5 SEO actions for those who think they’re done with their optimization

Do you struggle to find areas where you can improve your website? Does it feel like you’ve done everything possible in SEO? Here are five points that almost everyone needs to work on, no matter how far along they are.

Site speed

We ourselves work a lot with this, and maybe we consider it a bit more important than it really is, but the time it takes to load a page is extremely important to Google. And almost always, there’s more to be done here for those who feel that everything else is already taken care of.

Brath.se loads in around 200 ms if you ignore an annoying Facebook pixel we need for marketing. It can of course be made faster—we still have multiple CSS files, for example, and choosing HTTPS slowed us down a bit.

Expanded landing pages

There’s almost always more traffic to be gained for those who can deliver content to an already strong website. Start with a thorough keyword analysis, find the keywords where you’re not ranking but that still drive a certain level of traffic, and begin producing solid landing pages.

We apply this method in nearly every project where we’ve run out of other ideas—when rankings are already strong enough that other efforts don’t add much. We often work together with our content partner for this.

Strengthen landing pages

Pages on your site with lots of traffic or external links can be a goldmine if you take the time to review them. Especially if you have an older site, there’s good reason to dig into Analytics and Search Console to find strong pages that haven’t gotten the attention they deserve.

I personally do this continuously on this site. Above all, I find it useful to spot pages with lots of traffic and a high bounce rate in Analytics. I already know those pages have potential but aren’t living up to visitor expectations—improving them delivers every time.

Outreach

There’s no limit to how far you can go with outreach. Unfortunately, it’s rarely cost-effective, but of course, that depends on the niche. Build relationships with bloggers and webmasters, make sure to get mentioned and linked. If you have products to send, do it—otherwise, you’ll need to strengthen with content marketing.

Next-level image optimization

Have you noticed Google Image Search? If you search for a stock photo from your site or a product image you got from a supplier, do you find more of the same? Do you really believe Google will see you as unique if they can find identical images elsewhere?

Of course, Google understands that unique photos aren’t always reasonable, but all their other demands are based on uniqueness. There’s every reason to have unique images once you’ve taken care of all other optimization. The job can be quite big—we’ve just started tackling it on this site where we often use stock images.

And of course, images also need to have the right size, proper file names, be compressed, and include the right alt tags.

Too much?

Did these five points feel too overwhelming? If you haven’t come quite this far with your optimization, there may be plenty of lower-hanging fruit. A tip is our 31 SEO tips in 31 days, a guide for those who want a bit more pace and a bit less boredom.