SEO strategies are hardly something you can set on autopilot and forget about (though plenty of web publishers do exactly that).
If you really want to stay ahead of the game, you’ll want to be constantly re-evaluating, re-jiggering and tinkering with your SEO plan.
In a recent posting on Searchengineland.com, SEO guru Tom Schmitz shared his advice for keeping your plan fresh, alive and on track. Here are a few high points from, 8 SEO Cleanse & Recharge Ideas for Fall 2013.
Take Good Advice
Both Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools have plenty of good advice to offer about the state of your sites, if you’re willing to listen. These diagnostic tools do everything from red flagging duplicate content to identifying bad links.
Given the tremendous amount of weight and influence Google and Bing have in the SEO world, taking their advice is probably a pretty good idea.
Update Your Systems & Plug-Ins
Most content management systems (CMS) and plug-ins contribute to your overall SEO profile, so you want to be certain that you’re keeping them all up-to-date. This may be a bit of a headache at times, but it definitely pays off over the long haul.
Any quality plug-in or CMS, like WordPress, will be keeping an eye on SEO best practices and will update and adjust their product accordingly.
Be Social
How current are your social profiles and how prominently are they displayed on your site? If you haven’t looked at them lately, or haven’t put them up at all, you need to do that right away.
Social shares are SEO gold, so don’t get left behind.
Speed it Up
Slow page loads kill Page Rank quicker than just about anything else – and end-users aren’t crazy about them either. As part of your Fall cleanse, Schmitz suggests using a page speed diagnostic tool to find out if you’re more tortoise than hare.
Update Your Content Plan
Quality content is more than just a buzzword, it’s pretty much the first law of SEO these days. If you’re still phoning it in with watered down, low quality content, you need to get with the program.
We know that crafting a content strategy for SEO can be a real time suck, but your readers might not mind seeing fewer posts if they offer something of value.
Schmitz suggests writing less about products, and more about how end-users can utilize them.
Join a Link Posse
Link-building has caused lots of pain in the post-Penguin SEO world, so now is the time to raise up a posse to get back on track.
Creating a group, let’s call it a mutual aid society, that’s dedicated to raising one another’s link profile through linking and social shares is a perfectly acceptable link building strategy that really works.
Tool Time
Keeping up with the barrage of SEO tools and plug-ins that flood the market every year is practically impossible but you shouldn’t let the sheer volume of them discourage you.
There are plenty of gems in that avalanche and rather than culling search engine optimization strategy blogs that regularly review these products and are worth reading. If that sounds like too much trouble, just check out Search Engine Land’s Search Engine Land’s 2013 Guide to Enterprise SEO Tools to sort the wheat from the chaff.
Be the Master of Your Domain‘
Domain names are serious business and failing to renew them is just plain sloppy. Keep an eye on all your domain registrations and make certain that they’re up to date.