SEO housekeeping? What’s that, you ask? It’s the kind of grunt work no one likes to do.
It’s the kind of work no one likes. Yet, it must be done.
Here are some SEO Housekeepign tips to ensure that your blog content strategy works to deliver results for your business:
Watch an entire session of a live recording on good SEO housekeeping tips:
Delete Old, Orphaned, Irrelevant Posts
If you’ve been blogging for as long as I have, there are bound to be several blog posts that are too old for your business niche. Things could have changed since then. You might have never linked(internally) to those blog posts.
Most Importantly, these blog posts might not be getting any traffic for you at all (Check your Google Analytics and Google Search Console to identify what those blog posts are).
Then, delete them. You’ll not only make your life easier but also provide a much better experience for your readers, remove dead weight from your blog and help your website load faster, and avoid potential horror stories of broken links.
Which leads us to..
Use a Link Checking Plugin
Since you are deleting old posts — and even if you weren’t — it’s a great idea to use a link checking plugin to check for broken links. I use WPMUDEV’s broken link checker. You can use any link checking plugin you want.
Set the frequency at which your link checking plugin would do an automatic link check (like, every 24, 36, 72 hours or so).
This plugin is a lifesaver (imagine just how long it’d take for you to find broken links otherwise). You’d also have a great way to manage broken links themselves — such as to unlink, edit URLs, unlink, dismiss, and more.
Or you can use tools such as Semrush to achieve the even better results
Work on Titles, Sub headings, Links, & Clean Up The Mess (if any)
Your older posts might have formatting screwed up. The headings might be too long. The sub headings could be nestled in redundant HTML tags (or the wrong ones — like <p> instead of <h2>).
There are also bound to be remnants of shortcodes (of plugins you don’t use anymore), custom HTML scripts that won’t render, and other bits and pieces of content you’d have to remove.
This is also a chance for you to update, edit, and add content to your older blog posts to keep them up-to-date and more relevant.
Then, there’s another important thing you could while you are at it…
Show SEO Love To New Blog Posts
Internal linking is often underrated (as is the rest of the work here).
While you are at it, this is also a great opportunity to add Links to newer blog posts that you might have recently published.
As long as the links are pointing from a relevant and older blog article, it’s a great way to boost your chances of letting the new blog posts show up in search (faster than what it’d take otherwise).
Add Calls to Action
Again, while working on the older blog posts, don’t forget to add calls-to-action (buttons, graphics + buttons, customer HTML, or others).
You want to practice purposeful blogging and adding calls-to-action is the best way to ensure that your hardwork related to blogging and content strategy pays off and gets you tangible results (like generating leads and more).
Read:
How to Optimize Blog Posts for Lead Generation
Learn how to Add Calls to Action without Extra Plugins
Add Breadcrumbs for Better SEO
I use Yoast SEO plugin for my website. Yoast has a feature which enables me to add a “Gutenberg block” to add Breadcrumbs for SEO for each blog post.
I also use the Divi theme . Now, there are ways to do this easily such as to add a shortcode to a widget, or the Divi Breadcrumbs module, or by adding a piece of PHP code to the single.php or the header.php file by using the theme editor.
You can also use plugins that can help you not only add breadcrumbs but also style them the way you want.
I didn’t want to touch those files and I didn’t another plugin for breadcrumbs. So, I choose to use the Gutenberg block that Yoast SEO plugin provides.
Are you doing these SEO housekeeping tasks for your blogs? Tweet and let me know.