SEO Best Practices: How to Maintain Quality SEO When Updating Your Website

September 17, 2018

SEO Best Practices: How to Maintain Quality SEO When Updating Your Website
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SEO Best Practices: How to Maintain Quality SEO When Updating Your WebsiteAfter implementing SEO on your website, it’s really important to maintain certain practices to keep the traction you’re building online.

It doesn’t take much, just a little know-how and someone with attention to detail to keep these things updated on your page as you add valuable content to it.

NOTE: For the sake of clarity, I’ve provided examples in each section below from a made-up scenario to help illustrate my points:

 

Scenario:

You’re an asphalt paving company in Texas updating your optimized website with new content, blog posts and projects.

Got it? Great. Let’s get started.

Adding Text

Whatever page you’re updating or adding text to on your website, you’ll want to make sure the keywords you’ve chosen to optimize on the page are incorporated naturally into your H1 headings, AKA the page title, wherever possible (but don’t overdo it! That’s called keyword stuffing, and Google really doesn’t like it).

Example:

The Page Being Updated: Residential

Selected Keywords for Optimization: residential asphalt company texas

Original Page Heading: Residential Asphalt Services

Updated Page Heading: A Reliable Residential Asphalt Company in Texas

Nothing too complicated, right?

Adding Images

Adding images to an optimized web page is a bit more straightforward than text.

Once you add the image to your page or post, you’ll want to edit it so you can update both the alt and title tags to include the keywords selected for optimization on that page.

Example:

The Page Being Updated: Cold Milling

Selected Keywords for Optimization: cold milling contractor

Image Being Added: snapshot of the crew on a job site for a cold milling project

Alt & Title Tag: Cold Milling Contractor Crew on Site

You’re free to just use the keywords as your alt and title tags if you’re not a wordsmith, or if you’re just feeling lazy… Though, some say it’s good practice to be really descriptive with the alt tags because these are what appears for broken images and visually-impaired visitors using screen readers.

Either way, it’s best practice to put SOMETHING here that includes the optimized keywords for that specific page.

Adding Pages

Say you’ve launched a new service and you’re adding a whole new page to your site. You’ve probably already had your marketer perform the research (and if you don’t have one, we know one 😉) and choose an appropriate keyword or phrase for optimization. If you plan on doing the research yourself, here are a few tool suggestions… we use Google keyword planner. So when you go in to create the new page, you’ll need to not only perform each of these steps for all of your content, but you’ll also want to update the page’s URL (or permalink) to reflect the terms you’re optimizing for on that page.

Example:

Let’s say you started a new service line for parking lot construction. While you may internally refer to the service as “parking lot repair,” that’s not necessarily what people will search for to find your services. So therefore, that’s not what you’re going to name your new page. You’ll want to name your page for the keywords you’re optimizing for.

The New Service Page: Parking Lot Repair

The Chosen Keywords for SEO: parking lot pothole repair

The New Page Title: Parking Lot Pothole Repair

The New Page URL: companyname.com/parking-lot-pothole-repair

These are updated in the permalink field underneath your new page name:

SEO Best Practices for Updating Your Website

Adding Links

Go back through all newly-added content and/or pages and link your text and images internally throughout your website wherever possible to your optimized pages. By linking I don’t mean, “click here to learn more about SEO”. “Click here” does not tell you what’s on the page. Google associates the link text with the page content. And the content on the page does not discuss “click here”. Do your best to make sure the words you’re linking include the optimized terms for the page you’re linking to:

Example:

Say you’ve changed out the text on your Rumblestrips page, and because rumblestrips are performed on asphalt roads, your new text includes “asphalt road construction.” This is a prime opportunity to link those words to your Asphalt Road Construction page:

The Page You’re Linking to: Asphalt Road Construction

SEO Keywords for the Page You’re Linking to: asphalt road construction companies in texas
The URL of the Page You’re Linking to: www.companyname.com/asphalt-road-construction-companies-in-texas

Note in this example that all of the words you want to link are present in the URL permalink for the page you’re linking to. This is ideal.

Adding New Posts (Blog Articles & Projects)

This one’s a bit of a special circumstance, so I’m going to break it down for you.

Adding Blog Posts

Think of optimizing a blog post the way you would a one-page website. You’ll pick your blog post topic, write the post, and do the research on search terms related to your topic and choose words for optimization.

From there, you’ll go through all the usual steps to optimize the post:

Title your post to include your keywords.

Lemme s’plain this one carefully, as post titles are extremely important in the world of SEO:

You’ll find more pleasurable SEO results when you title your posts clearly so people will know exactly what your post is about, meaning the title should answer a common question people are asking in relation to your industry.

Example:

You’re writing a post sharing the tell-tale signs for when an asphalt parking lot needs repaving. Your chosen keywords for optimization are “when to repave your asphalt parking lot.”

Consider this title:

Snap, Crackle, Pop… Crappy asphalt has gotta stop!

It’s fun, it’s catchy. But what the heck does it mean? What is an article with this title actually about? If you can’t tell from the title, it’s not good SEO for your construction website (note the linked words and where they link to ).

Now consider these title options:

Question/Answer Style: When is it time to repave my asphalt parking lot? Know with these 5 signs.

Standard Title: 5 Tell Tale Signs It’s Time to Repave Your Asphalt Parking Lot

Both are golden. Here’s why:

A. They both include your keywords (or close variants of), and

B. Your prospects are far more likely to click on titles like these when researching “how to tell if my parking lot needs repaving” because the title is basically saying, “Hey! I’ve got the answers you need!”

The power of words is strong with SEO. Master it wisely.

As for the rest of these to do’s, well, we’ve already talked about them above, so go back, review them, and do all the things to maximize search engine optimization throughout your blog post:

  1. Use your keywords naturally in your post headings and text at least twice within each.
  2. Use your keywords in your alt & image tags.
  3. Make sure your permalink includes all of your keywords.
    When adding blog posts, your title is used to automatically generate your post’s URL or permalink.
     
    In the above examples, you wouldn’t really need to do anything with the permalink since all of your major keywords are in the blog post title. But you could, if you wanted to shorten your URL just use the keywords and leave out the “your, it’s, to” etc.
  4. Link throughout your blog post to other blog posts and pages on your site wherever possible.

Adding Project Posts to your Projects Section

Project Post Titles

The biggest thing to remember with SEO when adding projects to your projects section is to highlight what you did for your client.

Let’s say you just added a project to your website called “Lakeway Center.” What does that tell your website visitors? Darn near nothin’. Unless it’s an uber famous building or property, no one’s going to care about the official project name.

So, when naming your projects, include the service(s) you provided for your client in the title of the project. If location is an important deciding factor for your prospects, you can include that as well.

Example:

Job Site or Structure Name: Lakeway Center

Location: Arlington, Texas

Service You Provided: Pavement Resurfacing

Ideal Project Title: Lakeway Center – Pavement Resurfacing – Arlington, TX

The idea is to consider what people seeking out your services are searching for online and combine that concept with the value each post in your projects section holds on your website. Each project page acts as an entrance to your website; thus, by including your services in the project post name, you’re helping your prospects find a way into your site by giving Google the clues it needs to serve your page.

This is not only ideal for getting your website found more in general searches, but also for more specific ones. Kuesel, Inc., one of our excavating clients, features their services in the names of their projects. So now, when someone who’s heard of Kuesel is interested in Kuesel’s grading services, they’ll type in “kuesel grading” and see this:

SEO Best Practices: Kuesel Grading Search Results

Those top two listings are Kuesel’s home page and their Grading service page. Count all of the other listings Kuesel would have missed out on if they hadn’t included the word “Grading” in their project titles. That’s a lot of potentially missed opportunities if you’re not following the same practice.

Project Post Content

The name of your project isn’t all that’s important for maintaining quality SEO for your website.

Along with the steps outlined above, it’s also best practice to:

  • Include an on-page project description with at least 500 words sharing the problem your client had and how you provided your services to solve it for them. It might seem unnecessary to you, but pages with no words don’t optimize well, so you need ‘em in there.
  • Link the services you provided on the projects to their respective service pages on your site. (Try to use the same names you’ve used for your services pages when writing your descriptions – like we did above).

I like to think of these two points as a way of swinging your website like a hammer…in other words, enabling it to work for your business. It’s a wonderful tool, your website (if it was built well, of course), and you want to keep your visitors on it as long as possible, right? So show them what you’ve got by moving them through it naturally with helpful and well-placed links to the information they want.

Now get out there and get your SEO on!

Following the above practices (alongside an optimized Google My Business listing) is sure to keep your SEO ranking in good standing — as long as you’re mindful of how you do it. Consistency in completing these steps as you update your website, and frequently adding new content to it, will help your website following grow in ways you never dreamed possible.

Who Manifested This Madness?

Monica Maye Pitts

This fabulous human, that's who.

Monica Maye Pitts

Monica is the creative force and founder of MayeCreate. She has a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture with an emphasis in Economics, Education and Plant Science from the University of Missouri. Monica possesses a rare combination of design savvy and technological know-how. Her clients know this quite well. Her passion for making friends and helping businesses grow gives her the skills she needs to make sure that each client, or friend, gets the attention and service he or she deserves.

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