A big part of your yearly website SEO maintenance should include a “spring cleaning” of sorts, where you comb through your site:
fixing broken images
strengthening your internal link structure
refreshing and/or purging older content
The overall point of these activities is to ensure that your content continues to rank highly for its respective keywords, so before leaving all of that content out to spoil, follow these essential spring cleaning steps on your website to get the most out of it all year.
Address Any 404 Errors
Would-be users are more likely to bounce off of your page if they land on a 404 page. Screaming Frog and other diagnostic tools can audit your site, revealing which URLs under the domain receive the error. Acceptable ways to fix a 404 error that improve the user experience include:
a custom 404 page
301/302 redirects to a working URL (there is no good reason SEO-wise to use a temporary 302 redirect, which was subject to a Google aging delay in the past and retains link juice for the old domain, a largely unnecessary feature for many redirects.)
Time for a New Sitemap?
Your sitemap can be uploaded into analytic tools like Google Search Console, and should be done so whenever:
your site structure changes
new content has been added
new or updated structured data has been added
Though submitting a single new sitemap can help speed up the ranking process for your site, multiple sitemap submissions can confuse the system and actually slow down the process. Only submit a single new sitemap when necessary.
Fix Broken Links
Free online and in-browser tools and plugins exist that can detect broken on-page links, which can detract from the user experience as well. Remove or redirect these broken links to working URLs.
Update Old Content
If your website has been around for awhile, chances are you have some pages that probably ranked really well once upon a time, but likely have outdated information, broken images, etc. Be sure to scan these older pieces of content to see if they can be optimized for:
img alt text
header structure
internal links
keyword phrases
If updated information wildly conflicts with the original articles content, a simple “update” at the top of the article suffices.
Regularly Back Up Your Site
Most self-hosted websites will provide support or access to some type of tool that backs up your website in its entirety, and on a set schedule. Rather than losing everything you worked for due to a database crash, set up a regular backup schedule using one of these tools and rest easy.
How Little Egg Solutions Can Help
We are Little Egg Solutions, and we are dedicated to helping your little egg grow. If you don’t have the time worry about setting up a site backup, updating content, fixing 404 errors, or doing the full audit that typically finds all of these items, get in touch and let the organic SEO experts at Little Egg Solutions do it for you. We will be more than happy to help you reach your customers.