Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has come a long way since the days of stuffing keyword phrases like “best NYC restaurant” or “affordable shoes” into as many places as you could on your website. Google makes hundreds of little changes a year to its algorithm, and launches a major update every so often that turns the SEO world upside down. But in general, SEO has evolved to become more humanized than it was in the past. A good mix of natural, conversational language, combined with great media content, accurate business information, backlinks, and user generated content will typically give you better results than the old “writing for robots” strategy of yesteryear. However, some of these efforts take time and resources. So let’s look at a few quick and easy SEO fixes you can implement immediately and start seeing results soon after.

Test Your Current SEO

Before you dive in, it helps to get a sense of your current state. Perform an SEO audit to see what’s working, and where your areas of improvement are. Neil Patel offers a free SEO Analyzer tool to get you started in looking at your site and comparing it to your competitors. SEMrush is another great option for an SEO audit. Once you know what needs fixing, you can focus on those areas of your site.

Find and Fix Broken Links

“Really? Links? Again?” You may have just had a similar thought. But hear us out. Broken links take away credibility from your site, which, in turn, pushes it down in search results. Nowadays, finding and fixing broken links is not nearly as hard or cumbersome as it sounds. There are a number of tools that will do the hard work for you in identifying bad links on your site. Google Webmasters’ Fetch as Google can help, as well as SEMrush and a variety of others you can find from a quick Google search. Once you identify the bad links, remove or redirect them.

Optimize for Mobile

Open your site on your mobile phone. How does it look? If it’s not a good experience, you’ll want to optimize your site for mobile asap. Since the end of 2016, mobile has been the preferred way to access the Internet for consumers, outperforming desktop. Google knows this, and penalizes websites that do not give visitors a good user experience on a mobile device. Optimizing for mobile may require a website redesign (which you should start talking about today), or it may be as simple as switching to a responsive theme if you use WordPress or other DIY platforms. Responsive websites detect the screen size of the device someone is using, and automatically displays content to best fit that screen or device. The alternative option is to have a mobile version of your site, but that can add more work as you essentially have to manage two versions of the site. We recommend the responsive approach.

Edit and Proofread (Or Hire Someone)

Typos happen. Even great writers are guilty of publishing grammatical mistakes or misspellings. Typos and misinformation on your site greatly reduces your credibility and can have a strong impact on bounce rate (the rate at which people leave your site). A higher bounce rate will negatively impact your ranking in search results. Furthermore, misinformation can lead to a “Fake News” accusation, and Google and Facebook have both taken steps to identify sites that are considered fake news. An honest mistake can lump you into this category, which will impact SEO negatively.

Add Great Visual Content

People need visual content to stay on your site and absorb your information. Infographics, illustrations, photos, and videos are compelling and help drive conversions. Put simply, people retain visual marketing content at a higher rate than text content. More importantly (from an SEO perspective), good visual content is very shareable, which can create more user generated content and backlinks to your site. In addition, Google’s image search function makes your site more accessible to Google via your images and visual content.

SEO is a multi-faceted, ongoing effort. It’s important to keep an eye on site Analytics regularly, and perform audits and updates from time to time, especially after major algorithm changes. When done correctly, SEO efforts can pay off exponentially for your business in driving traffic and conversions through your site.

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