Detect and Improve Underperforming Content
SEO is all about content nowadays, right? Compared to when I started working in SEO (2014), today, content is consistently one of the most popular topics covered at digital marketing conferences, there are way more tools that focus on content analysis and optimization, and overall it seems to dominate most of SEO news. But why is it that content is now dominating the SEO scene? How vital is content for your SEO strategy, actually? And most importantly: how can you be content with your site’s content? Puns aside, this post aims to help you figure out potential causes of your underperforming content and how to improve it.
1. How to detect the issues affecting your content
We’ve covered the why above, let’s now address the how: how to determine what issue affects your page/content. This part is especially dedicated to a not-too savvy SEO audience (skip this part and go straight to next if you are after the how-to recommendations). We’ll go through a list of checks that can help you detect the issues.
- Technical checks
Google Search Console
Use the URL inspection tool to analyze the status of the page: it can help you answer questions such as:
- Has my page been crawled? Are we even allowing Google to crawl the page?
- Has my page been indexed? Are we even allowing Google to index the page?
By assessing the Coverage feature, Google will share information about the crawlability and indexability of the page. Pay particular attention to the Indexing section, where they mention user-declared canonical vs google-selected canonical. If the two differ, it’s definitely worth investigating the reason, as this means Google isn’t respecting the canonical directives placed on the page.
- Chrome extensions
Some Chrome extensions can give you lots of info on the indexability status of the page with a simple click, checking things like canonical tags and meta robots tags. My favorite extensions for this matter are:
- Portent's SEO Page Review
- SEO minion
- SEO META in 1 CLICK
- JavaScript check
JavaScript is key in today’s environment as it adds interactivity to a page. By doing so, it may alter some key HTML elements that are very important for SEO. You can easily check how a page would look without JS by using this convenient tool by Onley: WWJD.
You need only one of the following tools in order to check whether JavaScript might be a problem for your on-page SEO:
- Mobile friendly test
- Rich snippet results
- URL Inspection tool
All the above tools are very useful for any type of troubleshooting as they are showcasing the rendered-DOM resources in real-time (different from what the “view-source” of a page looks like).
- Intent and SERP analysis
By analyzing the SERP for key terms of focus, you’ll be able to identify a series of questions that relate to your content in relation to intent, competition, and relevance. All major SEO tools nowadays provide you with tons of great information about what the SERP looks like for whatever keyword you’re analyzing.
- Duplication and cannibalization issues
Use compelling SEO tools to understand the following:
- whether, for tracked keywords of interest, two or more ranking URLs have been flip-flopping. That is a clear sign that search engines are confused and cannot “easily decide” on what URL to rank for a certain keyword.
- whether, for tracked keywords of interest, two or more ranking URLs are appearing at the same time (not necessarily on page one of the SERP). That is a clear signal of duplication/cannibalization.
- check your SEO visibility by landing page: if different URLs that rank for very similar keyword permutations, chances are there is a risk there.
- last but not least: do a simple site search for keywords of interest in order to get an initial idea of how many pages (that cover a certain topic) have been indexed by Google. This is an insightful preliminary exercise and also useful to validate your worries.
2. How to fix underperforming content
We’ve covered the most common cases of underperforming content and how to detect such issues — now let’s talk about ways to fix them. Below is a list of suggested actions to take when improving your underperforming content, with some very valuable links to other resources (mostly from Moz or Google) that can help you expand on individual concepts.
Make sure your page can be crawled and indexed “properly”
- Ensure that your page does not fall under any path of blocked resources in Robots.txt
- Ensure your page is not provided with a no-index meta robots tag or a canonical tag pointing elsewhere (a self-referencing canonical tag is something you may want to consider but not compulsory at all).
- Check whether other pages have a canonical tag pointing to your URL of focus. Irrelevant or poorly-done canonical tags tend to get ignored by Google — you can check if that is the case in the URL Inspection tool.
- Ensure your site (not just your page) is free from any non-SEO friendly JavaScript that can alter key on-page elements (such as headers, body content, internal links, etc.).
- Ensure your page is linked internally on the site and present in your XML sitemap.
Understand search intent
- Search intent is a fascinating topic in and of itself, and there are a lot of great resources on the subject if you want to delve deeper into it.
- Put simply, you should always research what the SERP looks like for the topic of interest: by analyzing the SERP and all its features (organic and non), you can get a much better understanding of what search engines are looking for in order to match intent.
- By auditing the SERP, you should be able to answer the following questions:
a. What type of content is Google favoring here: transactional, navigational, informational?
b. How competitive are the keywords of focus and how authoritative are those competitors ranking highly for them?
c. What content format is Google showcasing in the SERP?
d. How comprehensive should my content be to get a chance to rank in page one?
e. What keywords are used in the competitor’s metadata?
f. What organic features should I consider addressing with my content (things like featured snippets, people also ask, top images, etc.)?
- Hopefully all the questions above will also give you a realistic view of your chances of ranking on Google’s first page. Don’t be afraid to switch your focus to PPC for some very competitive keywords where your real possibility of organic rankings are slim.
Make the right content amends
- Based on the intent audit and keyword mapping insights, you’re now ready to work on your actual page content.
- By now, you’ve done your homework, so you just need to focus on writing great content for the user (and not for Google).
- Readability is a very important part of a page. Tricks that I’ve learned from colleagues over the years are the following:
- Read the content out loud and try to objectively assess how interesting it is for your target audience.
- Make sure to use enough spacing between lines and paragraphs. People’s attention span these days is very short, and chances are people will skim through your content rather than dedicating 100% of their attention to it (I’m sure some of YOU readers are doing it right now!).
- Make sure your tone of voice and language match your target audience (if you can write things in plain English vs. highly technical jargon, do so and don’t over-complicate your life).
- Make sure you’ve thought about all internal linking possibilities across the site. Not only for the same type of page (transactional page to transactional page, for instance) but also across different types (transactional page to video/blog post, if that helps people make a decision, for example).
- Optional step: once everything is ready, request indexing of your page in Google Search Console with the URL inspection tool.
Courtesy & Copyright
https://creativesaints.com/
http://graphicwebdesign.in/
https://www.papeel.com.br/
https://graphicmama.com/blog/social-media-design-tips/
http://graphicdesignjunction.com/page/7/
https://graphicmama.com/blog/web-design-secrets-and-tips/
https://moz.com/blog/improve-underperforming-content
https://moz.com/blog?page=4