It might sound counterintuitive to say this as an SEO Consultant, but there are many websites that SEO simply isn’t the right fit for. I get a steady stream of enquiries, and for roughly 75% of them, I just can’t offer meaningful support.
There are a number of reasons why that’s the case and for each client I’d love to be able to explain in depth those reasons, but it’s just not feasible to do so, so I thought this article would be a better way to disseminate that information.
Local Businesses
Now just to clarify here – it’s not that local businesses could never benefit from SEO, they could. But do they need an expensive retainer of SEO services? Usually not.
Sometimes a local business has enough scope to justify a short project, they might have lots of services for example and an SEO professional could help them better organise their site and optimise their pages to communicate those services.
However, most of the time those businesses could simply get by with just a checklist of actions for them to undertake. There are loads of online guides to help:
LocalSEOChecklist.org (a whole website dedicated just to helping companies optimise for local SEO)
A local electrician, hairdresser, pizza place, mechanic, locksmith or any trade that’s limited to a specific area, doesn’t need extensive SEO services. In fact, they rarely need SEO support at all – they just need to tick off the key elements (get listed in Google Maps, create service pages, create descriptive titles for pages etc.) and then move on to other initiatives.
Too Niche
A really common one is offering something that is so niche that no-one is looking for it or anything related to it, and there is no opportunity to broaden the scope.
SEO only works if people are already looking for the product, service or information you are offering. It simply capitalises on that existing demand, it can’t generate demand that isn’t already there.
Lots of people reach out because they’ve come up with an offering but can’t get eyeballs on it. Most of the time they have jargonny names like “Behavioural Texture Modelling” or “Attention Decay Cartography” that are things that the general public simply doesn’t know exists, so isn’t searching Google for it already.
That’s not to say that people won’t search for it in the future.
The example I always give is if Coca-Cola came up with Cherry Cola and decided to tell no-one, then just waited until they searched Google for it. That’s never going to work because how would users know to search for it if they don’t know it exists?
They first need to generate awareness in order to generate demand.
Often that comes in the form of other marketing methods. With big budgets that includes TV ads, billboards, PR etc. but with smaller budgets there are other ways to get your ideas out there.
And SEO can play a role, but it requires lots of big picture thinking and appetite for a long-term content marketing campaign. SEO services can be hugely impactful for the production of informational content on informational topics that users are searching for that are related to the offering. They can be used to drive traffic and subsequently make users aware of that new product/service/offering.
Doing this well can take time and there are no guarantees. For many business owners, it’s simply not a viable option but for some it can be fruitful if various factors all align.
A Great Job Has Already Been Done
I had a doctor reach out to me recently. In just 9 months he’d taught himself SEO to such a high level that he’d built and optimised his own website and was already generating strong organic traffic. In reality, he just simply did not need any external SEO support.
In this case, a bit of consultation helped to give him the confidence in his own abilities, and answer any lingering doubts he had. This saved him spending thousands of pounds a month in expensive retainer fees for someone to do a job that he was capable of doing himself.
I’ve also seen it where other consultants or agencies have done an outstanding job, the client just hasn’t had the patience yet to wait to see the results.
Or, in a lot of cases, the niche has a limited amount of opportunity for generating traffic and it’s already achieved its potential. Sometimes there’s simply no more traffic to be had without developing new products, services or offerings.
Too Competitive
Sometimes it’s not so much an issue with the product or service or the demand for it. Sometimes it’s simply about who you’d need to beat in order to rank anywhere near page 1 of search results (and therefore also be mentioned in AI).
Unless they themselves are also fairly large or have big budgets to be able to grow exponentially, it’s going to be very tricky.
Think about a product like hair dryers:
Why would search engines rank a small, relatively unknown company for a highly competitive term above the likes of Amazon, Boots, Dyson and Currys, when those brands have been around for decades and have demonstrated their reliability, authority and quality?
Sometimes there is an angle or feature that we can really lean into, and sometimes there are teams who have the ambition, resource and budgets to behave like a challenger brand – which can be great from an SEO perspective. But more often than not, the expectations are unrealistic.
Better Returns Elsewhere
Sometimes SEO could absolutely have an impact, but is it going to be enough of an impact to justify the expenditure?
For me to take on a project, I need to be sure that the client could have a clear positive ROI from the work. It would be dishonest to take on a client if I didn’t believe they could make their money back, and then some, from the impact of the work.
And often, they could have better returns elsewhere. Other marketing channels like social media, email marketing, and Google Ads can all be highly effective initiatives to explore. Sometimes a product or service simply lends itself better to those channels anyway.
Final Thoughts
I get it. As a business owner it’s difficult to be told that your product/service/offering has no demand, or your expectations are unrealistic, or that your plans just don’t quite make sense. Typically I’m not able to go into that level of detail with an enquiry anyway, and I wish I had the time to give bespoke advice to every one that lands in my inbox.
Sometimes I offer hourly consultation via video call if it feels like it would be a productive use of time (feel free to reach out if you think that would benefit you). But I have to be careful not to overstep my mark, I’m not going to go all Dragons Den about whether a business is viable or not, but I have pretty well honed instincts when it comes to marketing.
Many small businesses would benefit from getting stuck in themselves, making it much more cost effective than seeking answers from people who have an incentive to tell you that you need their services (I would never do that, but many would). It also allows you to be agile, putting budget behind different marketing methods and seeing what works rather than being tied into a long term contract for just one channel.
I’ve provided SEO support to tonnes of charities over the years and without a doubt the most common topic of conversation is about how they can drive more traffic to their fundraising pages.
And it’s completely understandable why. They are transactional pages so they have high high profitability, it makes logical sense to try to drive as many users to them.
Many fundraising teams also have internal objectives to increase sign ups to their events so they naturally enquire with their SEO agency/consultant about what can be done.
But these pages are quite unusual and ultimately a perfect storm of frustration for your SEO consultant.
So what is the problem?
Every Charity Has the Same Pages
The very biggest issue with fundraising pages is that there are thousands of completely identical offerings from every other charity across the UK.
Almost every charity has a London Marathon page, for example. Google “London Marathon Charity Places” and just keep scrolling, the list of relevant charity pages for this search term is never ending. And of course, since these pages are so profitable, many charities will spend money on Google ads so that they appear even before the organic results.
And all of the pages are more-or-less the same. Most of them cover elements such as the minimum sponsorship, why run for the cause, the charity cheer point, the post-race reception, the race route etc.
As a product offering, this is highly unusual.
Normally if you are looking to buy a product or service there will be lots of options all with slight differences and with different sellers. In the case of fundraising pages, we’ve got the exact same product being sold with the only difference being who is selling it.
Imagine if you wanted to buy a new lamp. You search Google and every single result is for the exact same lamp at the exact same price, the only difference is the vendor.
And in the case of charities, every “seller” is amazing so the cause isn’t even that much of a USP.
So that’s the first issue. What do you do when you don’t have anything that can help you stand out?
Do Optimise Your Fundraising Pages
To be clear, when I talk about fundraising pages I’m talking about everything from challenge events to coffee mornings. We’re talking about the types of fundraisers that people search for generically, without having a charity already in mind. For example:
Charity bake sale
Great North Run charity places
RideLondon 100 charity places
Charity swims
Carol singing for charity
Charity quiz nights
Sponsored walk for charity
etc.
You may have some of all of these types of pages on your site already, and there are hundreds more that you could add. It’s not to say that you shouldn’t bother optimising them (you should), it’s just that you might want to set your expectations a little more modestly for how likely they are to perform.
There is a chance they could rank well, especially if you’re on of the biggest charities in the UK, but more often than not it turns out to be identical to 500 other charity pages on the same topic.
Still, the number 1 reason we optimise is for user experience – organic search comes 2nd.
As such, make sure every single page is as comprehensive as possible about the event, the cause they’re raising money for, what your fundraising team can offer, how to get started, fundraising materials, how they can pay in their money, and absolutely anything else you can think of.
Go through the top 10 ranking pages and start to look at what elements they have. If we go back to the London Marathon as an example, we can see they include features such as:
Event details
Minimum fundraising
Route
Registration fee
How the application process works
How to join with your own place
How your money will be spent
How to get in touch for more information
Testimonials
Videos from previous years events
FAQs
What happens if you don’t reach the minimum sponsorship amount
The list goes on.
By making your page comprehensive and answering everything a user needs to know, those who find it by other means (i.e. navigating through the site, social media, email etc.) are much more likely to convert.
And when you focus solely on user experience, search engines reward that (and so does AI).
Keep the Same URL Live
For many events, the page is updated yearly to reflect whether applications are open and which year it’s referring to. One of the biggest mistakes to make is to create a new URL every year (i.e. /london-marathon-2026/ instead of a generic /london-marathon/, and to unpublish it once the event has passed.
Search engines reward consistency. If your page resolves in a 404 error for half the year and then is live for the other half, it’s not a great look. Pages that are live for a long period of time are favoured by search engines as they can be pretty sure they can send users there and it’s not at risk of being taken down any soon – why would it when it’s been live for so long?
Additionally, the external links that point to your page (backlinks) are a ranking factor and these can be kept year on year if you keep the URL live. Once external websites see that there are links on their website going to a 404 page, they’ll very often remove them and that’s a huge loss.
Adding a 301 redirect each year to the new page can save those backlinks, but it’s not as ideal as having that URL consistency year after year.
Write Related Informational Content
One great way to grow your visibility is to write informational content related to the action you’re asking people to take. These are the types of tips, guides, and resources that help users to prepare for the event or to reach their fundraising goals.
By creating an ecosystem of relevant content that naturally links to one another, you’re creating a comprehensive user experience that search engines love.
Consider writing content such as:
Training guides
Fundraising ideas
Tips for the big day
How to cheer on family and friends
How to talk about the cause to donors
etc.
Make sure that each article clearly links back to your transactional page.
Write Informational Content About Your Cause
Whether you’re trying to generate interest in your fundraising offerings or a different action entirely, writing content about your cause is always an impactful strategy for your website.
For example, if you are a charity for a medical condition, your informational content will cover everything about the symptoms, causes, prevention, treatment, and diagnosis of that condition as a minimum. You can cover all sorts of other topics within that realm too, everything from guidance for carers to what to expect in the hospital.
If you’re an international organisation, you would naturally talk about the issues you deal with in each country you work in. For example, poverty in Bangladesh, or child labour in India etc.
You should aim to create a “topic universe” where you brainstorm every possible topic you could cover on the site that is relevant to what you do as an organisation. An SEO consultant can help you do this in a structured way, validated with keyword research. However, you can also do it yourself or with your team, with a little bit of preparation.
Again, the number one reason for creating this content is user experience. It educates your audience about the issues you deal with and encourages them to learn more about what you do.
However, the number two reason for this content is to generate organic traffic from users searching for this information, who you can then make aware of the actions you would like them to take.
Relate the content back to the work that you do (i.e. “see the amazing work we do about this issue”). Sometimes you can do this naturally within the content when it’s particularly pertinent to your cause. Other times you can use a section at the end of the article to more explicitly explain how it relates back to what you do, ensuring to link to relevant What We Do type pages.
Those simple steps bring users on a journey of:
Learning about the issue
Learning who you are and what you do about the issue
The third step is to make them aware of the actions you want them to take. This may change regularly, but it’s the point at which they are most likely to convert.
Make sure your What We Do pages contain a call to action i.e. “Donate to our … appeal” or “Run the London Marathon for us”. You can change these out as often as you like depending on which action is a priority at the time.
This brings users towards the bottom of the user funnel – taking an action.
Focus on the Less Saturated Asks
You will likely have asks on your website that are more unique to what you do as an organisation and less competitive than generic fundraising pages.
“Donate to girls education in Sierra Leone” is much more niche than “Run the London marathon for charity”, for example. There will be much fewer organisations competing for these types of keywords and so it may be worth putting more effort into those pages.
They are also likely to be much more relevant to your cause so you could include CTAs to them directly from your informational content instead of having to go through What We Do pages first.
Final Thoughts
Some organisations look to procure SEO services solely to optimise their fundraising event pages, and as a result there is a high chance of disappointment when the agency or consultant can’t deliver.
The strategies I’ve written about are some of the best ways to approach the troublesome situation of generic fundraising pages but they’re by no means quick wins or easy to show a positive ROI for. They require much more long-term thinking, resource and strategic vision. And if senior stakeholders are keen to see quick results, it may be that Google ads or display ads are a better option.
A common question I get asked by clients is “what should I look for in a CMS to be SEO-friendly?”.
This question comes about for two main reasons: either an SEO audit has highlighted flaws in their current CMS, or they are looking to refresh their site and want to start off the right way with SEO prioritised from the beginning.
Furthermore, many companies will reach out to an SEO expert to optimise their site, only for them to find out that the CMS doesn’t allow them to make any important changes without developer support. This can really limit the impact an SEO specialist can have.
Long story short, asking about SEO-friendly CMS’s is an excellent question and I wish more people would ask it before they invest in expensive site builds. Often they will later find out that their CMS lacks some or many of the basic functionalities needed to fully optimise a site for search.
In this article I want to cover the absolute most important features of a CMS required for SEO. When you are working with developers, please make sure to ask them whether the CMS has all of these features. If they don’t, you could be making a poor decision to continue with the project.
After the checklist, I will outline some of the most SEO-friendly CMS’s to consider if you are unsure which is best for you.
If you need support choosing a design agency or asking the right questions of design proposals, that is certainly a service I offer. Feel free to get in touch to discuss how I can help.
CMS Requirements Checklist
The following checklist contains the absolute must-have functionalities your CMS for an SEO friendly website:
Web Standards
Configurable URLs
Editable Meta Tags
Configurable Header Tags
Redirects
Categories & Tags
Canonicals
Responsive design
Pagination
XML Sitemap
Noindex Options
Image Optimisation
Analytics Integration
Editor functionality
Multi-language Support (for sites with more than one language)
Below I will cover each of these requirements in detail which should equip you with the knowledge to ask your developer or agency these questions. Remember, these requirements are incredibly important, so even if just one feature is missing then it is potentially a big red flag.
Web Standards
Web standards are simply the way the website is built, ensuring that the code used in the build conforms to modern standards. In a nutshell, this refers to layer based HTML code, with styling (CSS) and Javascript code externalised.
This is important for SEO because it impacts the way that web crawlers access and understand the contents of a page. There are many websites still using outdated methods to display content which is a direct result of the CMS using outdated web standards, so it is crucial to get this right.
For the most part, most modern CMS’s will have this covered and it’s usually not an issue. But it’s always worth asking the question.
Configurable URLs
Configurable URLs are the ability of the website owner to easily and effectively edit the URL to whatever they desire. Most CMS’s will offer this functionality including the ability to include, exclude or modify URL subfolders (such as categories).
Conversely, there are still well-established CMS’s in use that generate a random sequence of numbers and letters in their URLs. It is also common that subfolders are set once by the agency with no ability to ever change them again.
The reason this is important is because URLs define a site structure which is crucial to building an optimised site. Furthermore, whilst the URL of an individual page isn’t considered a major ranking factor, most SEO experts agree it is still important.
An SEO-friendly CMS will allow the website owner to easily manage and modify their URLs themselves.
Editable Meta Tags
Meta tags are part of wider metadata that pass little pieces of information to search engines, social media platforms and web crawlers. The two most common meta tags you will use are the meta title and the meta description. These are features that appear on a search results page but not on the page itself.
These elements are very important for SEO because they will help you to accurately describe what your page is about, target higher volume keywords and encourage users to click through.
It’s very important for your CMS to offer the ability for you to edit the meta title and meta description so that you can take advantage of page-level optimisations that will boost your pages up the rankings.
Header tags (H1, H2, H3, H4 etc) are quite simply the different styles of headers you can use when building a webpage. They are important for titling the page, structuring the content and making it readable for users.
Headers are used strategically so, in a nutshell, the H1 is the title of the page, H2s are subpoints of the H1, H3s are subpoints of the preceding H2s and so on and so forth.
It is surprisingly common to find a newly built website where headers are implemented incorrectly (titles formatted as H2s or H1s used throughout the content for example). And the only way to fix them is to pay developers a fee.
The ability to edit headers yourself should never be out of reach and therefore is an important functionality for any CMS to have, especially if you want your website to perform well in search.
Redirects
Redirects allow you to automatically push users to a different page if the URL they have visited no longer exists or is temporarily unavailable. Any website that intends to grow will likely be using redirects a lot as you constantly improve, tweak and make changes to the site.
If you are to change a URL or unpublish a URL, users will land on a 404 error page which isn’t great for user experience. If the content (or a similar page) is now served on a new URL then it’s a simple best practice fix to just add in that redirect to avoid any issues for users.
Of course, proper usage of redirects is also crucial for SEO. So make sure your new CMS has the ability for you to add these in yourself as you work on the site.
Categories & Tags
Categories and tags are ways for you to organise your content. You may or may not need them as much as other websites but the majority of sites at least require categories. This is so that you can have clear sections of your website focused on certain specific areas.
Tags are mostly necessary for websites producing significant amounts of content where users would benefit from the ability to quickly find pages with similar themes. For example, recipe websites would typically use tags for specific dietary requirements or allergies so that users can find all of the recipes under that theme.
It’s worth thinking about your content strategy first and then ensuring that your future CMS does have the ability to easily create, modify and remove categories and tags.
Canonicals
Canonical tags are a way for you to tell search engines which is the correct page to index when there are multiple available. The most basic requirements are when query string parameters are added to URLs (for example sorting a page, filtering or adding tracking parameters that change the URL).
In these instances your canonical tag will tell search engines ‘make sure you index the correct page’. In the future you will also likely find times when you would need to use canonical tags to handle a situation caused by a new initiative or newly found issue.
Canonicals are likely something you wouldn’t even think about until an issue occurs and the solution is to use them. So it’s worth making sure the functionality is available right from the start.
Responsive Design
This one is (hopefully) a no-brainer but you would be surprised about the number of website platforms that still haven’t fully ensured responsivity is properly integrated.
Responsive design ensures that pages format according to the device it is being viewed on. With mobile now bringing in the lion’s share of traffic for most websites, responsive design is crucial for user experience and subsequently SEO.
Pagination
Pagination is a simple piece of code that sits behind pages to let search engines and web crawlers know that this is one of a series of pages. Without pagination tags, crawlers may incorrectly identify random pages within a category to index. For example page 4 of a category called ‘Recipes’ when you almost always want users to find page 1 first.
XML Sitemap
An XML sitemap is a complete listing of every single page on your website in an XML format. This is submitted to search engines so that they can clearly see the number of pages and structure of your site.
An XML sitemap is important for SEO because it affects how search engines crawl your website. You want to not only ensure that your new CMS has a sitemap functionality, but that is also updates automatically when new pages are added or existing pages are modified.
Noindex Options
Often there are pages that you do not want to appear in search results. There are many reasons why you would want to do this but for SEO it can be important for ensuring that pages don’t ‘cannibalize’ each other. This means that if two pages appear to have a similar topic, you want to ensure that search engines index the correct one.
Adding a ‘noindex’ tag to a page simply tells search engines not to rank this page and is used a lot when growing websites.
Image Optimisation
Images are an important part of any website and for SEO they can add value in so many ways. However, it’s important to ensure that your CMS has the ability to optimise images for both search and for users.
One crucial functionality is the ability to add ‘alt text’ which adds descriptive text to explain what the image is. Not only is this important for users with sight problems, but it can also help you rank highly in image searches or add context to your page.
Other functionalities you may wish to ensure your new CMS has include the ability to resize, add titles, add captions and add links.
Analytics Integration
Your CMS should be able to integrate with any analytics tool you use. The most common is of course Google Analytics which simply requires a piece of code to sit at the <head> of every page.
For most CMS’s integrating analytics is a piece of cake but it’s always worth double checking, especially if you are using a custom-built or unconventional platform.
Editor Functionality
It’s important to ensure that the page editor you use to create new pages and posts has all of the typical functionalities you need. This is also known as the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get).
The most basic functionalities will almost certainly be included, such as bold, italics and underline but there are features you may not have thought about that can be very handy in a page editor.
Two useful editor functionalities for SEO are to do with how links are handled. Firstly you may like the ability to ensure that certain links open in new windows, particularly for external links where you want to keep users on your own website.
And secondly you will likely want to use the ‘nofollow’ or ‘sponsored’ attributes for links which will help to tell search engines what relation this link has to your content. These are more advanced SEO techniques which you will likely need further down the line once you begin looking at how you should handle links in certain scenarios.
It’s important to consider all of the functionalities you will require from a page editor in your CMS and ensure that these will be available as they are not always guaranteed.
Multi-language Support
If you are building a website that has content in multiple different languages, it’s crucial to ensure that your CMS is capable of handling this. The most common way to handle multi-language websites is by using the ‘hreflang’ meta tag which tells search engines which is the correct version of a page based on the language and location.
However, you may also wish to utilise additional features such as geo-redirecting which redirects users to different pages based on their IP address location.
This functionality is not necessary if you have no intention to build your content in multiple languages, but even if you think it could be an option in the future, it’s worth checking that the option is available.
Which CMS’s Are The Most SEO Friendly?
The CMS you choose to use depends entirely on what you need it to do. There are some excellent SEO-friendly CMS’s (and some not-so-SEO-friendly ones) that you could choose based on the functionalities you require, purpose and size.
The following CMS’s are ones that I work with on a daily basis with my clients and I can vouch for them being SEO-friendly.
WordPress
WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world. It is user-friendly, completely customisable and open source. It is somewhat of a blank canvas and so absolutely everything is possible using WordPress.
It’s worth noting that there are 2 versions of WordPress (.com and .org), the .org version is the correct one to use for building a proper website with your own domain name and hosting.
WordPress offers millions of plugins which can be easily installed to add any functionality. This can be both a positive and a negative in terms of maintenance and keeping a healthy site.
Shopify
Shopify is the most popular ecommerce CMS due to its flexibility and customizability. It’s also quite easy to use once set up, albeit not as easy as WordPress or some custom built platforms but for SEO it is almost perfect. Its one downfall is a lingering inability to remove the word “product” or “category” from URLs, but it’s a low impact issue.
Like WordPress, Shopify has apps that can be added on to offer bespoke functions. Again, this can be both a positive and a negative but for SEO the benefits certainly outweigh the negatives.
Drupal
Drupal is one of the most popular CMS’s for large websites. It offers the ability to add on virtually any functionality which is ideal for SEO. It’s also a very popular platform from a development perspective so it shouldn’t be hard to find support.
It’s one downfall is that it can sometimes be a bit user-unfriendly for those managing it on a daily basis. It does require some getting used to however, and it’s not often as clear cut for those with very little experience managing websites.
Magento 2
Magento 2 is the main CMS of choice for very large ecommerce stores, most well-known retailers will use it. Again, it offers incredible flexibility for customisation but it can be a bit overwhelming for new users.
Umbraco
Umbraco is another open source CMS which is typically great for SEO. Again, a lot can be achieved using plugins and sites can be customised to be very user-friendly for those with little website management experience.
Of course, with every CMS there are pros and cons. It’s certainly worth performing comprehensive research to understand whether it offers the functionalities and performance based on your requirements. For SEO, these 5 get gold stars which is not to say that other CMS’s are SEO-unfriendly, but they certainly need some vetting.
If you need support with vetting and quizzing potential website providers to ensure your new CMS is right for you, feel free to get in touch to discuss how I can help.
I work with ecommerce stores on a daily basis and so it’s safe to say I have seen my fair share of ecommerce site issues.
What’s disheartening is that sometimes these small but common mistakes are what solely prevents these sites from achieving their full potential, no matter how great the product or service.
More often than not, the issues are the same time and again with ecommerce stores I audit.
And what’s more?
Making a concerted effort to fix them almost always ends up in consistent growth in organic traffic. So it really is worth dedicating the time to fixing them.
This article aims to help you identify and fix some of the most common ecommerce issues yourselves.
Of course, these are just a small sample, there are hundreds of bespoke issues you could find on any website, let alone an ecommerce store. A custom, expert SEO audit will always be the best route to go down, so just a quick plug for my ecommerce SEO services before we get started.
So without further ado, here are my 11 most common ecommerce issues and how to fix them…
1. URLs Are Incomprehensible
Without a doubt the most common ecommerce issue I find is that URLs are completely incomprehensible.
There are two different ways this problem presents itself:
The site structure has been given no consideration.
Product URLs are automatically generated to include gibberish.
An example of incomprehensible product URLs would usually look something like this: /dunlop_1f11_pmm_34222.html
Just think: if it doesn’t make sense to a human, it probably won’t make sense to a search engine.
The reason this is important is because URLs are crucial for giving search engines clear information, as well as creating for user-friendliness and shareability.
Most importantly, your URL is a very key ranking factor.
And what’s more…. people are more likely to click on a URL that reinforces the thing that they searched for.
For example…
Which URL looks more relevant to a search for ‘wireless laptop mouse’?:
/logitech_3ff-mouse-kl34/
/accessories/logitech-wireless-laptop-mouse/
The second one, right? Even if those letters do mean something (the model number maybe?), if people aren’t searching using that information then de-prioritise it.
The click-through-rate from SERPs is an indirect ranking factor, so it is just another reason not to skimp out on your URL structures.
How To Fix Ecommerce URL Issues
Manually fixing URLs can be tedious, but it can be highly impactful for search visibility.
Firstly, you should be aware of URL structuring best practices. There are some brilliant ecommerce URL best practices in this guide if you want to read more.
Now pull a complete list of your URLs and export into a spreadsheet. You can pull these using tools in your CMS, Google Search Console or crawling tools such as Screaming Frog.
In a spreadsheet you can manually go through and rewrite all URLs that are incomprehensible.
Your URL should be:
Written to include the keywords you wish to rank for.
Short, friendly and intuitive
When you have multiple similar products from the same brand such as the wireless mouse example, try to use distinguishable features about the product in the URL such as “USB” or “bluetooth”.
If you’re still not able to distinguish between items using words, it’s ok to use model numbers but try to put them at the end of the URL rather than in a prominent position.
You will then need to go through each page to fix the URL, ensuring that you redirect the old one to the new one. This could be very time-consuming if your website is particularly large, so you may wish to outsource this task if you have the budget.
2. Not Producing High Quality Blog Content
Unfortunately the ‘Build it and they will come’ approach very rarely works in ecommerce.
It’s no longer acceptable to just create a shop and hope that people will find it. Paid marketing could help, but it can often be costly and unprofitable.
Content marketing is almost always the way to get an edge in competitive ecommerce industries. By writing great blog content you can draw in a large readership who can then be funneled through to your product or category pages.
You can get blog pages to rank for high volume search terms and promote them via organic social media for a steady stream of traffic.
There is a much broader strategic picture about how great content translates into sales, both short-term and long-term, and this is something ecommerce store owners generally need to get better at.
So what does quality content look like?
The type of content that gets ranked and the content that gets shared widely have a lot in common. Mainly that they are comprehensive, insightful and answer a user’s questions.
Generally great content takes the shape of long-form pieces of content, typically over 1,000 words.
Here is a great example from an ecommerce store, Healthspan, that sells supplements and vitamins:
They are capitalising on searches about the health benefits of turmeric. They have produced a very comprehensive article and in return they get to funnel readers through to their own product.
Ideally you want to be creating content where there is good search volume, and so thorough keyword research is important.
However, even when there is little search volume, there are also huge additional benefits in creating great content, whether or not it ranks.
For example, say you operate in a niche where it’s difficult to find that golden egg topic that is both relevant and has high search volume.
You can still write about topics that are interesting and insightful, and just use other marketing methods to promote it (social media, paid ads etc). Just by getting it out there you can find yourself with lots of bonus benefits such as new backlinks that strengthen your site authority.
You are also using this space to link through to your products, passing along crucial ‘link juice’ and funneling traffic strategically.
Achieving traffic from other avenues as well as search engines can also have a beneficial long-term impact on your SEO, with a wide range of surprise benefits.
Still not convinced?
Here are some great additional resources that will hopefully convince you on the importance of an ecommerce blog:
How To Create Great Content For Your Ecommerce Store
Of course, the first thing to do is to conduct extensive keyword research around your niche.
With the keyword research you should be aiming to compile a comprehensive spreadsheet that covers every individual topic that could be linked back to your product. Take a look at commonly searched questions, related topics and comparison queries for products.
Along with the search volumes for each of these queries, you should be able to group them into blog topics and develop an overall content strategy for publishing these pages.
I won’t cover keyword research in detail here since it is a topic covered by many great blogs already. This guide to keyword research by Ahrefs is a very good introduction if you would like to learn some useful tips.
During the keyword research process you might find gaps where there is very little search volume but there is a lot that could be covered. You should schedule these in amongst the other blog topics in the calendar to create variety in your blog.
The final step is to build high quality pieces of content and publish them.
Over time you will start to see natural organic growth and traffic to the whole site as a result. It may take time but it’s a very important element you need to become familiar with.
Those stores that do ecommerce blogs correctly set themselves apart from those stores that don’t, so it really can make the difference.
My article on using Google Analytics data to optimise your site also covers how you can find topics based on user site searches, as well as many more tips for optimising existing content. This should be a useful resource for building out your blog.
3. Handling query string parameters
Dealing with query string parameters is one of the most common and frustrating issues that ecommerce store owners come up against.
Whilst it is a slightly complicated concept, fixing it can be unbelievably powerful.
But firstly…
What are query string parameters?
Query string parameters are additional fields in a URL, after the main page slug, that tell you or a user additional information about the page.
Anything that occurs in a URL after a question mark is a query string parameter.
These could be simple tracking parameters (such as being shared on social media), but more commonly on ecommerce stores they are used whenever filtering or sorting takes place on category pages.
For example, if you have a page that displays “Sports shoes”, users may wish to filter by brand, size, colour and price. When users filter or sort the page, it adds additional fields to the URL.
This is absolutely fine because users may often want to share their filtered view with others. It can also tell you some great information about how users interact with the page.
Here’s how that typically looks…
I’ve just gone to a popular fashion retailer’s website and found this base URL:
/men/shop-by-product/shoes
I then started filtering the page to add what style of shoe I’m looking for and what size, and the end result is this:
Pretty long, right?
So what’s the problem?
In a nutshell – this issue is about the creation of thousands of new URLs that aren’t being correctly marked to tell search engines exactly what they are.
If clear indicators aren’t given to search engines then there are unlimited issues this could cause, including:
Duplicate content (when the page stays the same even after parameters are added)
Duplicate meta titles/H1s (even when the page content changes, these stay the same)
Using crawl budget (making search engines crawl these pages rather than the ones you want to rank)
Inability of search engines to understand which is the correct page to rank
How to fix query string parameter issues
Fortunately there are some fairly easy ways to fix query string parameter issues. The below fixes assume that URLs with query string parameters shouldn’t be indexed. (There are instances where you want parameters to be indexed, most of the time you probably don’t want them to be).
Add Canonical Tags
By far the most important thing you can do is to add canonical tags to the base page that you wish to be indexed. The canonical tag will then appear on all query string parameter pages and will tell search engines that the correct page to index is the base URL and not this one.
Specify preferences in Google Search Console
The first thing you can do is to tell Google Search Console how to handle these. In the ‘URL Parameters’ section Google will have made some reasonable assumptions about parameters it has already found, but you can edit these or add additional parameters to make sure everything is completely accurate.
Use Robots.txt Directives
At the time of writing there are some big changes coming to do with how Google reads robots.txt directives, but right now it is still relevant.
A robots.txt file is unique because it tells search engines (and others if you wish) which pages should not be crawled. This means that, even if Google is not going to index your pages, at least it doesn’t need to waste it’s crawl budget on these pages.
4. Barely Populated Product Pages
I was recently auditing a new client’s ecommerce store and it was so clear to see why the competitors were ranking in position number 1 and this site wasn’t.
Each top ranking product page was perfectly crafted with a comprehensive description, product spec, images, FAQs and just all-round great information.
In comparison, my client’s product pages had an image, title and a “Buy now” button.
As an online shopper, why would you buy a product where very little information is provided about what it is and why you should buy it?
Sometimes this is because products are pulled from an API, other times it’s because the sheer volume of products makes it too time-consuming to write unique content for each one.
But it’s important to remember that the difference between ranking product pages at number 1 vs any other position is almost always going to be the content of the page. If you don’t have time or budget to write them then they are clearly not a priority for you.
How to populate & optimise product pages
The cold hard fact is that, if you want a product page to perform well in a competitive space, it needs comprehensive, unique and compelling.
This is content that unfortunately takes a lot of time and resource to create.
For webshops with thousands of products there is some automation you can do. Using Excel formulas you can use readily available data to craft unique-sounding product descriptions that can do a decent job until you can personally rewrite them.
You should use formulaic content as a placeholder until you find the time them individually. You can use Google Search Console to find pages with the highest impressions and prioritise them that way to have the biggest impact.
To optimise each ecommerce product page you should:
Add a range of product images that cover all features of the product
Write an effective and detailed short product description
Write an in-depth long product description
Add product specifications (where relevant)
Add product FAQs to answer the most common questions about the item
Enable product reviews
Incorporate relevant keywords into the meta title, URLs, headings and descriptions
Putting in this time and resource to crafting high quality product pages will undoubtedly pay dividends in the long-run. It’s a big time investment in your website and search engines will reward that hard work.
5. Poor Site Styling (CSS)
Ok so this image of a 90s style website is a bit of an extreme example, but you get the point!
Awful styling on ecommerce sites are one of the most frustrating issues I see.
A site can be ranking well and achieving great traffic but still seeing no conversions. All because the styles are visually unappealing!
With this point I am not talking about the occasional box or button, I’m talking about sites that have given very little consideration to stylings and how they impact the user journey.
So important is ecommerce styling, companies like Amazon spend huge sums of money to test, tweak and optimise in order to maximise conversions.
But it really doesn’t have to be an expensive or complex project. There are some really simple things you can do…
How To Optimise Site Styles For Conversions
There are a huge range of site elements you can look at to see how they could be styled better for conversions.
I won’t go into every single one, but here are some basic elements that can make a monumental difference:
Make your paragraph font size large and readable
Use good paragraph spacing (don’t squash the lines together)
Use font colours that are easy to read (no bright lime green for example)
Make call-to-action buttons big and enticing
Make text links very visible both without hovering over them and with hovering
Make product prices large and clear
One of my former clients had an addiction to lime green text, yet his store was selling health products. To many users this screams “unprofessional” and when you’re dealing with expensive or life-altering products, this simply won’t do.
My go-to tip for improving simple site styles is to simply audit the site styles of well-performing competitors and copy things that look good. If their products are selling pretty well, it’s safe to assume that users are happy with the way the site is displayed.
6. No SSL Certificate
Not having an SSL certificate in 2019 is a major issue for any up-and-coming ecommerce stores.
If you’re not familiar with SSL, it’s simply the act of adding a higher level of security to your site to protect your users when they need to input their data. This presents itself in the form of ‘https’ at the start of the URL, as opposed to http.
For many web browsers it also presents itself as a lock with a “Connection is secure” message that looks like this:
When you don’t have an SSL certificate, some browsers will ask you whether you are sure you would like to visit this page because it’s not secure. Others will direct you there but display a “not secure” notification to warn you.
If you are thinking of purchasing a product online by inputting your personal details and your bank details, the last thing you want to see is an SSL warning.
So for ecommerce stores, it’s an absolute must.
How To Get An SSL Certificate
Getting an SSL certificate is actually surprisingly simple. You need to log in to your hosting provider and look for information about acquiring an SSL certificate.
Many hosting providers offer them free as part of their package, but others charge a one-off fee or a yearly fee for purchasing one.
After installing it, the process is usually automatic but there can occasionally be minor issues. With WordPress you have various “Force SSL” plugins that can help with issues.
A great website I use for diagnosing client’s SSL issues is Why No Padlock? This gives information about what issues the site has that are stopping it from being fully SSL compliant. You can then take this information and make the fixes yourself.
7. Long Or Broken Checkout Forms
Broken checkout forms are absolutely unacceptable on an ecommerce store, and yet you would be surprised how common this actually is.
As part of the full auditing process I make sure to run some test orders through client websites. You can uncover some very interesting insights from doing this with the perspective of a customer and I encourage you to do so with your own checkout forms.
Broken checkout forms usually manifest themselves with very small errors such as mandatory questions that you can’t answer, or dropdown menus where your option isn’t available.
And then there are the unnecessarily long checkout forms…
For me these feel worse because you’re giving the customer a real headache when trying to purchase something from your shop. There is absolutely no reason for your customers to face huge hurdles when buying your product.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to collect great data on customers that you can use for future marketing. But for a first time checkout these should be as simple and basic as possible.
Long checkout forms will lead to high rates of abandoned baskets and a loss of sales. Therefore, it’s important to make this final step as seamless as possible for the user.
How to fix checkout form issues
The first thing to do is to actually test out your checkout forms.
Even if you have test payment cards to use, I encourage you to actually test once or twice with a real payment card to see it through the customer’s eyes.
Under each question on the checkout form, try a range of different inputs to see how they work.
For example, if you offer international shipping try inputting different country codes into the telephone number box. The same logic applies if you have a postcode/zip code field that only accepts the format of your own country.
You should then audit your form questions and ask yourself if this information is really necessary to purchasing this item.
For example…
Do you really need to find out the customer’s gender? And whilst it’s great data to ask how they found your site, could you possibly sacrifice it for a better user experience?
Maybe you force users to create an account for a one-off purchase rather than offering a ‘Guest Checkout’ option. This is an instant red flag for many customers, especially when they may be able to get the same product from a site like Amazon where they can make a purchase within 30 seconds.
Finally you should audit your mandatory fields to ensure that everything marked as such is definitely required.
These simple steps can really help you streamline your checkout forms and increase your conversion rate. You should also revisit forms regularly, not only to optimise more but also to ensure nothing has broken as the result of updates or broken plugins.
8. Misusing Product Tags
Product tags allow your users to see other products that share a certain property, allowing them to navigate seamlessly through product pages.
These can be really effective and useful if done correctly. If done incorrectly they can be a major burden and can be terrible for SEO.
The worst case scenarios are ecommerce stores that have a tag for every single thing under the sun. These types of websites are also guilty of creating a tag in the moment and then completely forgetting about it, or creating very similar new ones on other products.
Each of these tags creates a new page that houses all products that share it. This means that incorrectly applying tags can lead to hundreds of tag pages that serve very little purpose.
The result of this is that we get pages with thin content, where only one product has this tag. We get duplicate content where multiple tags have the same 1 product. And we get bloating of the website where a significant amount of the total site pages are tag pages.
How To Address Product Tag Issues
The best thing you can do to address product tag issues is simply to develop a very basic strategy.
Ask yourself:
What are your tags for?
How are they going to be applied consistently?
Are all of these tags definitely useful for user experience and SEO?
You might want to start with a tag audit. Pull a big list of tag pages and manually go through to see what you currently have live on site.
Consider how you can use dynamic filters instead of tags. If your store sells t-shirts and you currently have tags for sizes and colours, you should know that filtering is often a much better solution for users and SEO.
If you’re building tags for SEO you should conduct some keyword research and SERP research to find out what the possibilities are for this tag.
If you decide your tag pages aren’t useful for SEO, that’s absolutely fine.
However, you should tell search engines not to index these pages. This can be done by adding a “noindex” meta tag to each of your tag pages.
Depending on your CMS you should have some options to do this quite easily so you shouldn’t need to do any coding. If your CMS doesn’t offer this functionality, it might be time to think about upgrading. Check out my SEO-friendly CMS checklist if you are considering making the switch.
9. Not using authentic payment badges
Inputting your payment card details online is unnerving for a lot of people. With internet security a hot topic and online scams abound, it’s your duty as an online seller to let your users know that this is a safe place.
Your SSL certificate plays a role in this but as does using secure payment methods and verification by third parties, which some trust seals provide.
Each CMS has different methods for implementing trust badges, assuming you have already implemented your SSL certificate. I won’t cover all the details of adding trust badges to your site since it’s slightly more complex than I can explain in just a couple of sentences. But here are a few resources that should help you out:
The first resource has some excellent findings from testing the differences between sites with and without badges, so you can see how impactful these can be.
10. No breadcrumb navigation
‘Breadcrumbs’ is a term used to describe the trail of pages that a user took in order to reach the page they are currently on.
For big and complicated websites these can be priceless in allowing users to easily go back through the broader categories that got them to their initial page. This means they can continue browsing, theoretically allowing them to increase the number of products in their basket.
Implementing a breadcrumb navigation is a tried and tested method used by ecommerce stores to increase the number of pages per visit and ultimately maximise a customer’s expenditure on site.
Many smaller ecommerce stores may get away without using breadcrumbs because the categories are accessible from the menu. But the bigger an ecommerce store gets, the more important it is to use breadcrumbs.
For example…
If you’re in the market for a rather questionable flowery shirt but you can’t quite bring yourself to commit to that purchase, the Asos website allows you to navigate back to the categories you came from using the breadcrumbs above the product:
This ease of navigation is what shoppers subconsciously find themselves coming back to when shopping online.
A difficult navigation experience on a store is often remembered and when that familiar site comes up in search results, these memories mean they will refrain from clicking on that result.
There are plugins or apps that can help with implementing breadcrumbs on your site, but you may find that a more tailored approach from a developer will work better for your site.
In the worst case scenarios are websites that do not adjust to different screens sizes, causing users to zoom in to every individual element in order to see it.
But in the most common scenarios, there is some mobile responsiveness in place but in practice it’s very difficult to use. This could be because:
Buttons are too small
Clickable elements are too close together
Text size hasn’t been increased for the screen width
The results of the test will help to give you some pointers, but the fix will depend entirely on how your site was built. Most new online stores are much better at being mobile responsive straight out-of-the-box. It’s mostly older or custom built websites that are usually problematic.
The fix is likely to require the support of a developer, but you could also choose to switch over to a CMS such as Shopify or WordPress that can provide template themes that are already mobile responsive.
Conclusion
This article showcases the most common ecommerce issues and how to fix them. Of course, there are many more bespoke issues that affect online stores. So don’t take this as a definitive list.
If you haven’t recently had an audit of your website from an SEO specialist, it’s definitely a worthwhile investment. My technical and on-page SEO audits run through over 200 site checks to identify issues and areas for optimisation. They are then presented in an actionable, comprehensive and easy-to-understand report.
Google Analytics data is an absolute feast of unlocked potential.
Most people only use Google Analytics for reporting purposes, missing out on some of the most effective and actionable insights available to site owners.
Did you know that you can use your Google Analytics data to improve your site SEO, user journeys and conversation rate optimisation?
In fact, if you’re not yet utilising the vast array of data available in Google Analytics for SEO, then you might be missing out on some very good opportunities.
In this article we look at ways in which you find unique insights from Google Analytics that will allow you to climb up the search rankings, generate more traffic and, ultimately, increase your conversion rates.
These tips can be applied to all websites, from ecommerce stores to local businesses, as long as you have sufficient data you can put it to good use for optimising your site.
Since many of these tips involve using data, you could also find my article on Excel formulas for SEO quite helpful.
Here are my top 8 tips for optimising your site based on Google Analytics data..
1. Find Time-on-Page Anomalies
Time-on-page (and dwell time) are ranking factors that tell search engines whether or not your content was particularly relevant or interesting to the user.
Of course, if you find a webpage interesting or it matches what you were looking for then you will likely stay on that page longer even if you do leave after getting your answer.
Search engines will interpret a long time on page as a positive signal and reward you with improved rankings. (Source).
Sometimes you have middle-man pages that are purely intended to encourage people to take an action or click on the next page and those are fine and not what we’re looking for.
Instead, we want to find pages that we wanted users to spend time on but that currently they are not.
We’re thinking here about resource pages, articles and cornerstone content that are the backbone of any well-optimised website. These pages are what draws readers in for long reads and gives you the opportunity to earn their trust in your brand.
How to find pages with low time-on-page
In order to locate pages with a poor time-on-page metric, follow these steps:
In Google Analytics set your date range. The bigger the better but 3 months is a good benchmark.
Go to Behaviour > Site Content > All Pages and open up the report.
Add a segment at the top of “Organic Traffic”.
Now click on the metric of “Avg. Time On Page” to order the results by lowest time on page.
Here we can see a time on page anomaly of only 43 seconds when other pages are much higher
You can manually look through the results and scroll past any pages that don’t need a long time on page.
Pick out any with a low time on page and put them in a separate spreadsheet to begin working through.
Unfortunately it’s not possible to find out time on page for sessions where only one page is visited or the user left on this page.
This is because your analytics account gets this data from the time between clicks on site, which would be lacking if the user left. You should therefore take all time on page data with a pinch of salt and carefully assess the data before acting.
How to Optimise Pages With a Low Time on Page
To optimise these pages you might want to take a visual look and see what specifically is preventing people from staying on the page for very long.
The main elements you should look out for are:
Poor structure of page (dominated by images or text blocks out of place)
Pop ups or ads interfering with user experience
Poorly written content
Slow loading time of page
Content doesn’t entice further reading in the first paragraphs
The content isn’t relevant to the search queries
The content is too short
The article offers nothing interesting or noteworthy about the topic
The article is out of date
You should make a note of all issues that you spot and then make an action plan to vastly improve the content.
You might find for example that when you visit the page it is difficult to read because of the styling. Or the opening to paragraphs are incredibly boring. The article could have been originally published a few years ago and is now out of date.
These types of small issues can be very easily solved with minor tweaks and updates.
Other issues might take more time however.
You might notice that your content is only 500 words whereas competitors have content that is well over 1,500 words. Or that the content just isn’t very well tailored to searcher intent. Content length often correlates with good organic performance rather than causes it, so it’s important to understand how better value and content quality is the solution, not mindless content length.
One interesting technique you can use is called Bucket Brigade which is the process of writing your copy using phrases that entice readers to keep reading.
Examples bucket brigade phrases include:
“Here’s the deal…”
or
“And it doesn’t stop there…”.
Simply making minor tweaks and amends across poor performing pages can actually have quite a significant effect on SEO. I’ve optimised pages that shot up from page 5 to page 1 in the SERPS just by utilising these techniques, so it can be very effective.
2. Find Topics Your Readers Have Searched For On Your Site
There is an official way to set up Google Analytics reports to be able to find data about internal search terms, as well as an unofficial way…
If you have already set up Site Search in your analytics then this is easy to do. Simply navigate to Behaviour > Site Search > Search Terms and your data will be laid out there clearly.
However, the majority of site owners aren’t aware of this feature and the fact that in needs to be set up beforehand to begin generating meaningful data.
But all is not lost!
Most websites use query string parameters in their URLs for internal searches, and so you can actually find data for internal searches from within your Behaviour > Site Content > All Pages report.
In layman’s terms this means that whenever somebody searches on your site for something, the URL automatically adds a parameter of “?s=” followed by the search term.
These then get reported in Google Analytics and you can find them in the All Pages report just by searching for “?s=” and seeing what comes up.
If you set your date range large enough you should find an absolute wealth of insights here.
What To Do With Internal Search Information
There are lots of great things you can do with internal search informationthat are invaluable for SEO.
The first thing to do is to ensure that information is somewhat statistically significant. If you’re doing anything drastic then this is important but otherwise it doesn’t have to be too scientific.
The logic here is to not too anything rash just because there were 2 searches for the same topic. Unless you only had 3 visitors on the site then 2 searches is usually not a high enough number to warrant any changes.
Optimise Existing Pages
Internal queries for topics that you already have pages on can be really useful for optimising your page based on the language and terminology that people use.
For example – say you have a page titled “Best rucksacks for travel”. You might notice that internal searches on your site actually use the phrase “Travel backpacks” instead. This is a great indicator about the type of terminology people use and so you can start tweaking your copy to match this.
If “rucksack” has a higher search volume than “backpack” then there is no need to change the title, instead what you can do is go through your page copy and see where it might be possible to include the term “travel backpack” either in addition to or in place of “travel backpacks”.
The effect of this is two-fold…
Firstly your internal search function will then show the relevant page when users search this term, and secondly it enriches your semantic language which we know that Google likes, thereby improving the SEO of the page.
Minor tweaks like this can help boost your traffic both from search engines and from users already on your site.
Create New Pages
The second option is incredibly straight-forward.
If people are searching your site for a topic that you don’t already have a resource on, then build one!
Internal search results are a fantastic vault of information to give you topic ideas.
It is essentially market research without having to do market research. Rather than try to figure out what content people would enjoy or like to see on your site, you already have this information!
Again, be selective here. If your website is about “eco friendly travel” for example, then you won’t want to build pages about topics that are completely out of line with your brand such as “round the world flights”.
Adding value to the overall niche of your site is more important than creating a page for every imaginable topic.
Once you notice a trend in internal searches, build up a list of the terms that people are using to find the topic, complement them with some keyword research and build a page that perfectly meets this need.
3. Nail Your Demographic Targeting
You might not be reaching the right demographics with your content
It’s fair to say that the vast majority of websites have a very specific demographic that their content is aimed at. Those who are most likely to convert.
If you are a local electrician, hair salon or a restaurant for example, then it’s fairly useless to have all of your traffic coming from a country you’re not located in.
In a similar vein, if you run a business entirely targeted at a specific gender or age and your site traffic does not match this demographic, then this is a good indication that something is wrong.
You can find a whole wealth of demographic data by delving into the Audience section of Google Analytics and focusing on Demographics and Geo.
Here you can find out the typical profile of your users, whether they are male, female, their age and their location.
If your website is not converting as well as it should then your demographic data might hold some clues as to why.
How To Use Demographic Data To Optimise Your Site
The demographic data might help you identify issues with your targeting and lack of conversions, but what can you do to help tackle this?
Geo Targeting
If you have a local business and you want to attract users primarily from one location, you should implement the following:
Set up Google My Business using a local address and specify your service area
Mention the location throughout your content i.e. “We are a restaurant based in Leeds”.
Add your address to your footer (ensure it is written exactly the same as on your Google My Business page)
User Profile Targeting
User profile targeting is slightly more tricky.
It might be difficult to identify why you’re not attracting the demographic that your content is aimed at. Follow these steps to help you find a clearer understanding:
Conduct a content audit of your web pages. This will help you identify and assess whether individual pages are relevant to your target audience.
Language style – The words and tone you use can be important at attracting the right demographic.
Assess your marketing channels. (If you’re using Instagram to advertise an over 60s cruise then you might be barking up the wrong tree.)
4. Site Speed Insights
Site speed and pagespeed are becoming increasingly more important ranking factors.
Sometimes you can pick up tips about slow loading pages from looking at high bounce rates. But Google Analytics already has a very nifty tool for helping you diagnose where pagespeed issues lie.
Under the Behaviour section and then Site Speed, there are a wealth of different options for you to find useful data.
The greatest insight can come from Speed Suggestions section which shows your slowest loading pages along with useful links to Google Pagespeed Insights for each individual page that lets you know where the issues lie.
What To Do With Information From Page Speed Insights
One of the most common issue for a slow loading page is very large images.
Set a consistent file size target for your images and stick to it, as long as it does not affect the image quality.
A recommended size is anything up to a maximum of 100kb.
However, many other page speed fixes will be universal to the whole site rather than individual pages, and sometimes quite technical.
These include things like minifying CSS and javascript, installing a CDN, leveraging browser caching or enabling lazy loading.
Not all of these issues are easy to fix on your own but the Google reports can help you identify what issues you have and then you can pay a developer a small fee to fix them.
Alternatively, if you’re using WordPress there are a range of great site speed plugins you can utilise. My personal favourite is Swift Performance Lite.
There are quite a lot site speed plugins but make sure to only activate one at a time and to carefully test each of the options in order to avoid breaking anything on site.
5. Exit Rate & Bounce Rate
The thing about exit rate and bounce rate is that they’re not always negative metrics.
It’s important to realise the meanings behind metrics before taking any action.
The first step is to understand the metrics, the second is to interpret the data with that understanding, and the third is to plan action.
What Is Exit Rate?
Exit rate shows the percentage of people for whom this page was the last page they visited in their session.
What Is Bounce Rate?
Bounce rate shows the percentage of people who leave the site after only visiting one page.
Understanding Exit Rate And Bounce Rate
Whilst these metrics might sound negative, that’s not always the case.
Say I were to search for the price of a haircut at my local hairdressers; I will very likely be able to find that out from my very first click from the search results.
This will count as both a bounce and an exit, but the page still did it’s job.
Similarly, if a user navigates through the site to complete the goal I wanted them to complete, then they are more than welcome to exit the website on those pages.
Therefore a high exit rate on the right pages is what we want.
What we don’t want is a high exit rate on the pages where we wanted users to take action or click on to other pages.
But be reasonable…
There will always be people who exit or bounce. We just want to minimise it to a reasonable rate, say… anywhere below 40%.
Optimising Pages With High Exit Or Bounce Rates
There are a few different scenarios depending on the action you would like your users to take.
Encourage Them To Convert To Your Goal
If you are a goal-oriented website such as an e-commerce store, a charity asking for donations or a local business trying to drive enquiries for example, then an exit rate on a content page is negative.
Therefore, the aim is to drive them to the goal page (product purchase, donate form, enquiry form) for them to exit after completing that transaction.
How you encourage users to take these actions is a whole other science called conversion rate optimisation. But some examples of actions you could take include:
Adding call-to-actions (CTAs) to headers, footers and sidebars
Using internal links to the CTAs within copy where relevant
Tailoring content to the CTAs i.e. using language that inspires readers to want to take that action
Making sure your CTAs are visible across all devices
Reducing unnecessary, cluttered content
Running A/B tests for things like button colours, CTA wording and frequency of ask to find out what converts best
Many of these CRO improvements are particularly important to ecommerce stores where you are encouraging users to purchase products. (P.S. If you have an online shop you should also read this guide to fixing the most common ecommerce site issues).
Encourage Users To Click On More Pages
If you are primarily a content-based website such as a blog or news website and you make money mostly from adverts, then you want people to continue clicking on more pages.
If you don’t yet have enough relevant content, see the next point. If you do have enough relevant content, these points should help:
For SEO purposes it’s important to link to relevant resources and not just any random page on your site. Look through your backlog of content and search for relevant keywords (you can use Google search operators to do this if you like).
Find relevant pieces of text within your article that you can hyperlink to the pages you have found.
Be creative and entice clicks with effective anchor text. For example: “it’s like that time I got chased by a gorilla in the jungle” is very intriguing!
Create Related Content
Another very good strategy for decreasing exit and bounce rates is to create additional, complimentary content that answers additional questions your users might have about a topic.
If you’ve ever visited Wikipedia you will notice they do this outstandly well; you can end up losing days clicking on a never ending stream of related topics.
Wikipedia’s are the masters of the long click
Here you should look out for topics that are related but not necessarily relevant to be included within this page.
You should think:
What additional questions might people have when visiting this page?
What related topics or ideas might interest or inspire these readers?
Build yourself a list of great topic ideas, create strong pages for them, and then link to them from the original article.
For example…
Say I have a page about a weight loss diet, I could also create complimentary pages about: weight loss through exercise, positive sleep patterns or “what is a good BMI?”
These topics aren’t relevant enough to be included in the article but they incredibly powerful when linked to within the text i.e. “of course, exercise is also important for weight loss and you should do this in conjunction with your diet”.
The main thing you’re doing here is adding value to your user’s experience on the site, something that search engines love! Here’s a resource for generating topic ideas that may help you.
6. Behaviour Flow For User Journeys
(Image blurred on purpose)
The behaviour flow charts are so useful for visually understanding the journeys of users from page to page.
The reason this section is important is because it lets you know whether or not people are taking the action you wanted them to take from reading your content.
This functionality is highly beneficial assuming that you have mapped out your ideal user journeys.
For example, if your website offers services then you will most likely want users to visit your “service pages” after reading any content. (On that note, check out feel free to find out about the SEO services I offer).
In particular, the behaviour flow is a powerful tool for developing your sales funnel.
The main point is that you want your traffic to convert. Behaviour flows lets you know if your user journeys are aiding that goal or hampering it.
You can find the Behaviour Flow section under “Behaviour”.
How to use the behaviour flows chart to optimise your site
Since behaviour flows is quite a visual feature, it’s actually incredibly simple to use.
First set your date range so that you have a meaningful amount of traffic. If your traffic is quite low you should look at a year’s worth of data but typically 3 months is a good range.
Click on behaviour flows and your chart will display based on landing pages. This is the default view and also the most useful.
The way to use the behaviour flow is actually quite straightforward. You basically want to find out if the behaviour flow matches the user journey you wanted people to take.
If it matches fine then great! No more work needed.
If it needs some work, consider these tips:
Tips to improve your sales funnel
Make links to sales pages from landing pages more enticing i.e. “we have developed the most innovative AI software on the market”
Use visual banners or buttons for calls-to-action
Make sure sales pages are accessible from the header navigation and the footer
If using a sidebar, make this the most prominent. You could use a sticky sidebar which follows the user as they scroll.
Increase the number of links to the service from within the content (but don’t get spammy).
These are some very basic principles that would help to guide small to medium websites, but for larger and more complex businesses it is crucial to use much more sophisticated user journey funnels.
7. Devices data
The devices data is actually a lot more important than most people realise. Simply because getting this wrong can be devastating for your site.
I’m going to have to admit that I’ve been a victim of this in the past when naivety got the better of me…
With an early website I built I had a huge bounce rate across all blog posts which wouldn’t budge despite numerous optimisations.
When we build websites on desktop we generally assume that either other people will view it in the same way you are, or that your CMS will do its magic and optimise your site perfectly for any screen width.
We would be wrong to make these assumptions, especially after we tinker with formats, stylings and add plugins that change various elements.
For me, my bounce rate issue was caused by social media icons that took up half the width of a mobile screen but looked perfectly fine on desktop.
Once I fixed this issue my bounce rate restored itself, pages per session increased and I received a welcome boost in rankings as a result.
I also learned a valuable lesson: never forget how your audience is viewing your content.
How to use device data
Firstly you can find your user’s device preferences by going to Audience > Mobile > Overview in your Google Analytics account. Again, set your date range large enough to give you significant data.
The results will look something like this:
You might actually be surprised at the data you find in here.
If you’re a B2B website and have always assumed that your clients use desktops to find you, you might find out that actually that’s no longer the case.
The report will also show you the bounce rate by device. This is the most important metric to look at because it will give you a clear indication if the format is broken only for one specific screen size.
If you do find that one specific device has a significant bounce rate, you should take the following steps:
Try to isolate the specific device if it is a mobile or tablet by going to the view “Devices” in the same section under “Mobile”. This will narrow the figures down into specific brands of phones or tablets.
Check to see if there is one specific device that has a significantly higher bounce rate than the others. If there is not then move on to step 4.
If you do find one problematic device, attempt to use that device to access your website.
Begin testing all content types on your website by interacting with the pages from the device type or specific brand that is causing issues. Look for anything in particular that is causing usability issues.
Attempt to take the action you would like users to take. For example, click on links, buttons, fill out forms and sign up for things.
Note down all of your findings, no matter how small. You should now have a list of things to improve from the font size to functionalities.
More often than not the finding will be something glaringly obvious like a pop up that users cannot close or scrolling functionality that isn’t smooth.
However for small, incremental changes you would be surprised at the impact this can have on improving your site metrics.
I’ve had clients that have seen a 50% increase in time-on-page and pages-per-session simply because they changed the size of their fonts for mobile screen widths.
It really can be that effective.
The one final takeaway from this point is to check this data regularly and to conduct robust testing for any website changes to styles or functionality.
The last thing you want is to receive a loss of income from overlooking something so small.
8. Search Query Data
Ok this one is slightly cheating because this data actually comes from Google Search Console. But if you have configured your Google Analytics account correctly then you will be pulling in this data to your account view.
Search query data lets you know what terms people Googled in order to find your site.
If you haven’t yet configured this you can simply toggle the setting in your Admin > Property Settings like so:
Once the connection has been made you should start to see data populated in the Acquisition section under Search Console.
You can find queries specific to individual pages under the section called Landing Pages. Click on each one to find all queries that led to a visit on that page.
How to use search query data to optimise your content
The data in the Landing Pages section will by sorted by Impressions by default. This shows you how many people saw your site from searching this query, regardless of whether they clicked on it or not.
I find this ordering the most beneficial because mostly you want to optimise your site based on search queries with the highest search volume.
(This is not always the case, especially if you are targeting a niche of a highly competitive search term – so feel free to order the data based on which relates most accurately to your site).
Now simply optimise your pages for the queries you have found in the data.
In order to do this, you can add high volume keywords to your:
Meta titles
Headings
URLs
Meta descriptions
Content
And you can scatter a range of lower volume keywords throughout the text to increase relevance.
Of course, with bigger and more complex websites you would want to do this strategically. And an SEO specialist would delve much deeper by performing a deep analysis of the keywords in order to maximise the impact of optimisations.
But for simple quick wins on smaller websites, this basic method alone can be highly impactful.
Conclusion
I hope you found these tips for optimising your site with Google Analytics data useful. The main takeaway is that you can and should be using this extensive vault of data regularly to look for improvements.
You should get used to tweaking, testing and analysing based on the data you collect because this can really take your website to the next level.
If you would like to enquire about SEO support for your website, feel free to get in touch. I would be happy to discuss your project and how I can help.
Professional SEO specialists possess very broad skills in everything from coding to copywriting and, crucially, in using data!
In particular those working on big websites will often find themselves spending huge amounts of time using Excel or Google Sheets to analyse, edit and optimise data.
So just learning some basic formulas and functions can take your SEO game to the next level.
The aim of this article is to showcase some pretty basic but effective data tricks, formulas and functions that can be incredibly powerful when applied to SEO tasks.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s Excel or Google Sheets, these SEO data tips are huge time savers and allow you to achieve excellent results for common SEO tasks, with absolute efficiency.
I may produce another article to show some of the more complex formulas and reports I use for my clients, but these Excel SEO tips are very much aimed at beginners who are looking to improve their SEO skills by using data effectively.
There are no limits to the number of tasks you can use these data tips for. Just picking them up now will make life so much easier when a challenge inevitably comes up.
What Data?!
Before I go any further I should clarify that I’m not talking about personal data here, I’m talking entirely about website data or about analytics data.
To be even more explicit, I’m mostly talking about all of the data extracted from websites using crawling tools such as Screaming Frog.
Typical view of a ‘Frog Crawl’
Additionally, there is a huge amount of reporting data from sources such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console and SEO tools such as Ahrefs, that is used to inspire and action the granular optimisation of pages.
But before I begin, just a quick word about the typical type of SEO data you will mostly be pulling into Excel sheets or Google docs.
I’m going to continue using Screaming Frog as the default data supplier, since it’s the most commonly used tool by SEOs, but crawlers will typically return the same types of data.
What Data Can You Get From Screaming Frog?
Absolutely loads! Screaming Frog pulls a comprehensive list of data from a website allowing you to export and view the data in any way you wish.
Here is a brief list of some of the important data you can retrieve from a Screaming Frog crawl:
All Website URLs
Meta Titles
Meta Title Lengths
H1s-H6s
Meta Descriptions
Meta Description Lengths
Status Codes (Find Error 4XX/5XX Pages)
Redirect Chains
Crawl Depths
Inlinks
Outlinks
Directive Tags (Canonicals/Noindex)
Images (Inc. Sizes)
The list is endless.
Conducting an SEO project, regardless of length will most often require you to export large amounts of data to fully complete the task at hand.
These tips and tricks will allow you to handle large amounts of data effectively and efficiently, enabling you to implement great traffic-boosting initiatives.
So without further ado, here are my top 7 recommended data tips and tricks for SEO….
1. The VLookup Formula
Without a doubt one of the biggest timesavers is the VLookup function.
The VLookup allows you to take two sets of data that share a common value and pull through a unique set of values from one of those sheets into your main sheet.
In a nutshell, it allows you to take the data from another file and add it to the master spreadsheet you are producing without needing to find, copy and paste.
Reading about VLookups can make it sound more complex than it is so I will outline an example…
When Would You Use A VLookup?
There are loads of scenarios where you would use a VLookup formula, but here is a common example of when it is used in SEO to highlight its purpose.
Say I am conducting a website content audit, I want the end result to show a list of URLs and various attributes relevant to each URL in order to demonstrate whether it is performing well or not.
You can get all of the static metrics from Screaming Frog, but you will need data such as page views from Google Analytics, and backlinks from Ahrefs or Google Search Console.
Each download of data will present a different spreadsheet, so the task is to merge all of this information into one MASTER spreadsheet that houses it all together.
It would take forever to manually locate the data then copy and paste, so this is where a VLookup becomes invaluable.
In this example, the common static value is the URL. So in your master spreadsheet you will use the VLookup to indicate that you would like to find X URL in Y spreadsheet and then return the value of page views.
In order to do this, in the master spreadsheet you type =Vlookup and then in brackets you simply fulfil the following criteria in this order:
The cell which has the common value you are looking for in the other spreadsheet (i.e. B2)
The range of cells in the other spreadsheet where you are going to pull data from (typically a range of columns that you can identify by highlighting)
The column that houses the value you would like to return, numbered rather than lettered (column A=1, B=2 etc)
Then for simplicity, type TRUE or 0 and press enter (you can specify an approximate match here but we won’t go into that, I use ‘0’ 99% of the time).
Your VLookup formula then looks a bit like this:
Vlookup formula example
Once you press enter, it will either populate with the correct value or with #N/A which indicates that there is no value there (which is often fine because it could mean the page received no traffic, rather than that the formula didn’t work).
You can then drag the corner of the cell down, or copy and paste the formula down the entire column to apply to all. And voilà! You’ve just saved yourself countless hours of copy and pasting.
The next thing to do is to copy the whole column and paste as plain text only, otherwise any further changes you make will disrupt the formula and cause issues.
The Microsoft Office website has more information on how to perform a VLookup function if you require any more guidance. It can be tricky to start with but once you start using it regularly it will become second nature.
2. Find and Replace
Find and replace is a super basic function in any type of sheet or document, but I have found that it is not nearly used to its full potential!
I use find and replace many times on any given document as it helps me clean data up, set data correctly or fix a range of issues very easily.
In a nutshell, the Find and Replace function allows you to search a document for any given value and replace it with something else, or nothing at all.
You can conduct the Find and Replace function by simply pressing Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+H.
When Would You Use Find and Replace?
Again, you should be using it very regularly throughout all facets of work (including in content). But here are a couple of examples to highlight the benefits.
In the example of the VLookup function I discussed merging website data with Google Analytics data. The issue there is that Google Analytics data displays URLS minus the domain name.
This means that the values are different, even though they are actually the same URL. One method is to add the domain name to all of the values from the analytics data but a quicker method is simply to remove the domain name from the master spreadsheet.
In this example, you are finding the domain name and replacing it with nothing. That looks like this:
This means that all of your data is consistent an it took all of 10 seconds to do!
Other common application examples include:
Replacing http with https
Removing brand name from meta titles to be able to use the subject on its own
Creating site structures by adding categories to URLs
Replacing a commonly misspelled word in meta descriptions
Fixing slightly incorrect results from a previous formula (if you forgot to add a space after full stops when merging columns, simply find “.” and replace with “. “)
Removing unnecessary HTML if pages have been copied & pasted from Word (import to a text editor and get rid of stylings brought over from elsewhere)
The applications are endless and it should be a feature you go to without thinking about it. I can’t imagine working with data without the help of Find and Replace, it would take forever to conduct simple, menial tasks!If you are
3. Combine Text Values
This one is great for creating content en-masse. Whether that be formulating meta titles, meta descriptions or even entire page content. This formula will allow you to do that very efficiently.
Say you want to create a new value based on the combined information from a range of different columns, for a sheet of any more than 10 rows it would take forever to write it out manually. And it would take a lifetime to do it for sites with thousands of pages!
When Would You Need To Combine Text Values?
I find this one to be most common for e-commerce websites that have tens of thousands of products. Of course, in an ideal world every single product would have finely crafted unique text, but for the time vs outcomes doesn’t make any logical sense to do it this way.
Essentially, combining text values is useful for creating large amounts of formulaic content en-masse.
Multiple text values can be combined using a formula that looks like this:
=(“insert text”&CELL&”insert text”&CELL)
Here’s how that might look for e-commerce meta descriptions:
The end result will then look like this:
Of course, this is just an example to illustrate my point, meta descriptions need to be much longer than this and the wording isn’t exactly enticing – but you get the point.
I use this one all of the time and sometimes my formulas become so long and complex that it allows me to create super bespoke content in no time at all.
If you have lots more details you can use then you can craft really strong, tailored content en-masse. For example, you might also have product price, product dimensions, product colour, product category, or any number of unique pieces of information to make the text unique.
Another good application is to use this formula to create HTML en-masse such as generating links.
For example, if I want to create an HTML sitemap of hundreds of pages, I can create a formula to insert the URL and page name into the “a href” tag which can then be easily pasted into HTML editor of a page.
Whilst this is a real time-saver, it does get pretty complicated because the tag includes speech marks and so does the formula, meaning it looks a little like this:
=(“a href=”&”””&B2&”””&”>”&C2&”</a>”)
These applications take a little trial and error but the result is that you don’t have to do everything manually. If you’re still struggling to understand the formula, there’s a helpful guide on combining text values in Excel here.
4. Split Text To Columns Function
This is such an incredibly simple feature you can use in Google Sheets or Excel, and yet I’ve noticed that it is rarely used by beginners even though it only requires a few clicks of a button.
Splitting text to columns allows you to take a column of information and separate the contents into individual columns based on a defined delimiter. This means that you can then use one or more elements of the cell content for another purpose.
Simply highlight the column you wish you apply the formula to, click “Data” in the menu and then find “Split text to columns”. Options will appear asking you which delimiter you would like to split the text by. “Detect automatically” is quite often correct, but you can also use “Custom” to set your own.
When Would You Use Split Text To Columns?
Here’s an example of how Split text to columns is useful for SEO.
Say we have a list of meta titles that contain the product name, category name and the domain name. I would like to create meta descriptions based on these pieces of information so in order to use the use the function of combining text values (as described above), I first need to separate them into individual cells.
In this example, we have a range of t-shirts with unique colours and styles:
If we then set a custom delimiter of ” | ” and apply it, we then get each attribute in a separate cell which we can then begin to use how we wish.
As a result of this, we can now draft new formulas such as combining text values in order to create content that looks like this:
Again, it’s super simple but incredibly effective at saving time. Of course, you might want to fine-tune the results using other previously mentioned formulas. In this instance I added an “s” to T-shirt” in the formula but you could also use find and replace to add the S, or even to remove “.com” to just leave the brand name.
5. The Remove Duplicates Function
When working with mass amounts of data you will inevitably come up against duplicates for some reason or another.
Data doesn’t always come cleanly packaged how you would like it, and if you’re combining multiple sources of data then your odds of finding duplicates in your data is massively increased.
It’s relatively easy to remove duplicates manually, but if you’re working with thousands of rows of data it’s not a good use of your time to do it this way.
There are various ways to highlight or remove duplicate data in Excel or Google Sheets. However, the most simple way I have found to do this is to use the =UNIQUE(cell range) formula.
In order to apply the UNIQUE formula, simply start in a blank column and write out the formula =UNIQUE( then select the whole column of data, close brackets and press enter. Simple!
When Would You Need To Remove Duplicates?
With large data sets from multiple sources it is common to find large amounts of duplicates that are unnecessary for SEO purposes.
For example, many sites utilise URL parameters where additional pieces of information are added to a URL based on user activity such as filtering options on site, or tracking acquisition.
For SEO purposes, these are essentially the same URLs as you are unlikely to want to index each variation of a URL based on additional parameters. Therefore you will only need to edit information on the core URL and not each individual URL parameter.
In this scenario you can use functions such as text to columns to separate values that appear after a question mark, for example. Leaving you with a large amount of complete duplicate URLs.
You can then get rid of them all using the UNIQUE formula as follows:
This gives you a much cleaner data set to work with and makes the job at hand much more straightforward.
6. The LEN Formula
The LEN formula is another one that is so gloriously simple and yet incredibly important for SEO specialists. The LEN formula very simply calculates the number of characters in a specified cell.
This allows you to determine whether the length of the contents within the cell is too long or short.
The LEN formula can be used by typing the following into a blank cell:
=LEN(insertcell)
…and pressing enter. (Of course, replace “insertcell” with the cell you would like to measure the length of). It should look a little like this:
You can then drag the formula down to find out which of your range is above or below the character length you are aiming for.
When Is The LEN Formula Useful For SEO?
Character count is important for many on-page elements for example:
Meta titles
Meta descriptions
H1s
Alt text
Excerpts
If we know that the ideal meta title length for full optimisation is 50-60 characters, then we can pull a list of all meta titles, run the LEN formula and identify those that are either too long or too short.
The LEN formula then allows you to be able to identify quick wins very efficiently.
As an example, if you use this technique for meta descriptions, you will likely find a range of meta descriptions where the main keyword is at the end of a sentence that is far too long.
Whilst the keyword here isn’t a ranking factor, it can be very important for click through rate. So just spotting and fixing these can make a significant difference to your site’s traffic.
7. Conditional Formatting
Conditional formatting allows you to highlight (or format) cells that match a criteria that you have set. This means that you can spot values that are significant or visually display numbers based on whether they are positive or negative.
Conditional formatting is achieved by highlighting the column you’d like to use, clicking Format > Conditional Formatting and selecting your specification from within the sidebar.
You can choose to format cells based on a range of criteria such as “Greater than x”, “Less than x”, “In between x”, “Is equal to”, “Contains”, “Is empty” etc. This means your spreadsheet can be highly customised based on your set values.
When Would You Use Conditional Formatting?
I personally love conditional formatting for reporting. This allows me to visually display to my clients how traffic has increased month on month for pages or keywords in a way that allows them to judge immediately.
However, another amazing use is simply for spotting rows of data that don’t match your requirements. In the previous point about the LEN formula I discussed finding elements that are either too long or short to be well-optimised.
Conditional formatting allows you to identify these easily by colour coding those in green that are correct and those in red that need fixing. Applying conditional formatting in that instance would like a bit like this:
When you have thousands of rows of data, conditional formatting is a real time-saver. Of course, there are other methods for identifying certain ranges of data that match your criteria, but conditional formatting is quick, visual and effective.
Final Thoughts
Whether you’re an SEO Freelancer, an SEO Agency or an SEO beginner who has been put in charge of a company website, I hope these simple tricks make your life a lot easier!
In my recent article about SEO tips for nonprofits I spoke about conducting a top-level content audit to address duplicate content issues. By applying the data tips, you can turn a top-level content audit into an expert-level audit.
Of course, with bigger, more complex websites you will need to learn some much more advanced formulas but that can come later. I may even write a blog about the expert level formulas I use for SEO in the future.
Conversely, if you’re having some trouble figuring out how to optimise your website using data, do feel free to get in touch to discuss how I could help.
Recently I took the decision to offer free SEO audits to small charities and nonprofits who needed a little boost with their website. For websites with a good cause I wanted to highlight their major on-site SEO issues and show them the major fixes for them to implement.
My theory being that highlighting very simple SEO fixes and best practices can transform a declining website into one that receives consistent organic traffic and significant increases in donations as a result.
I had only intended to audit 1 or 2 sites but in the end I couldn’t face turning people down and so I agreed to audit 11 nonprofit websites.
*Quick disclaimer: Whilst I do offer SEO services for nonprofits, this wasn’t an effort to generate new business, although it has since led to enquiries for SEO support.
For each site I offered somewhat of an ‘SEO audit lite’. I wanted to cover some of the big, core issues that could be fixed without needing to go too in-depth. The audit lite consisted of a complete site crawl to identify serious issues, an eyeball check to spot for visible mistakes, and some CRO checks (conversion rate optimisation).
Here’s what I found…
SEO For Charities: Tips To Solve Common Site Issues
Whilst conducting these audits I kept noticing the same simple errors over and over again.
The reason is simple, small charities are focused on helping their beneficiaries, and so the website (quite naturally) takes a back seat.
And it’s true, beneficiaries should come first.
However, investing quality time in improving the website should be seen as an opportunity to grow, help you reach more beneficiaries and raise even more money for the cause.
That’s why I felt it necessary to write this article.
The aim of this post is to highlight some of the most common and easy-to-fix issues found on nonprofit websites. Indeed, many of these issues apply to websites in all sectors, but this is very much tailored to charities.
If you run a non-profit website that isn’t receiving very much traffic traffic, try these tips out. There is a very good chance they will turn your website around.
But if you are still struggling or you need extra SEO support, feel free to get in touch. I’d be happy to discuss how I can help.
So without further ado, here are my 12 simple website SEO tips for nonprofits and charities…
1. Create Content That Actually Serves A Search Query
Without a doubt the most common issue I came across was that sites lacked content that could actually turn up as a search result for any potential queries.
By this I mean: “what phrase could someone possibly Google in order to find this page?”. 9 times out of 10 the answer was “not much at all”.
Often I would find the “About” page had all of the information crammed into 2 paragraphs rather than being spread out across the site as separate, comprehensive pages.
As a rule of thumb, every page you want to rank for should be:
Entirely focused on a particular topic within the niche of the website (for example, pages on: “causes”, “effects”, “treatment” etc).
Extensive and thorough. Prove you are the experts in this subject matter.
Adding value to the overall niche. A search engine is looking for the best authority on a subject that has comprehensive coverage of everything within that topic. Each page should contribute to this overall value.
The goal of every good web page should be to provide a thorough resource that matches what people are searching for.
Here’s a good way to approach it:
Think…
“What would people search for, in order to find my site?”
And now write down a big list of topics that people might search for, related to your niche.
For example…
I’m going to use Cystic Fibrosis Trust as a case study, simply because a good friend of mine is a trustee and so it just popped into my head.
If I was managing the Cystic Fibrosis Trust website I would ask myself “What is it that people would search for in order to find our website?”
Then I would write down the following:
What is Cystic Fibrosis?
What are the effects of Cystic Fibrosis?
What causes Cystic Fibrosis?
How is Cystic Fibrosis treated?
I would then create a high quality page for each of these questions and I would put the most relevant ones straight into the menu.
And that’s exactly what the CF Trust have done…
If you can afford keyword planning tools you can check the search volumes and find related keywords for each of your topics. These tools can be expensive, however, and would mostly be used by an SEO consultant.
However, if you can’t afford keyword tools or SEO support, you can use simple Google search techniques to help you create your content.
Here’s how you could do that…
Say I’m writing a page for “What causes Cystic Fibrosis?”, I will start by Googling that phrase.
One of the first things that comes up is the “People also ask” box, this instantly gives you a great range of related questions that you can either incorporate into your page or make a note to create another brand new page on this topic.
The ‘people also ask’ box is a great resource for topic inspiration
Next, simply scroll through the search results and note down any common words you see in the top 10. By doing this I can see the words:
Symptoms
Treatment
Life Expectancy
Causes
Diagnosis
Information
These are great words to include in your article, either as headings or included within the content of the article.
Now scroll to the very bottom and look for the “Related searches” box:
Again, you have lots more additional information you can use to write your article or inspire you to create new articles. I also talk about this in my article about SEO and charity fundraising pages, because this type of content is also a great way to make users aware of the actions you’d like them to take.
It’s important to think about site structure whilst doing this. You want to ensure that the main pages are featured high up in the structure and ensure there is only one page per unique topic.
I’ve worked for various charities so I am well aware of the difficulties of dealing with brand and marketing speak. The big problem is that no-one else talks like this.
Sometimes brand messaging will take the longest route to say something very simple which can be particularly damaging to the SEO of a page.
Terminology is incredibly important for the ability of a page to rank. A page that includes an exact match phrase of the terminology used by the general public is always going to beat a page that doesn’t.
Third Sector News has a post about using jargon in fundraising appeals, but I would go one step further and say don’t use jargon in ANY public facing resources.
And most importantly, don’t include it in key areas of your website, such as your meta titles, headings or taglines.
Try to avoid the term “an organisation” when you are “a charity”.
People rarely Google “poverty organisation”, they are searching for “poverty charity”. So tell them that you are one!
My recommendation: talk to your brand team about loosening the rules for SEO.
3. Review & Fix H1s
The Heading 1 (H1) is one of the most important ranking factors of a page along with the meta title and URL. The H1 sits at the top of the page and acts as an overall title for that particular content.
Essentially your H1 tells Google “Hey, this page is about X”.
As such, there should only be one and every page should have a unique H1 (no other page should have the same H1).
Many of the nonprofit sites I audited had various weird and wonderful H1 issues. Some were using no H1s, some had multiple H1s on the same page, some used the same H1s as other pages, some had H1 tags but nothing in them and some had H1s in widgets, sidebars and logos.
And so the problem is with what you’re telling Google this page is about, which is mostly incorrect.
If you have a donation widget which is set as an H1 then you are effectively telling Google that every page with this widget is about “Donate”.
This issue is typically a lot easier to identify and fix for those with SEO tools, but there are some options you can use for a rudimentary check up.
If I use the CF Trust as an example again, using this tool I can see that their headings are perfectly laid out:
There is only one H1 and they are using a wide range of heading types across the page, which is great!
Essentially the point here is to use this tool to check that a page has only one H1 and, if it has more than one, to locate the source of the problem.
You may not have the skills or access to edit things like H1s in widgets, but at least you can identify the issue and pay a developer a small fee to fix it.
Other times, the issue is perfectly within your control and you can choose to remove multiple or duplicate H1s from your site, which will likely give you a quick ranking boost for very little effort.
4. Stop Using Tags So Much
If you don’t know what I’m talking about here, CMS’s like WordPress allow you to add custom tags to every post to generate categories of content that share that tag.
However, I found sites with hundreds of tags that were used seemingly at random, for no particular purpose.
Every one of these tags creates a new page but the majority of these only have one post with that tag. This means that there are hundreds of pages with really thin content, duplicate content (because another tag category also only has that one post tagged), and let’s face it, useless pages.
In the worst cases I saw, about 75% of the pages on a site were tag pages. Think about what signals this sends to Google.
My advice: 90% of the time you should ditch the tags all together and stick to categories.
This gives you a clear defining border to say “If it’s important enough, it will become a category and it will be in the menu”.
If you have a charity webshop then the same advice applies to product tags too. And if you do have a webshop you might also be interested to read my article on fixing the most common ecommerce issues which can help you optimise your online store.
*Disclaimer – tags can sometimes be useful in certain scenarios if done well, but this applies to most charity websites I audited.
5. Resolve Duplicate Content Issues
Another very common issue I found was that nonprofit sites had huge amounts of duplicate content. Duplicate content issues arise when there is more than one page with the exact same text, headings and title.
This can be a problem as search engines are unsure which page is the correct one to index, and unnecessary pages bloat a website meaning vast amounts of the site is useless content.
Most commonly, duplicate content issues occur because variations of the same URL have been indexed. (Think http vs https, Facebook parameters etc). I won’t go into detail about that here because this wasn’t what I found to be common on the websites I audited.
More often than not, complete identical versions of pages existed that either had a number ‘2’ at the end of the URL or different categories in the URL.
Identifying and fixing duplicate content issues should be one of the first steps you should take when trying to revive your website traffic.
Not to worry though, duplicate content issues can be solved.
How To Fix Duplicate Content Issues
There are free tools you can use to identify duplicate content on a website. These include SEOreviewtools and Siteliner. Simply input your site and let it run an evaluation for you.
*Disclaimer: I’m not a huge fan of these tools as they are far less accurate than more established SEO tools, but they are free and can give you some good information.
It takes just minutes to do this so you may as well input your URL and see what it returns. Siteliner displays “match %” which is handy for finding pages that are very similar to one another. (Really you want pages to have a match % of less than 20%).
I find Siteliner rarely shows you match percentages of 100% (even when I find them with other tools). But it can help you identify pages to focus on making more unique.
Crawl Your Site & Audit The Content
A “site crawl” returns every URL on your website in a spreadsheet format so that you can manually go through and check each page that has been published.
If you are keen on delving deep into SEO then the very best way to do this is to download the free version of Screaming Frog that lets you crawl up to 500 URLs and gives you an unbelievable amount of useful information.
Screaming Frog can be quite overwhelming for new users though so maybe not best if you don’t have the capacity to learn this.
If you just want to get a quick list of URLs indexed by Google, you should get this from your Google Search Console.
Every website needs to set up Google Search Console in order for Google to begin indexing your site. If you are ranking in Google then you should have a login to Search Console somewhere.
When you are in Search Console, go to ‘Coverage’, click on ‘Valid’, then scroll down and choose “Submitted and indexed”.
You should now see a list of URLs that Google has indexed, you can export the data into Google Docs or Excel.
Sort the list alphabetically as this will enable you to spot similar URLs right off the bat.
If you have less than 250 pages I would highly suggest manually going through your URLs and taking a stock of what you’ve told Google to index. This process might take a bit of time but it will enable you to flag up some pages you may not have known existed and, crucially, duplicate pages.
Any pages you flag for deletion you can go ahead and action, ensuring you 301 redirect the old URL to a page you want to keep.
If you’re not sure whether to delete a page, check Google Analytics to see if it is gaining any traffic. If it’s not, it’s low risk to delete.
If you’ve made it this far, you will very likely find my article on data & Excel tips for SEO quite useful. These tips will help you to use and make sense of your data!
6. Optimise The Site For Conversions
For many of the websites I audited, I kept ending up at dead ends where I would read information but couldn’t see any next steps I could take.
If you look at any successful commercial site you will notice that your ability to take the action they want you to is incredibly easy.
This is because successful sites develop user journeys and CRO (conversion rate optimisation) strategies that aim to achieve the maximum conversion rate from the amount of people who visit the site.
These types of user journeys can be hugely impactful if replicated across nonprofit sites. This will help to maximise donations, petition signatures and any other action you want people to take.
Take a look at The Guardian website:
From clicking on an article you can immediately see 3 clear calls-to-action. At the top they have “Contribute” and “Subscribe”, and covering half the page is a large pop up banner that asks you to support The Guardian with a compelling case as to why you should.
There is a whole industry focused on ‘Conversion Rate Optimisation’, but implementing these basics will make a real difference:
Put the donate button in the header, footer and any sidebars. Make it large, visible and enticing.
Use an email signup box as a widget in sidebars or footers.
Optimise online forms. Data capture is great but if too many fields cause a high abandon rate, delete those which are unnecessary.
These are some quick wins that can give you a welcome boost. If you have time, budget or willingness to learn, there are a huge amount of CRO elements you can implement.
7. Learn & Implement Good Internal Linking
Internal linking is the act of adding a hyperlink from one page to another. Internal links pass ‘pagerank’ and ‘relevance’ from one page to another, which means that it can boost your pages up the ranking if done properly.
Poor internal linking was a common issue I noticed on nonprofit websites. Many pages were left stranded with no way to access them, and many great pages didn’t link out to any other relevant pages.
Quick Definitions:
Pagerank: Pagerank is a measure of importance of a page, judged by the amount of links pointing to it. Pages that are linked to from a page with lots of backlinks will receive a share of the authority of that page.
Relevance: Relevance in SEO terms refers to common topics discussed on pages. For example, a page about “Diabetes symptoms” would naturally link to a page about “Diabetes treatment” because it is relevant. This builds up an ecosystem of relevant resources.
Inlinks: Inlinks refers to the amount of internal links a page receives from across the website. Typically, the pages with the most inlinks tells search engines that these are the most important.
Anchor text: Anchor text refers to the words that are hyperlinked in a link. Best practice is to use anchor text for the term you want the page to rank for. For example, “if you have been diagnosed with diabetes, you will need to seek medical attention for diabetes treatment“.
Link Silos: Link silos are groups of pages about a similar topic that link to one another.
There are great internal linking strategies that are devised by SEO professionals, but you can implement some basic internal linking yourself.
Here Are Some Simple Internal Linking Steps You Can Take:
Link relevant pages to one another from within content. Simply link existing words in sentences (see anchor text definition). There is no need to write “click here”.
Add links to your most important pages in the footer to give them the most inlinks.
Identify pages you think will become core resources and link to them from popular pages such as the homepage. This will pass great pagerank.
Build ‘link silos’ of quality pages relating to a niche within your topic and link them all together.
8. Set A Meta Description For Every Page
For each audit I conduct a complete crawl of the website which flags up core missing components on pages. By far the most common missing component is the meta description!
The meta description of a page is the descriptive text that appears below the meta title in search results, like here:
When you write a meta description it doesn’t appear in the content of the page, it is purely intended to encourage users to click through. And that’s exactly what you should use it for!
The actual words within the meta description text are not a ranking factor, but the amount of people who click on your page after seeing it in the search results is!
This means that if your description isn’t compelling enough then you will receive fewer clicks and your rankings will suffer.
This handy little meta description section is a space for you to use about 155 characters to convince users that this is the best page to match their search needs.
As such, you can use action words such as “Discover”, “Find out about” or “Get involved” in order to encourage clicks.
If you have pages without set meta descriptions, search engines will pick a random piece of text and display it there for you. So writing meta descriptions can be a simple quick-win that helps you achieve more traffic.
9. Fix Or Redirect Broken Internal Links
I see this issue a lot. As sites grow they often leave a trail of destruction in their path in the form of error 404 pages, broken internal links and redirect chains.
Put quite simply – if you unpublish a page, consider what happens to the links that were pointing to that page.
Not redirecting an unpublished page can lead to poor user experience with error 404 pages, a loss of pagerank and you risk losing all backlinks that were pointing to that page.
The best way to combat this is to 301 redirect URLs for unpublished pages so that they go to a live page that is relevant. Then, if you know where the links to this page are, replace the link to avoid causing redirect chains.
Google Search Console can give you a list of error 404 pages to redirect, but these only become apparent once it has crawled the site. You can use it to fix 404s retrospectively, however. And it should be an important part of your website clean up.
If you can get these error pages fixed then you might notice a free boost in traffic as a result.
10. Get Yoast SEO
If you’re using WordPress then, without a doubt, one of the best tips I can offer is to install a free plugin called Yoast SEO.
Yoast SEO has so many advantages that I won’t begin to list here but some of the best value you can get for it is the technical features it installs in the background.
For example, it will create an XML sitemap for you, automatically add canonical tags and pagination tags, and create schema markup.
Most users find Yoast incredibly useful for creating meta titles and meta descriptions for every page. Yoast not only makes this very simple but it also gives you a handy colour-coded bar to let you know if you go below or over the recommended character length.
Here’s how Yoast looks for the page you’re reading right now:
It also gives great tips on the SEO-friendliness of the page you are writing with hints to improve your content by adding keywords, length and improving readability. Some of these features are perfect for those not too familiar with SEO.
Yoast also gives you options to edit how the page looks when shared on Facebook or Twitter which can be unbelievably useful.
You should be careful not to consider Yoast the God of SEO, however. It can help you improve your page and content but it’s not a magical wizard that can guarantee you top rankings for your search queries if you follow it’s suggestions.
If you don’t already have Yoast, I highly suggest you install it and start using all the features. This will help get failing websites up to a minimum quality standard required to rank.
11. Add Alt Text To All Images
Optimising images well can be very impactful for the SEO of a page. Not only does it improve user experience but there are also elements within an image that can be used to boost relevancy of the topic.
The image URL and title play somewhat of a role in adding keywords but optimising the image alternative text is the most impactful.
From auditing charity websites, image alt tags seemed to be an area that was almost entirely ignored, with my crawls showing hundreds or thousands of images without!
My recommendation: Spend some time manually going through site images and adding relevant, keyword-rich sentences in the image alt text.
I should also mention the importance of image sizes too. Pages with heavy images on will load a lot slower which will affect user experience and ultimately SEO.
When we talk about optimising image sizes we are mostly talking about the file size, not the dimensions. You can use free online image editing software to crop and resize your images to optimise them for a page. My favourite tool for this is Pixlr.
12. Beef Out Thin Content
If you’re trying to rank a page that has only 200 words, forget about it.
Unless it’s a category page, a page with miniscule search volume or an e-commerce page, 200 words is almost never enough words to get on the first page of Google.
Lots of people contact me asking why their website isn’t receiving any traffic. When I look at their sites, each page only has about 6 paragraphs on a topic. Essentially, they are not providing a high quality resource.
SEO isn’t easy. It takes time to build quality resources and so it’s important to focus on creating very thorough, extensive content that attacks a subject from all angles.
This is what search users want to see and what will keep them on the site for the longest.
My recommendation: Go through your site and identify any thin pages. Create an action plan to write 1,000 words for each of these pages.
This not only hugely increases your chance to rank for your main keywords but as content becomes more thorough it opens up possibilities to rank for keywords you might not have considered.
This means you can appear in search results for hundreds more terms, generating clicks from all manner of search queries.
Quick Tip For Beefing Out Thin Content
Pick a page to optimise and then locate it in your Google Search Console under “Performance” > “Pages”. Click the page so that it creates a filter and then click back to “Queries”.
Here you will find a big list of search terms that this page has been appearing for and which you can use to further optimise the content.
Add these keywords throughout your content, in headings and in your meta title and you’ve got a quick win! Of course, professional on-page optimisation is a lot more thorough than this but if you’re budget limited then this will be effective.
Write long articles but most importantly… write quality content.
Final Words
I really hope these 12 SEO tips are useful and can help your charity to boost online visibility. If these tips can result in increases in donations or registrations from beneficiaries then it is a job well done!
If your CMS doesn’t allow you to make any of these fixes yourself, this can be a problem and you should potentially consider switching CMS.
Remember, SEO best practices are for the long-term. These tips should be performed regularly and integrated into the website strategy.
If you have any questions or you would like to get in touch about commissioning an SEO audit or other charity SEO services, feel free to get in touch to discuss how I can help.
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