis. Learn more about Thesis vs. Genesis.

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