Don’t Miss Your SEO Health Checkup Appointment!

Chad Faith
Chad Faith

Director of Content

SEO health check

Does your business have a website? If you feel that dental checkups are important, you should feel the same way when it comes to SEO health checkups. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is complex and is constantly evolving. It can be challenging just to keep up to date with Google’s latest demands and algorithm changes. Let’s find out why you should not miss any SEO health checkup appointments but before that, here’s 200+ SEO Abbreviations and Acronyms You Should Know to get you up to date with SEO basics.

Understanding the Importance of a SEO Health Checkup Appointment

Firstly, it gives you a brief snapshot of your search engine rankings and activities. This way, you will know if you are on track to hit your online marketing goals. Secondly, it prevents you from getting penalized by Google. It may even warn you about an impending penalization. Lastly, it allows you to unearth new opportunities to improve SEO strategy and even meet your goals sooner.

What Happens During a SEO Health Checkup Appointment?

  • Diagnose outdated content

Google only favors fresh content. For example, it will determine that a 2018 article is the most relevant page to display for a user’s search query. An article that has remained untouched since 2008 will not be considered. If you discover old content that is not doing its job, it is time to freshen it up. You can add internal links to recently-published content, insert infographics, update the article with more popular keyword, alter heading tags, expand on an interesting point, re-write certain sections, and more.

  • Check and optimize website for schema markup

Aside from traditional search results, there are mini-snippets created from structured data markups. They tend to appear when a user searches for how-to guides, flight times, movie details, etc. These boxes only work for site owners who optimize their site for schema markup. The main types of schema markups that Google offer include recipes, products, organizations, people, places, and events. If possible, do take advantage of these markups as they can improve your overall rankings and boost your organic click-through rate.

  • Checking the vital signs of your keyword targeting strategy

You should keep in mind that keyword research is not a one-off task. Certain words from your initial batch of research might have become popular. If those words are not used in your content, you will miss out on conversion-worthy traffic. Today, there are two important types of keywords that require your attention, e.g. longtail phrases and short words. In fact, longtail key phrases account for up to 70 percent of searches. You can start a new keyword research process by browsing through Google Trends. When you have found the latest must-use keywords, keep targeting them.

  • Checking the integrity of your URL structure

A site’s URLs have a huge impact on its rankings. Google prefers short and neat URLs as they are easier to understand and crawl. Most sites found on the first page of Google’s search results feature about 17 characters in their URL. So, a good URL structure should have the following characteristics: a focus keyword, no numbers, and short. Here’s an example:

Messy version: https://www.hotelbookingranger.com/online-booking-2IAm239-Ghi1.html

Organized version (this is what you want): https://www.hotelbookingranger.com/online-booking-form

There are other areas that a SEO health checkup appointment will assess, including robot files, broken links, duplicated content, meta tags, loading speed, and your site’s backlink profile. So, don’t postpone it!