The SEO team at LendingTree works to improve pages across multiple sites in a variety of areas, including home loans, mortgage refinance, auto loans, auto refinance, student loans and home services. Today they share their favorite SEO audit tools and suggestions. On-Site Health Check with Sam Ruiz

"I like to run a BrightEdge SEO site audit to get an overall look at on-site health--duplicate content, broken links and other details that can affect your site's performance on SERPs."

The diagnostic report allows you to set priorities on items, and then breaks down all the issues by priority: severe, moderate, minor. I go to work on the severe problems first and work my way down the priority list. Here are some examples:

• Missing or empty page title, meta description, or H1 tag
• Duplicate page title or content
• Missing or empty H2 tags
• Poor text to code ratio
• Bold and italics tags
• Page size too large
• Page title too short or too long
• Page URL too long
• Image tags without alt attribute
• 404 errors (reclaim links to pages that were moved or removed)

Further Reading: Basic SEO Concepts.

Google Tools with Erika Sturino

"I like to dig into some of the less-used features in Google Analytics and Webmaster tools to find some really interesting things during an SEO audit."

Under-Utilized GA Reports for an SEO Audit Audience:Technology:Network:HostName

Hostnames--the most boring GA report ever, right? Well, maybe not, since I find things like:

• A domain that scraped your entire site and all the code including your GA tracking. This is a good time to send a Cease & Desist letter to some of those very blatant copiers.
• Someone who hand-coded their GA code could have fat-fingered or mistyped their tracking code, accidentally putting in yours. You may start seeing strange lifts in traffic or keywords and pages that don’t make sense. You can reach out to these people and let them know (typically, they’ll be pretty grateful someone told them!).

Audience:Mobile:Overview

• Check if bounce rate is similar across device categories
• Do pages/session and average session duration vary by device category? If so, start digging in and seeing how you can optimize your lower performing device category or find some learnings from your higher performing one.

Audience:Mobile:Devices (Mobile Device Info, Mobile Device Branding, and Operating System)

• If a certain brand, device or operating system has a bounce rate significantly higher than the others, you should dig in and figure out if something is broken.

Behavior:Site Speed:Page Timings

• Which pages on your site are the slowest? Find out here. Flip into this report and switch to Avg Page Load Time (sec) in both columns.
• You can see the avg load time for all your pages and how that compares to the site average.
• Try changing the first drop-down to pageviews to see how your top trafficked pages compare in speed to the rest of your site.

Behavior:Site Speed:Speed Suggestions

• Pick your top trafficked pages and put the page speed suggestions in place.
• Pick your top target pages that AREN’T performing as well as you’d like and put the suggestions in place.

Behavior:Site Search:Search Terms

If you use Site Search, jump in and look for terms people are commonly searching for on your site. If you don’t have a great page for those search terms, make one now. Give the people what they want.

GWMT

I use GWMT regularly. Check your messages and look at the search queries report and links to your site.

Search Appearance: Structure Data

Do you have structured data across a large number of pages? If so, check this report. Even if it was perfect when it was implemented, I’ve found that something usually breaks along the way. Check for errors and get fixes in place.

Search Appearance:HTML Improvements

Here, Google's actually telling you how to improve your HTML to make them happier. They tell you the exact page and HTML to change. Why wouldn't you do this? Also, this is a great way to find accidental duplicate content on your site.

Search Traffic: Mobile Usability

Not sure if your site should be improved for mobile? Google wants to tell you that, too. They tell you the potential mobile error, how many pages have the error, which pages have the error, when the error was last detected and what to do about it. Thanks, Google!

Crawl: Crawl Errors

This is an amazing report and should be used regularly. My favorite use is fixing internal links (I don’t like 404s. 301, 302 or 410 them -- 404s mean you are lazy) and finding opportunities for link reclamation.

Crawl: Sitemaps

Check for errors. Make sure all your pages are there. Don’t send Google to pages that don’t exist. And the biggest thing: what percent of your web pages submitted are also indexed? If you don’t have most of the pages in your sitemap indexed, figure out why. Figure out which pages Google doesn't want to index and make them better. Further Reading: Google Webmaster Tools for SEO Efficiency.

Classy Content with Ralph Miller

Classy content captures the intention of your audience, answering deeper questions they haven't even thought to ask Google yet.

Intention

Classy content starts by understanding a searcher's intentions. Ask yourself these questions:

• When you Google "things to do in Phoenix," are you looking for one thing to do or a list?
• When you search "how to become a teacher," are you also interested in teacher salaries?
• When you need to refinance your car, would a refinance calculator be useful?

Your answers help define your intention for these searches. Your website visitors may have a variety of intentions that relate to where they are in your conversion cycle. Failing to provide the type of content and tools they need for the stage they're at is not only a disservice but a killer of UX, rankings and conversion. Therefore, user intention should dictate the content you offer on a page. Words and content that speak to a visitor's needs, along with links to additional content that takes them deeper into what they're looking for ultimately makes visitors feel like you understand them and builds the trust you need to make them a customer. One of the first questions I ask when auditing content is: "What elements are needed on this page to provide the best experience possible when someone searches on a keyword phrase?" This often leads to a lot of work for the dev team, who has to implement calculators, rates tables and other useful features. But if you're thinking like this from the beginning, you'll see a lot of opportunities to improve a page that go beyond just thinking about title tags, meta descriptions, and keyword usage.

Googling

Typing your keyword phrase into Google and seeing what comes up is another great way to discover user intention. Look for the related terms that appear in the titles and descriptions and pay attention to the Google suggestions and related searches. Click on the top pages and take a look. Determine what elements on the page are contributing to a positive user experience and either replicate or improve on them for your own page. Classy content starts and ends with the user in mind. Keep your visitor first and foremost in your mind as you audit your content, and your success rate with Google will improve. Further Reading: How to Perform an SEO Content Audit.

Link Audit with Tom Sumrak

Why go through a long list of individual links when you can automatically and neatly sort all of the domains into actionable groups?

IP Clusters

I use referring IPs for sorting lists of domains and links. Not only are IP addresses useful for finding dangerous link networks, but they can also help quickly sort through similar websites. This helps you quickly find groups of beneficial domains as well as domains that will need a more thorough inspection. Further Reading: Link Audits: A Qualitative and Quantitative Approach.

You’ve most likely heard of “retargeting,” but what is it exactly and how does it work? Retargeting is a technique that allows marketers to keep their brand in front of potential customers who’ve visited their website without making a purchase or taking some other desired action, such as subscribing to a newsletter. According to AdRoll, first-time visitors who leave a site without converting is a substantial 98 percent.

So given that only 2 percent of users actually convert the first time they visit a site, the goal of retargeting is to entice the other 98 percent to return to your site with ongoing brand exposure and relative messaging. This can be accomplished with targeted advertisements displayed on other websites that the prospect visits around the web. Since those 98 percent are now qualified site visitors, retargeting has proven to be a highly effective marketing strategy that drives higher click-through rates and conversions.

How Retargeting Works

When users visit and navigate a website their web browsers can collect and store small pieces of data known as “cookies.” The user information gathered by browser cookies is then sent back to the website owner’s server which tracks and records the user’s behavior on the site. This data is invaluable to online businesses as it allows website owners to determine user actions such as the specific pages visited, the number of pages visited and shopping cart items. Based on this information, marketers can then develop a sharply honed retargeting campaign to woo site visitors back to their website to complete the conversion. In order to capture user behavior data, marketers need to include a snippet of code (a remarketing tag) in the footer of their site.

Your web developer will likely assure you that your site has a single master footer, so you should only be concerned with adding the retargeting tag to one page for use throughout your website. After this is complete, each time a user visits the website, they are automatically added to a list created via the browser cookie. Voila! The retargeting list is born. This is a simplified explanation, of course. Retargeting is a bit more complex than that and different retargeting lists can be created for individual site pages, such as key product or services pages. The site visitors on any given retargeting list are then exposed to custom display ads on other relevant websites based on their recorded behavior.

Display Advertising’s Major Players and More

The Google’s Adwords platform is well known to those who employ pay-per-click (PPC) ads in their search marketing strategy. In terms of retargeting, Google relies on its display network. The ad network allows for all types of media for ads, including image and video ads. A number of brands have achieved great success in terms of lead generation and cost per acquisition (CPA), detailed at Google’s Ads Display Network page. You can read more about how brands are using Google’s remarketing here on Think with Google. Bing’s advertising platform also boasts an impressive suite of retargeting tools that rival Google’s. Specific to retargeting, Bing features a program that it calls “remessaging.” Like Google’s remarketing, Bing allows you to set your retargeting tag for search, which will display your ad on its search results pages or set it to show your ad on other related websites in its display ad network.

Whether you settle on Google or Bing or choose to use both, the advantages of leveraging retargeting techniques are undeniable. By luring qualified prospects back to your website, you can realize more clicks and conversions. In addition to these big players, there are other well known companies that that focus on retargeting, like AdRoll. They use direct relationships with ad exchanges to grow their display networks. They also provide a robust suite of tools to segment, track, and optimize your website traffic. There's no one size fits all methodology for retargeting, but the more targeted and segmented structure you create, the better your results.

We are proud to announce the release of Landing Page Optimizer (LPO) Intelligence. Our latest ground breaking innovation integrates seamlessly with Adobe Experience Manager to provide strategic landing page insight to marketers using AEM’s new performance targeting capabilities to test landing page success. Alongside our customer and partner Adobe, BrightEdge is empowering marketers with unmatched and accessible web-wide competitive insights to create high-performance landing pages. Powered by the BrightEdge Data Cube, LPO Intelligence leverages machine learning to automate decisions and systematize landing page testing, helping to increase conversion rates and deliver solid business impact.

Empowering marketers with the competitive edge

Today, marketers operate on a content battleground where they fight for their content to be heard above competitive noise. In order to win, marketers need to produce content that resonates with their audience, wins consumers’ attention and converts. It is increasingly important for marketers to understand the performance of their content within the context of the broader marketplace. Marketers have data visibility limited to their own content but no insight into content across the web that they are competing with. As a result many marketers struggle to build content that performs as they solely rely on first-party data rather than understanding the complete landscape of competing content across the entire Internet. Utilizing Landing Page Optimizer Intelligence marketers can:

• Understand the content battleground for their landing page
• Uncover page elements and offers that are used by pages that perform well in their vertical
• Generate new test experiences automatically based on what is working for competing landing pages

“As a data-driven marketer I am very excited about the BrightEdge LPO Intelligence integration in the Adobe Experience Manager environment. BrightEdge machine learning and the subsequent data-driven insights will further empower me in my role to ensure that content marketing performs with maximum efficiency and scale ” - Michael Kirchhoff, Director at PennWell Media

The power of complete sets of data compared to singular first-party data

For years, marketers have been stuck relying on first-party data to power their strategies — but this incomplete view simply hasn’t provided a full understanding of how content is performing. LPO Intelligence integrates with Adobe Experience Manager and automatically provides landing page recommendations that marketers should consider when using AEM’s new performance-targeting capabilities (powered by Adobe Target) to test landing page variations. Following on from our Content Optimizer 3.0 release last month, marketers can now understand the competitive battleground, optimize content at point of creation at scale and now gain the ultimate competitive edge through automation of landing page optimization. BrightEdge is integrating data insights with machine learning technology to further empower our customers, ensuring that their content performs with maximum efficiency and scale. Marketers who use LPO Intelligence alongside Content Optimizer 3.0 will now have access to an industry first complete set of data actionable insights and recommendations for all types of content.

“In any customer acquisition strategy, optimized and relevant landing pages are a competitive advantage, especially as brands vie for consumer attention. Marketers need strong content, analytics and personalization capabilities to come out on top. Our customers will be confident knowing that they are delivering the best digital experiences with Adobe Marketing Cloud and innovations from partners such as BrightEdge." - Loni Stark, Senior Director of Strategy and Product Marketing, Adobe

Some of the key LPO Intelligence features include:

• Competitive Insights: LPO Intelligence is built on top of the powerful BrightEdge Data Cube, offering a unique web-wide view of content performance. It not only analyzes a brand’s own webpage but also offers unique insights into competitors’ landing pages. With inside insight on strategy and success, we’re delivering the same level of web-wide intelligence at scale that Facebook and Twitter bring to their consumers.
• Mobile Best Practices: With our mobile-analysis component, we’ve identified the most competitive page elements across each vertical and have developed a set of common mistakes that negatively affect page performance. These tailored insights help marketers bring landing pages as close to ideal performance as possible, and actionable recommendations help marketers develop effective A/B testing.
• Landing Page Experimentation and Optimization: Our LPO Intelligence technology also works to identify and dissect page layouts by industry and by competitors, helping unlock specifics, such as minimum spend necessary for free shipping across e-commerce company channels, or elements like effective CTA color, text and size. Instead of iterating with no improvements, marketers are offered prescriptive knowledge on boosting landing-page performance and can utilize this knowledge to inform landing page optimization through AEM’s performance-targeting features.

• Internet Categorization Powered by Machine Learning: While many businesses are limited to their own websites in their use of machine learning, BrightEdge LPO Intelligence uses sophisticated natural language processes to crawl all headlines and CTAs across the web. In addition, search volume trending capabilities identify patterns to understand effective strategic elements. Finally, predictive analytics offer data-driven recommendations to bring landing page success to new heights.

Check out LPO Intelligence at Adobe Summit! Join us at Adobe Summit this week (March 10-13) to witness the LPO Intelligence in action! We’re at Booth #414. We hope you’ll come by to say hello and schedule a demo.