My website is about 14 months old now and for some, it might sound fairly established in terms of traffic. At least, that was what I hoped. As a beginner, I struggled to understand SEO and in the process, I actually ended up making more mistakes than I thought. In this article, I am going to show you on how to improve on your website SEO by fixing specific problems. Hopefully, you’ll benefit from these tips too.
A couple months ago, I found out that my search traffic is finally picking up. Hurray! Interestingly, I could also match the spike in data to some of the things I did around that time.
Timeline – February 2014 to October 2014
The Stats – Zero Traffic Report
The Situation – Well, I got a website alright. But I totally FORGOTTEN to inform Google about it. So even when I was publishing my blog diligently, Google has no idea about it and hence my site didn’t get ranked at all.
The fix:
(A) Set Up Google Analytics (a free web analytic service that tracks and report website traffic)
Method 1 – Use a plugin. You must have a Gmail account for this. From there, you go to Google Analytics, register your website URL and get your tracking ID. The ID is to be inserted in the Google Analytics ID in the All in One SEO plugin (if you are using this) and make sure you update the settings.
To verify, open your website in a new browser and at the Real Time data, you should be able to see ‘one visitor’ who is actually you, viewing your own site. Sometimes, it could take up to 24 hours to show data on the analytics. Once that’s completed, your status should say ‘Receiving Data’ as shown below.
Method 2 – You can also add analytics manually to your site by copying the tracking code and pasting it to your header.php file. Some people might not feel comfortable doing this because if you accidentally delete any code in the editor, your site could break.
(B) Set Up Google Webmaster (also a free service that helps to index and increase visibility of your website)
To do this, sign into your Gmail account and access to Google Webmaster Tools. Add your website and verify using your Google Analytics account, which is the recommended route. Once that’s done, you’ll be able to see some traffic report trickling in.
(C) Submit a Sitemap
A sitemap is basically a map that improves your website indexing speed by letting Google crawl your webpages more thoroughly.
To do this, you’ll need to install a plugin called Google XML Sitemaps at your WordPress site. Within the sitemap setting, you’ll be able to see the URL of your sitemap in the top column. Grab that URL and go back to Google Webmaster to add the sitemap.
After submitting the sitemap, Google will now be able to crawl your site more frequently as you continue to publish your articles. Here is what it will say on your sitemap settings;
If you are using All in One SEO plugin, the sitemap can be enabled under the feature manager.
Timeline – October 2014 to November 2014
The Stats – 10 to 20 Search Traffic
The Situation – At this point, I had like 40+ posts/pages and was getting some engagement from my readers. One of them actually commented on my poor choice of WordPress theme and suggested that I look into changing it. I used to think that all themes work the same; just different in designs and layouts. Well, I was wrong. Apparently, they play a huge role in optimizing your site.
The Fix – I upgraded to a premium theme and here’s the change.
Timeline – December 2014 to January 2015
The Stats – 30 to 50 Search Traffic
The Situation – I took some time to revise my blog and decided to improve on the content. I researched for better keywords and replaced them on the titles and in the first paragraphs. Surely with captivating titles, I would be able to capture more audience…or so I thought.
And then, I read about 301 redirect. Uh-oh.
You see, when I went around changing the titles, I inadvertently changed the URL as well. By now, Google already indexed some of my older blogs and since I had changed the permalinks of these articles, Google will not be able to find them the next time it crawls my website. As a result, my new content will rank much slower.
The Fix – In order to let Google know about the changes, you should do a 301 redirect. To do this, you’ll need to download the Simple 301 Redirect plugin (by Scott Nelle). In the setting, simply fill out the old permalinks (a.k.a slug) and the new permalinks according to your new keyword title.
That way, you’ll direct the traffic from your old URL to the new URL without affecting the page rank.
I worked on this laboriously for almost 60 articles and days later, my traffic jumped from 50 to over 100 searches. What a boost!
The moral of the story – avoid using 301 redirect, if you can. It’s very time consuming and non-productive. So don’t go around changing the permalinks unnecessarily.
Timeline – January 2015 to February 2015
The Stats – 40 to 120 Search Traffic
The Situation – Up to this point, I was only focusing on one task which is writing. As a busy blogger, it’s actually challenging to find time to work on my site. But I knew I needed to put in more effort.
The Fix – I started on a daily and monthly plan. I set dates for articles to be published (no questions asked), I organized blogs to be shared across all social networks and I actually removed some affiliate links (I was reluctant at first).
Instead, I focused more on building my internal links within the content as well as in the commenting area. As I paid more attention, I actually found a lot of great comments from my readers that can be linked to older articles and even inspired me with ideas for new blog posts.
So, to all my avid readers out there, thank you!
Timeline – March 2015 and beyond
The Stats – 60 to 120 Search Traffic (and something unexpected happened towards the end)
The Situation – I was told time and again that creating good quality content is very important and the more frequent you publish, the faster your site get ranked. I have also been using a lot of media (images, infographics, videos, etc.) and still getting good comments from my readers. So what’s going on here?
The Fix – I accelerated my writing speed and managed to publish articles every 2 days for the entire March. Suspecting that my media content could be slowing down my site, I used GT Metrix to test my loading speed and true enough, I got a shocking ‘F’ for it.
Surely, that isn’t very good for the user experience, isn’t it? Apparently most of the faults came from the size of images and after tweaking based on their recommendation, I scored a perfect ‘A’.
Yay!!!
As I was checking what else to do to improve my SEO, I discovered one thing that I have overlooked all these while. Most of my readers are bloggers and they usually leave their website URLs behind in the comment area as an invitation for me to visit their sites. For every comment that I approved, I allowed these URLs to be published on my site too.
As a result, I had accidentally created massive external links to my site. The last I check, there were close to 1,600 external URLs leading my traffic away. That was a horrifying number! I quickly deleted all the URLs and after several days, my traffic actually doubled.
Here’s a graphical summary of my rather ‘interesting’ SEO timeline (click to enlarge).
What’s Your SEO Like?
I know, my stats is not very impressive. Then again, I am not an SEO expert; I am just a budding blogger trying to start her own online business. So I think this experience will benefit those who are starting out, just like me. At least, you don’t have to repeat the same mistakes that I did.
As the months progress, I hope to share more of these traffic data with you guys. Until then, keep writing good content and trust me, the traffic will come.
Do you have any thoughts or questions about improving website SEO? Please leave your comment below and I’ll get back to you.
Hi Cathy – this is a great read for one simple reason (for me anyway) – you’ve listed numbers, and a timeline, and what you did each time to improve the traffic.
That’s exactly the type of information some of us need – as we just don’t realize what we may be doing wrong.
Hi there Mark,
This is not the easiest topic to write, but I am glad to have made notes of the actions and results pertaining to each situation on the timeline. I hope this will help more people who are trying to improve on their SEO.
I have gone through several courses to learn how to create WordPress website and I had no way of knowing that there were some VERY important details left out. I have come to learn that they are so fundamental that it’s hard to believe they were left out!
I am talking about the use of Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools. If you aren’t using webmaster tools, you are leaving up to Google to find your content in a sea of new content that is published everyday! They may find it eventually, but why wait?
There are 2 things I always do immediately after publishing new content.
1. I ping my article with Pingoat.net
2. I use the “Fetch” feature within webmaster tools and submit it to the index.
These 2 activities have reduced my index time and I have achieved first page rankings in a matter of days! I would never have learned about these methods had I not undergone the training program at Wealthy Affiliate.
Exactly my point, Steve.
Most website builders that I have tried prompt about Google Analytics, but not many will tell you about Google Webmasters. These two tools work in tandem so it’s vital to install them from the very start.
Yes, I ping my articles too, but I am using Pingler.com instead. It’s also a good practice to share them socially on Google Plus and Pinterest right after publishing, just to give it a little bit of boost.
Thanks for sharing Cathy. I never considered before the page speed as an important factor and now I understand it. Totally right and I need to work on that. Will check on my page speed now. Thanks again!
Hi there Andrea,
Page speed is really important for websites, especially those with a lot of images like a food blog or a travel blog. Compressing or reducing the size of these images can actually help the site load faster. If you need me to help test yours, just send me the link when you get things fix.
Some good SEO tips. I didn’t know about how to solve a redirect problem. Sometimes I get my permalink wrong but just leave it so I don’t have to wait for Google to re-index it. So it’s good to know there’s something I can do instead.
There’s one thing I’m a little confused about. When you said that there were 1600 external URLs leading traffic away, did you mean that too many people were leaving your site through those URLs?
Hi Martina,
Theoretically, those external URLs are pointing traffic away from my site, from Google crawlers point of view. The only time it would actually take people away is when the readers click on the blogger’s name, leave my site and land on the other blogger’s site.
By deleting the URLs (hopefully) I am able to retain more readers within my site and get the crawlers to check out my other posts rather than sending them away. Likewise, you also want to have more internal links vs external links within your content to funnel readers to your landing page.
Right, and it’s not so much that people are actually clicking on those links, but that Google sees all those links as an indicator that the website as just a reference to other sites, while not offering much valuable content itself.
Another tip, regarding the 301 redirect, is to just set the slug before changing the title. Usually, the “slug” changes to match the title when you change it. However, you can set the slug separately. I usually do this when I publish an article, just in case I decide to change the title later. That way, there is no need to add any plugins or worry about the redirect. The slug (and thus, the URL for the page) remains the same no matter what you do to the title. 😉
Thank you for your comment, Scott.
I was under the impression, from various sources, that the slug should be the same as the blog title for SEO purposes as well as for the user experience. That’s why I use a redirect because I went in to change the slug as well.
I wonder what’s your take on that. Thank you 🙂
I guess it depends on how drastically you change the title. But not much. Nobody is going to actually type in the URL with the slug. Most people will click on a link from Google. If they’ve bookmarked the page, it’s the same thing. Just a click. As far as SEO goes, the URL of the page is not as important as the title and the content.
Google displays the page title, regardless of the URL and Slug. So, the slug doesn’t matter as much as it used to. Set the slug from the beginning, and after it’s already in the search engines, you can change the title as you like and won’t have to worry about any redirecting at all.
Thank you for your thorough feedback, Scott. I was under the impression that the title should match the slug, so when I changed the title, I literary deleted the old slug and type in the new one. That was when I proceed to do a 301 redirect. From the resources I gathered, I am still in the opinion that the title should match the slug. Could you point me to an article that suggest otherwise? It would be good to know.
Thanks again, Scott!
Very good article, explains in depth on how to improve SEO ranking of the website. I did all of the necessary steps including submitting a sitemap. Now all I have to do is create good quality content and the traffic will come.
Hi there Ante,
Content is the single most important factor to get more traffic and rank better in terms of SEO. Good quality here means – informative, more word counts (800-1000 words/article at least), publishing and sharing frequently online. So, try to do that on a consistent basis and you’ll see good results on GWT.
Hi Cathy
I am so glad that I came across this article because I made some of the errors listed above and I will need to look at this more in depth when I get time.
Also, when you say that bloggers left their URL, do you mean literally in the comments box? Or was it picked up just by them leaving a comment?
I was on Google Webmaster Tools last night and I noticed lots of links to other sites. Not sure if it was just saying who was on my site or if it’s something I need to fix.
Also, like you I updated to a premium theme and it’s well worth the $10 dollars or thereabouts.
Hi there Olive,
A premium theme will definitely make you site more optimized largely because they are mobile responsive and well coded. But it will not necessarily help in traffic if you don’t provide any good quality content.
As for the bloggers URL, yes, you delete them at the comment box (if they type it in). In GWT, the ‘Links To Your Site’ is the natural backlinks that you are getting from other places on the web. This isn’t exactly a problem because all these links will point readers back to your site, if they click on it.
Thanks Cathy, I just sorted this, one more thing off my “to-do” list.
I really needed to know how to improve my SEO. Cathy, you never cease to amaze me. Your articles are chock full of useful information every week, presented in a way that everyone can understand.
I love your examples. I’m not a real critical thinker so to have the text along with the pictures help me understand.
How do you remove the blogger URLs?
Hi Lin,
Thank YOU for becoming my avid reader by fueling so many interesting engagement 🙂 To remove the URLs, click on “Quick Edit” beneath that particular comment. You’ll find ‘Name’, ‘Email’ and ‘URL’ on the first row. Delete anything that’s in the URL column before publishing the comment and you should be fine.
Hey Cathy – I really enjoyed your article about SEO – it actually helped clarify a lot for me. As a beginner, it really helped me avoid some mistakes as an affiliate marketer. Like for example, I am going to make sure I write my content from the get go with strong keywords in the title and first few paragraphs. I should also check the images on my web content – this was such a helpful post. Thank you!
Welcome to my blog, Anja.
Good selection of keywords is definitely the cornerstone for search ranking. You should try to use Jaaxy keyword research tool to help discover low-competition long-tail keywords to write your articles. This will indirectly expose your articles to semantic keywords that can be used for page ranking too.
If you need any help, feel free to drop me a message at WA.
Cathy,
Great post and thanks for sharing some information about your traffic. Site speed is something that I’ve struggled improving in the past. I’ve looked into it a bit, but do you have any recommended plugins or techniques for improving your site speed?
Hi there Brok,
I did install a site speed plugin a while ago (can’t remember the name) but I remembered that my site ‘behaved’ very strangely shortly after. My social sharing disappeared, some of my editing tools went missing etc. Suspecting that it could be a plugin incompatibility problem, I had to delete each of them one by one to catch the culprit.
I ended up uninstalling a few plugins (the site speed being one of them) and currently have 17 plugins that seem to agree with one another. It would be great if they don’t slow down my site already!
Wow Cathy, I’ve been trying to improve traffic to my site and didn’t seem to be getting anywhere quickly. I thought I was doing things pretty much right, but I still don’t seem to be making much progress. There are some tips and ideas you’ve given here that I would have never thought of. I’m bookmarking this page and will be trying some of your techniques.
Hi Eoin, I believe there’s a video tutorial in Wealthy Affiliate on “Tips on Improving a Site’s Ranking”. I find it very relevant to my timeline (maybe yours too) and it made me realized that I need to go back to fix some articles. Do watch it when you have the time. It will surely add more value to your traffic.
This is a great article. It is very helpful because I am having a few problems with my SEO as well. How did you delete external urls? Thanks
Welcome to my blog, Tavis.
You can delete external URLs at the commenting area within your WordPress site. Check my explanation to Lin at the comment above.