ssharma@brightedge.com

M Posted 11 years 10 months ago

t 9 min read

With Google’s next Penguin update potentially right around the corner, there’s no better time to perform a link audit on your site.

Link audits look at the volume and quality of links in your link profile to ensure it’s balanced, healthy (meaning your website is getting good value from the links) and won’t trigger any unwanted penalties by Google. It’s also important to be proactive with your link audit, meaning don’t wait until the next Penguin update hits.

If you haven’t done it in a while – or ever – it should be the first thing you do before investing in other activities like content creation (aka additional link building). After that, you should prepare to do a link audit every three months to stay on top of your link profile.

Approach a link audit in two ways: quantitative and qualitative, which looks at the number of backlinks to your site and the quality of those links.

While quantitative research usually highlights any unnatural recent growth in the total number of backlinks, qualitative often assess the entire health of the link portfolio.

A 4-step process for assessing link quality

Let’s look at four steps you can take to assess the quality of your backlink profile in a link audit. To pull data, you’ll use tools like Majestic and Google Webmaster Tools (GWT). (Remember, GWT and Majestic integrate with BrightEdge’s S3 platform, too.)

1. Look at link growth by month (quantitative)

Look at the link data by month. You can do this by exporting the data from the tools into an Excel spreadsheet. The following graph shows an example site; the sharp increase in link growth over two month’s time is alarming: The next step of this type of analysis is asking, “Why?” Oftentimes, you won’t find an immediate answer to the unnatural link growth you’re seeing.

If you work in an enterprise-level company, the answer may be even harder to uncover when multiple teams have a hand in the website. Oftentimes, it can be the result of some marketing activity that wasn’t pre-approved or assessed by the company’s SEO team. Perhaps someone paid for links or had sponsored content go live on a large number of publishers.

Whatever the cause, it’s your job as a link auditor to uncover it, and assess if it truly is something of concern.

2. Look at the link's AC rank (qualitative)

“AC Rank” aka “a citation rank” is an important performance indicator in Majestic’s reporting that checks the quality of backlinks. Therefore, AC Rank is a simple measure of how important a particular Web page is. AC Rank assigns a number from 0 (lowest) to 15 (highest), depending on the number of unique referring external root domains.

In other words, it assesses how many backlinks the website has that’s linking to your site. In order for a page to have an AC Rank of 1 or higher, it needs to have at least one external backlink. You can download a report that shows AC Rank in Majestic. In the following example, you can see the majority of the site’s backlinks come from other sites with an AC Rank of 0.

While there isn’t a strict guideline on what percentage of a site’s backlink profile should contain links with an AC Rank of any number, you may want to look at your competitors to gauge a benchmark. And then consider building links with a higher AC Rank. There’s a manual review process involved here as well.

Once you identify the low AC Rank sites, you’ll want to visit at least some of the links and do a quality check to see if the site looks OK, or if it is of concern. Are there too many ads? Too many links pointing out? Create a checklist of how you might assess the quality of the site.

3. Conduct anchor text analysis (qualitative)

Anchor text is the word or words used in the link (the clickable text in a hyperlink). Anchor text helps search engines understand what the page is about that they are going to visit. The search engines used to view anchor text as a strong signal in ranking websites. Because of this, spammers attempted to manipulate search engine rankings by creating a large volume of unnatural links that contained a specific keyword pointing to a site. When the Google Penguin update first hit in April 2012, it essentially put the kibosh on those spammer activities. With Penguin, Google reduced the amount of weight that the anchor text has, and even penalized some sites that had too many anchor text links with the same keyword pointing to them. Let’s quickly go over the different types of anchor text.

• Exact match anchor text: The keywords in the link are the exact keyword you are trying to generate more visibility for in the search engines.
• Partial match anchor text: The links include the keyword you are trying to generate more visibility for, in addition to other words.
• Zero match (or generic) anchor text: Links that don’t include any mention of the keyword you are trying to generate more visibility for. Example: “click here.”
• Branded anchor text: Links with the brand name or URL of a website in them.
• All variations of naked URLs: Such as www.example.com, example.com and http://www.example.com.

There isn’t any rule on the percentage mix for having different types of anchor text pointing to your site. But stay away from emphasizing only one or two types of anchor text. A healthy anchor text profile should be a mixture of all of the above. As a general rule of thumb, branded (including branded naked URLs) should make up four out of your top five anchor texts. In the following image, you can see there were too many exact match anchor text for this sample site (keywords blurred out to protect the brand):

4. Perform a backlinks analysis by IP address

Too many backlinks from the same IP address will not give any value to the site. And, too many backlinks from different domains but the same IP address (when brands own multiple websites, for example) could hint at a possible link scheme network of sites, which is classified as a bad SEO practice by Google.

For more on what Google thinks is a link scheme, see its documentation here. In this step, you’ll want to document all the links coming from a single IP address, and assess whether or not the mix of links is quality. You can do so with Majestic’s reporting. The result of all the steps in this four-step process will show you which domains are “bad” domains to have links from, and then you’ll decide how to handle them next.

How to handle bad links?

You now have a good picture of the volume and quality of your backlink profile – now what? Sometimes this next step in the process can be long and methodical, since you have no control over who links to your site. But, there are a few ways you can go about cleaning up those links you want to get rid of.

1. Contact the webmaster of the site that’s linking to you. Put together a template that you will use for every site’s webmaster, and ask that the link either be taken down or nofollowed, depending on the severity. You’ll want to try this several times.
2. Hire an agency to clean up your links. There are agencies that specialize in link audits and pruning your site’s backlinks for you. This saves you time and resources.
3. Use Google’s disavow tool. Google gives webmasters a tool to use as a last resort to disavow links pointing to their sites. Google was very specific about how and when to use this tool, and you can read the guidelines here.

Here’s a video by Google’s Matt Cutts explaining how the disavow tool works: I hope this link audit process helps you keep your site healthy and your links working to your advantage. Remember, a link audit can be a time-intensive process, but it’s worth the effort being proactive rather than waiting to deal with a penalty that will catapult you into the same process anyway.  

A BrightEdger

M Posted 11 years 11 months ago

t 9 min read

Google’s Panda update, which is aimed at filtering out low-quality content from the Google search results, has yet again rolled out, this time affecting 3 percent to 5 percent of search queries. The news hit on September 25, and early analysis of the results here at BrightEdge yielded some interesting findings. More on that in a bit. You may remember in 2013 that Google said it would no longer be announcing Panda updates, as it would be baked into the algorithm as a more regular, gradual rollout. But this announcement comes with a note from Google that the infrastructure to Panda has changed a bit. From the announcement on Google+:

Based on user (and webmaster!) feedback, we’ve been able to discover a few more signals to help Panda identify low-quality content more precisely. This results in a greater diversity of high-quality small- and medium-sized sites ranking higher, which is nice.

Historically, Panda went after sites with different types of weak content such as thin content, which is basically a lack of content; duplicate content, usually at scale; and machine-generated content, like spun content. But according to BrightEdge’s initial analysis of sites that have been impacted after Google Panda 4.1, we’re seeing some interesting observations that may go beyond the initial criteria of Panda and could hint at the new signals working together to surface higher quality sites in the search results.

How Google Panda 4.1 impacted sites organically in three patterns

BrightEdge tracks a large set of independently researched queries across several verticals on a daily basis, and its professional services team has been monitoring movements closely over the past week to identify trends. We observed some interesting patterns amongst the sites that did not fare well after Google Panda 4.1, and wanted to share that data along with some tips with readers. We also want to stress that we have not yet had time to form definitive conclusions about what we’re seeing. Our starting point was to pivot our data in different ways to see which sites experienced dramatic gains and losses in first page rankings and Top 100 rankings, plus loss or gain in Share of Voice. We then analyzed the heavily impacted sites for notable characteristics. Here’s what we found in terms of types of sites and patterns that emerged for those websites that did not fare well.

1. Infotainment and media sites: image heavy, ad heavy

Several negatively impacted sites, particularly in media, dedicate valuable real estate above the fold to ads, and also packed a lot of images on the page – and sometimes a lot of ads as well. Just some of those sites included:

• EOnline.com
• Essence.com
• HollywoodLife.com
• Independent.co.uk

Generally, the editorial-to-ad ratio was low, and the image count was high, which could impact page load time and thus user experience, especially on mobile devices.

Remember Google’s page layout algorithm has set the tone for sites that use a lot of ads at the top of their pages; pair that with the fact that Google is placing a high value on sites that offer a good mobile experience in general, and you can see how sites like this might be negatively impacted. With the latest Panda rollout, we think your content-to-ad ratio and image heaviness may count more than ever. While visuals are great for engagement, use them with the right intent and mind their placement. Invest in high-quality images, but not at the expense of high-quality copy. Ensure the page loads quickly, and that ads and images augment rather than obstruct the site’s experience. On that note, there were some image-heavy sites that actually seem to have gained ground like USMagazine.com (search is a zero sum game, after all), and they do seem exercise at least a little more moderation with images and ad units.

2. General informational sites: generic content

Once again, we see a set of mostly informational sites amongst those most negatively impacted by Panda. The topical reach of each of these sites is extensive, but the length and quality of the content is not always uniform. Some of those sites include:

• Answers.com
• HowStuffWorks.com
• HubPages.com

Of those that benefited were a combination of highly recognizable media brands and more targeted niche media (these would be some of the small and medium websites that Google mentioned would benefit):

• GlassDoor.com
• NYTimes.com
• OrganicGardening.com
• Slate.com

Share of Voice continues to shift to rich informational sites, even for queries that are more transactional in nature. To compete, brands need to get creative, leveraging proprietary data and new ideas, and putting their communications team to work to create differentiated, compelling content.

3. eCommerce sites: thin content

Again, we see rich, vertically oriented information sites competing with more commercial sites for the eCommerce Share of Voice. Thin content comparison sites and e-tailers did not fare well in many cases. Some of those sites included:

• CheaperThanDirt.com
• FindTheBest.com

That said, richer content around products is typically rewarded. Smaller sites can compete if they focus on best-in-class content and experience that aids in the shopping experience, like the following sites:

• Cabelas.com
• CNet.com
• Nike.com
• Otterbox.com

Odds are that the comparison shopping site will have to invest in substantial content (detailed reviews or articles, for instance), in order to provide a significant value and compete. Google stated that the latest Panda update should be rolled out by the end of this week. So if your site has been impacted, you should be able to tell right around now. We’ll keep a close eye on the data here at BrightEdge, and let you know what we find out when we’ve been able to analyze the data further. Thanks to Justin Thomsen at BrightEdge for driving the data analysis for this piece.

ssharma@brightedge.com

M Posted 11 years 11 months ago

t 9 min read

It's clear that SEO can bring additional traffic and revenue to a website, but with constant algorithm updates and changes from Google—like Penguin, Panda, and the infrastructure update, Hummingbird—it can be difficult to know how to prioritize your SEO plan.

In this post, I’ll talk about five of the most common SEO failures in having a quality, search-optimized site so you can begin to organize where you’ll focus your SEO efforts and how to go about fixing those SEO failures.

• Duplicate content
• Failing to link internally
• Outdated sitemaps
• Overly dynamic URLs
• Low-quality links

1. Duplicate content

Duplicate content typically originates from other websites scraping content from one website and posting it on their own site. Put simply, the best practice is to locate and remove duplicate content from a site. Google's main objective is to provide a good user experience, and duplicate content tells Google that the content is not unique and therefore less valuable. Duplicate content can occur if a site has both plain and secure protocol URLs (HTTP and HTTPS). The solution? Use BrightEdge to perform a site audit and locate duplicate content. 

2. Failing to link internally

Good content will earn links and authority which will earn more organic traffic. Sites that fail to link blog posts internally to other webpages within their site are not passing this authority throughout the site. It's important to find ways to link to other parts of your website within your blog posts, especially to your landing pages. If a blog post naturally mentions specific keywords a website is trying to rank for, it should link to the corresponding landing page. This will pass authority from a blog post to other webpages, especially landing pages. Internal linking is a crucial process to maintain the health and authority of a website.

3. Outdated sitemaps

XML Sitemaps assist search engine crawlers to index a site in an organized fashion. Websites are usually large, and Google's crawlers don't have time to constantly crawl sites. A dynamic Sitemap helps these crawlers prioritize their indexing process. It's crucial to verify that a Sitemap is readable by search engine crawlers. To do this, log onto your Google Webmaster Tools account and submit your XML file. First, your site must be registered with Google Webmaster Tools. Once your site is registered, under the "Crawl" section, click on "Sitemaps." There is a button labeled "Add/Test Sitemap." It will ask for your Sitemap URL; simply provide GoogleWebmaster Tools the URL, and you'll get your results shortly. 

4. Overly dynamic URLs

There are situations where a content management system (CMS) creates long URLs; this is usually the result of tracking parameters. Not only do they just not look good, but they also takeaway from the user's experience, which is Google's No. 1 priority. Clean up the URLs to make them more SEO-friendly. Use keywords and dashes to clearly explain the content of the page to Google and users. Here are two examples, one bad and the other good:

ssharma@brightedge.com

M Posted 11 years 11 months ago

t 9 min read

You’ve likely heard of XML Sitemap generation, but do you know what it is, and why it is so critical that you have one? Simply put, an XML Sitemap is a way to list your website’s pages in a file using XML tags (XML stands for “extensible markup language” schema, which is far more precise than HTML aka “hyper text markup language” code). Once submitted to Google (and other search engines), this list of your site’s individual page URLs informs them about the organization of your site’s content. This, in turn, enables “Googlebot” (and other search engine “spiders”) to crawl your website more accurately and index its content in the search engine results pages (SERPs) more quickly.

Google introduced Sitemaps in 2005, followed a year later by Yahoo and Microsoft (now known as Bing) in a rare collaborative initiative known as the “Sitemaps Protocol." The good news for webmasters is that, as a uniform standard supported by the largest (U.S.) search engines, you only need to work on one XML Sitemap generation. In this introductory guide, we’ll discuss best practices and share resources for optimizing your website’s search performance with XML Sitemap generation.

Creating your sitemap

As Web crawlers work by following links, Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) guidelines recommends the creation of Sitemaps if your site:

• Is really large or relatively new
• Contains pages that are not linked well within your site or are otherwise “isolated”
• Uses rich content (video and/or images)
• Contains content featured in Google News

Even if your website doesn’t meet any of these criteria, it is still a best website optimization practice to build and submit a Sitemap to ensure that all of your site’s pages are crawled and indexed in the SERPs as quickly and accurately as possible which also helps create a good bounce rate. Both GWT and the Sitemaps Protocol (referenced above) offer specific examples of how to apply XML tags to your website’s pages.

Rich media XML sitemaps

As with written content, building Sitemaps for your site’s videos and images ensures they are found and indexed by Web crawlers, which can improve visibility for your site’s rich media in Google’s image and video search results. For both types of rich media content, you have the option of creating a separate Sitemap or adding the information to your existing website Sitemap using the appropriate XML tag “extensions,” according to GWT. Details on how to use XML tag extensions for images are available via GWT here, and for videos, here.

As a side note, another way for ensuring your images are visible in search is by following Google’s image publishing guidelines, which urges webmasters to use highly descriptive file names for images to assist Google in identifying their subject matter. And you can also check out Google’s video best practices that include details on how to use schema.org to mark up video content within Web pages, as well as how to create quality “thumbnail images” to be displayed alongside your video pages in its search results. Google also addresses how to create XML tags for mobile. You can find that here.

XML sitemap troubleshooting

There are several issues that commonly occur with XML Sitemaps. GWT (and others) note that one of the most typical snags occurs with contradicting website URLs. This occurs when a webmaster submits a Sitemap for a website recognized as “http://www.mysite.com” in its search engine’s webmaster tools account, but submits an XML file with page URLs that do not include the “www” preface (i.e., “http://mysite.com”). Besides this obvious oversight, other typical issues involve broken links that haven’t been addressed and “301” redirected pages that haven’t been updated to reflect the new website page URL, as Ben Goodsell explains at Search Engine Watch. Fortunately, there are also several tools for troubleshooting XML Sitemap issues.

GWT’s “Crawl Errors” page offers information on how to detect both site-level and page-level errors. Other resources include “Fetch as Googlebot,” which allows you to see content and links that Googlebot can’t crawl. If you have multiple sites to manage, GWT offers detailed tips for simplifying XML optimization. Well, there you have it: a basic introduction to XML Sitemaps, which are a best practice for every brand that owns a website and wants to ensure its content is found in the search results and even in the Google answer box!

Mark Mitchell

M Posted 11 years 11 months ago

t 9 min read

Pinterest, the visual social network launched in March 2010, has evolved far beyond its humble scrapbooking and recipe-sharing origins. Advancements such as “Rich Pins” and cross-platform sharing in Twitter and Facebook, plus the explosion in visual marketing in general, has dramatically increased Pinterest’s viability as a marketing tool, and transformed it into a powerful social referral engine.

Pinterest’s social traffic referral share grew a quantum 48 percent in the first quarter of the year and is now second only to Facebook in total social media traffic referrals, according to Shareaholic’s 2014 Q1 Social Media Traffic study. In this post, we’ll look at who uses Pinterest, and five ways to create a Pinterest presence and work on your Pinterest SEO for your brand, plus some bonus tips for engagement.

Who uses Pinterest?

Citing demographic data from Pew Research, MarketingCharts shows that users are predominantly educated, affluent women between ages 18 and 29. They tend to live in the suburbs rather than cities, and are also generally active on Facebook. For brands targeting this particular market segment, optimizing for Pinterest is a no-brainer. Digital marketers in general should find Pinterest a compelling social media platform, given the overall Web trend towards rich media - images and video – as BrightEdge CEO Jim Yu recently wrote for Search Engine Land. While Pinterest isn’t appropriate for every sector, e-commerce companies and those organizations that lend themselves to visually appealing marketing campaigns will find Pinterest an ideal venue for showing off their brand’s products or messaging (think grassroots non-profit social causes, for example). Let’s go over best practices for leveraging the Pinterest platform for your brand.

Five steps for your Pinterest SEO efforts

1. Create and verify your business profile

The first step for businesses wanting to leverage Pinterest is to create a corporate profile. Once you’ve created your brand’s profile, you’ll then need to verify your website. Doing so adds a “check sign” icon to your site’s images that shows Pinterest has officially confirmed your site. This can be done easily from your account’s settings page.

2. Add Pinterest buttons to your website

Next, you’ll want to add the “Pin It” button to your site’s product pages and those landing pages that lend themselves to image sharing. You’ll also want to add the Pinterest “Follow” button to these pages, so your site’s visitors can readily track your Pinterest boards. Pinterest walks users through a simple process for uploading all of their buttons to your site’s pages via its “widget builder.”

3. Create and optimize Pinterest boards

You can think of Pinterest boards as virtual bulletin boards, each displaying a separate category of pictures aka “Pins” that represent your brand’s information or products. As Pinterest’s Kevin Knight recently wrote on the company’s blog for businesses, you can approach boards either as a source of content distribution or as a destination for your content. No matter your approach, a best practice is to create several boards focused tightly around specific topics for more targeted engagement with your followers. For instance, rather than just a “clothing” board, you would want to narrow it down to “work fashion” for one board and “casual fashion” for another. You’ll increase both search visibility and user engagement by enriching the board titles themselves, adding keywords to the titles and repeating them in board descriptions (within reason – avoid “keyword stuffing”).

Elaborating on your boards’ descriptions make them far more compelling, as well. Simply illustrated, a board title of “Healthy Recipes” with the description of “Deliciously healthy recipes that make trying to lose weight a little less miserable” conveys specific product benefits (and is far more search savvy) than a title of “Recipes” followed by a description of “Mmmmm … dinner.” In his post, Knight offers three examples of brand boards demonstrating best practices:

• Madewell’s Malta / Spring 2014’s board, “offers a mix of inspirational images next to products those images might inspire you to buy.”
• REI’s The Chef features “a collection of delicious camping dishes and the supplies you’ll need to make them.”
• Etsy’s Etsy Weddings “combines beautiful wedding images with specific ideas.”

4. Optimize your images

First and foremost, start with good, quality images that are clear and represent your brand well. And, just as with Pinterest boards, a best practice is to optimize individual Pins by adding keywords to the image file name and description. Other image optimization tips include:

• Make Pins Twitter-friendly by adding a hashtag (#) to the image’s alt attribute (and further encourage cross-platform sharing by checking off the “Facebook” box as well).
• Add a URL back to your site or specific product pages, depending on the image and what it represents.
• Limit the length of the image to 5,000 pixels (although there is no limit to the size of images, those longer than 5,000 will require users to scroll down)

5. Leverage rich pins

"Rich Pins" are designed to make your business stand out from your competitors on Pinterest. If you’re in the ecommerce biz, you may consider employing Rich Pins so users can see the price and availability of a product right on the Pin itself.

Rich Pins work by including extra details on the Pins from your website. There are now five category (“board”) types supporting Rich Pins: movie, recipe, article, product and place. There are three steps to enabling Rich Pins for your site:

1. Add Meta tags to your website (such as Schema.org or OpenGraph)
2. Test your Rich Pins
3. Apply to get them on Pinterest

More detailed information for website developers can be accessed by links provided on the Rich Pins page.

Bonus: top seven tips to increase engagement from Pinterest SEO

Just like any social network, you need a consistent publishing schedule to create an engaging experience. And, you need inspiration to do so. Here are seven tips to get you started:

1. Add Pins weekly from a variety of sources, and include new Pins and re-pins from Pinterest. Do a Pinterest search to see what people are pinning, and get ideas for what you might pin or re-pin.
2. Focus on creating Pins that empower users and facilitate re-pinning. How-to guides, DIY activities and recipes are most likely to go viral if you’re in any of those sectors.
3. Create contests that engage your online visitors via Pinterest. Read up on the guidelines for contests here.
4. Find out what people have been pinning from your site, and learn which of your products or content is most popular. To find your source page, go to: pinterest.com/source/yourdomain.com
5. Browse the popular feeds to see what Pins are trending on Pinterest, then tailor what you offer on your website or blog.
6. Follow the “Pinterest For Business” board for new ideas.
7. Review Pinterest case studies to see what’s worked well for successful users like Etsy.

And, for more information on leveraging Pinterest for your brand, check out its business and Web developer pages, as well as its business blog.  

ssharma@brightedge.com

M Posted 11 years 11 months ago

t 9 min read

Auditing your website’s content is much like undergoing a physical exam. You may dread it at first, but it’s a smart practice that uncovers where you need to focus in order to improve your health, and helps you understand what’s working in your approach and what isn’t.

As an enterprise-level company that devotes valuable time and resources to every marketing channel, you know how essential it is to budget and plan for results. An SEO content audit will help you accurately assess the return on your website’s content investment, and formulate an informed strategy looking ahead. In this post, I’ll discuss how to benchmark your site’s content based on key SEO metrics for both your main Web pages and your blog.

The SEO content audit: getting started

Starting from “ground zero” in an initial content audit, you need the right tools, then you need to define metrics and gather data around those metrics. Once you’ve delved into the data and interpreted what it means, you can then set goals for your site’s content performance based on those insights.

The tools

There are several resources available to assist you in extracting all the data you need from your website to perform website audit and SEO content audit, including BrightEdge’s SEO platform, Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider and Majestic. Each of these resources has their own set of features designed for different needs. For those operating at scale, BrightEdge’s SEO platform offers analytics and reporting tools measuring organic search and revenue performance at the individual Web page level and for groups of pages.

Creating your SEO content audit

Regardless of what tools you’ll employ, all data should be organized well and exported into a spreadsheet (such as Excel), with the columns designating the specific metrics tracked and the horizontal rows showing the individual page URLs to be audited. Here’s an example of what the spreadsheet may look like, with columns showing key metrics like:

• Pageviews: Total number of pages viewed -- repeated views of a single page are also counted.
• Organic visits: Shows how many visits came from the organic channel.
• Bounce rate: How many people came to the page and immediately left without interacting with it?
• Page speed: Gauges how fast or slow a page loads.
• Conversions: Whatever your conversion goals are – form fills or product buys – how many are happening as a result of that page?
• Word count: The total number of words on a page.
• Code-to-content ratio: How much actual text content exists versus code?

Every metric tells a story. The next step is figuring the “why” behind the metric data, and then putting together some next steps. For example:

• Would adding more content on the page help lower the bounce rate?
• If you have a low word count, does that result in "thin content" that could be deemed "low-quality" content?
• How about images and video -- would that help improve conversions?
• What if you’re showing a slow page load time – would that be from the video or images on the page?

SEO content audit: main web pages

For your main website pages, you’ll want to collect all the data, but focus on the Web pages that are key to your business. On a spreadsheet, you may organize those key pages so they are positioned below one another; that way you can see the metrics for each page and how it fares against other important pages in that group. The most important pages of your site typically represent the “core” of what you do. For instance, your home page, and key information-rich pages or landing pages likely would be priority for scrutiny in your audit. That said, your most important pages might not necessarily be the best-performing pages. Findings such as this underscore the value of an audit, informing both your strategy and resource-allocation decisions for the site. By simply knowing which Web pages need bolstering, you can then focus your SEO efforts on them for the coming months. You may also choose to do a second-tier prioritization of your Web pages. Identify, based on what the data is telling you, which pages you can make small tweaks to that will move the needle drastically (at BrightEdge, these seemingly minor yet quantum content optimization opportunities are referred to as “striking distance”).

What about your blog?

While pageviews, bounce rates and time on site are all important metrics to gauge the success of your blog content, in today’s current Web environment, you’ll need to measure social signals. These will indicate how (or if) people are engaging with your blog content. By examining the number of Facebook shares, tweets and Google +1s, for example, you can not only determine what is resonating with your readers, but also what direction you should take your blog overall. For instance, if you discover your blog is receiving more engagement from how-to pieces versus interviews, you may choose to include more instructional posts. An obvious “red flag” is if your blog content is not being shared at all. In that instance, you need to examine ways to improve upon that, such as creating a more solid community around your brand or ensuring that the blog is set up well technically for social sharing. Using BrightEdge, you can get a picture of your engagement metrics in the “page report,” as shown in the following screenshot:

You’ll also want to consider backlinks as part of your blog metrics. These show a vote of confidence that your content is likable and sharable. Blogs with a lot of quality links show “credibility.” Your own social media metrics can be informed by a relatively quick secondary audit of your main competitors, their backlinks and social engagement metrics. This type of analysis can be used to come up with similar ideas in that niche. For example, during a recent SEO content analysis of UPack.com, I noticed that this content had a lot of backlinks as compared to the site's other pages. If you were a competitor, or even as UPack.com, you might want to create similar content around something like an “ultimate checklist for after you move.”

Every SEO content audit tells a story

Consider your SEO content audit as the outline for a story. The more you dive into the data, the more rich the plot and honed-in the characters become. Slicing and dicing this data is one of the important jobs of a technical SEO, and one of the ways technical SEOs inform a brand’s organic search content strategy. Once you’ve established your own site’s “once upon a time,” you can continue to use content audits to provide a feedback loop to the content strategy that has been implemented, as well as testing out those tweaks and changes you’ve made as part of your optimization plan.