How to Identify if Your Website Needs SEO

The truth is, your website or business can always use Search Engine Optimization if your website is not currently optimized.

Let’s discuss what I mean by “optimized”

SEO Tags or Meta Tags

The first thing we look for when deciding if a potential client or a current client can benefit from SEO is to look into whether the title tags, meta descriptions, and alt text have been optimized.

By optimized, I mean a few things:

Best Practices for Title Tags

• Should be 60-70 characters in length.
• Utilize the keywords that a particular page should target.
• Must be 100% unique.
• Do not overuse the same keywords.

Best Practices for Meta Descriptions

• Should be 150-160 characters in length.
• Should describe the content on that particular page.
• Must be 100% unique.
• Do not necessarily need to include keywords.

Best Practices for ALT Tags

• Describe the image.
• Use a keyword if possible.
• Short and sweet.

Typically, an unoptimized title tag will look something like “Page Name – Brand Name”. And you can tell right away if the tags are under the character limit.

An unoptimized meta description will either be missing altogether or will be under or over the character limit. We’ve even seen meta descriptions with HTML code in them, or duplicate meta descriptions across the entire site!

Category Page Copy

When dealing with e-commerce websites, I always recommend the category or collections pages have copy on them. So, to identify if your collections pages need copy, go check them out!

Adding optimized copy to your collections pages, that targets the same keywords as your title tags, is one of the best ways to increase the number of keywords your website ranks for.

For an e-commerce store, it’s a way to compete for more non-brand keywords with a page that is more permanent than a product page which may sell out or be taken down.

Blog Content

If your website is not currently utilizing a blog or the posts do not target low-difficulty opportunities, then there is a ton of opportunity to drive additional organic traffic.

Our typical blog strategy is to find topics that are low in competition but high in search volume. If your blog is currently covering less targeted topics, we always suggest supplementing those blogs with some more SEO-focused content.

Page Speed

Is your website incredibly slow? If your website takes more than a few seconds to load, it is likely to cost you organic traffic.

To determine the speed of your site, use a tool like the Google Page Speed Insights which will give you suggestions for how to improve your page speed as well as some insights into what might be causing any slowdowns on the site.

Typically, images play a major part in a slow website and are one of the easiest optimizations we can make to improve page speed.

To Sum It All Up

Pretty much every website can benefit from an SEO strategy. If you run an e-commerce store, SEO will definitely help grow your revenue in addition to other metrics like organic traffic.

Have a question that wasn’t answered above? Or would you like to speak with our SEO team about your website? Fill out a free consultation form!