SEO recovery is a topic many small business owners are reticent to undertake. But the truth is if your SEO rank is dropping because of a Google update or too much neglect, you need to take a look at it.
SEO is an ongoing task for everyone As businesses grow and evolve, so too should the way they approach digital marketing. It’s normal for your site to show signs of age and that often means your website rank goes down. Everything from shifting trends to search engine changes can cause your SEO to drop. Do yourself a favor and address it. The sooner you do, the sooner your SEO will recover.
As a solution, SEO recovery can help if you’ve gotten in trouble with Google or if your SEO rank is dropping because of normal attrition. Both require different “fixes” but the ideas below will help you get a handle on what to do next.
If you’re struggling with your organic search visibility, here is a guide on how you can best approach SEO recovery.
Step 1: Assess where you currently are
As you begin your SEO recovery process, it’s vital to assess where your current website stands in terms of search engine visibility. If your Google ranking has dropped, this is one sign that something deeper may be going on.
While it might be challenging to pinpoint what precisely an organic search result looks like due to the sheer volume of traffic your site receives, you can use tools such as SEMRush to get a rough estimate (or request a complimentary SEO audit of your site and we provide this free of charge to you).
Although it’s essential to start with an analysis of where you currently stand, keep in mind that the goal of SEO recovery is to get your site back to its former glory.
Therefore, it’s also important to consider where you want to be in the long run.
Step 2: Assess your current needs and goals
As you assess the depth of your SEO challenges, it’s also essential to assess where you want to be with your SEO and Google traffic. Ask yourself, what are your organic SEO needs and goals?
Perhaps you want to start seeing more visitors to your site. Or you want to expand your backlink profile? While it might be tempting to go all-out and amp up your marketing budget that might not be the best way to start your SEO recovery process.
Instead, consider a budget-friendly approach by increasing the number of places your website is promoted. For example, you could consider adding more citations to your blog posts and guest posting on other websites.
As you assess your current needs and goals, keep in mind that there is often a link between the two. If you want to see more traffic and boost your site’s ranking, you’ll need to prioritize your online presence and that’s where blog posts often come in.
Step 3: Establish what you’re looking for
When it comes to organic SEO, you need to address any spammy content on your site. If Google sees your site as spammy or offering only “thin content”, it will harm your SEO ranking overtime.
On the other hand, if it’s spam-free, you are insulating your website from penalties and inviting more traffic to your site. To find that “sweet spot,” you’ll want to establish what you’re looking for in terms of ranking. What is the ranking that you’re shooting for? What are the goals and needs of your brand? This is a great topic to share with your SEO consultant so they can support you in a content strategy to meet your goals.
Step 4: Define your strategy and set goals
Once you’ve established your needs and goals, it’s time to set a strategy to meet your goals. This will help you determine the best possible SEO recovery course of action.
Why do we suggest starting with a strategy? While you may want to go all-out and amp up your content marketing budget, it could be better to take a budget-friendly approach by adding more citations to your blog posts and/or guest posting on other websites.
Setting up your strategy to reach your goals will give you a greater sense of confidence that your SEO recovery is on the right track.
Step 5: Outline your Google Ad and content strategies
Now that you’ve established your strategy and set your goals, it’s time to outline your Google Ads and content strategies. This will help you determine what type of content you should produce so that it’s optimized for SEO.
If you’re looking for more traffic, there are a couple of ways to do so. Ideally, you want to start (or increase) your blogging efforts on topics relevant to your target audience. You also want to consider guest posting on other websites to increase the number of links back to your website.
Creating a backlink strategy is one of those “game changer” strategies because when highly valued sites link to your own site, it’s the social proof you need to tell the world you are at the top of your game.
With a guest post, you could focus on providing value and helping other websites improve their SEO in exchange for a link back to your site. This is a great way to extend your SEO wings and grow your reach.
Step 6: Reach out to local businesses to support their SEO
One of the best ways to extend your search engine optimization wings and boost your organic visibility is to reach out to local businesses. In many cases, local businesses are highly interested in being featured on your website, which can be a local SEO win for everyone.
In this strategy, you write blogs that discuss local businesses on your site. Inside those blogs, you add a link to the local business to share how readers can find/interact with them. After publishing your article, you then share the article with that local site to spread the word. In exchange, they share the content on their social media linking back to your site to read the article. It’s a win-win loop.
Not only will these local businesses help boost your organic visibility and traffic, but you could also earn some new clients along the way.
Step 7: Optimize your site with Schema Markup & HTML tags
If you want to boost your website’s Google rankings, it’s crucial to take advantage of all of Google’s different features.
Schema Markup is a way of adding micro data to your pages to better qualify for Google what the page is all about. Schema Markup tags define and describe your content, but they can also be used to define the type of product you’re selling. This can help improve your ranking and boost your organic visibility, but it’s essential to ensure that you’re doing it correctly.
There are many opportunities for businesses of all varieties to take advantage of Scheme Markup and tools like Yoast make it simpler to do than ever before.
The other way is through additional HTML tags on your site.
These are content features that allow you to add custom information to your pages, and they’re incredibly easy to use. In most cases, it only takes a few seconds to add these tags, and they can serve several different purposes.
One of the best things about adding HTML tags is that it’s completely free. The only downside to this is that it can take a bit of time to see its effect.
SEO Recovery: Best Approaches to Take
The bottom line is that if you have noticed your SEO ranking drop, you should enter a phase of SEO recovery. We’ve provided some steps above to help you do so, but the best thing to do is work with a company that understands the ins and outs of SEO for your business.
Related content:
7 Questions To Ask An SEO Agency Before You Hire Them
3 Reasons To Hire An SEO Consultant
If you would like to talk about your website, SEO recovery, strategy or have us take a look under your website’s hood, we would be happy to schedule a call. Our SEO consultation process is complimentary so we can feel assured about the results if we choose to work together. Please reach out when you’re ready.
