SEO, it’s one of the few site aspects that can take months, or even years to boost to the level you need it to be. Most people have trouble boosting their SEO without the help of a professional, and may have some difficulty knowing the issues, to begin with!

Here is a scenario: What happens when someone comes across your website and runs into a “File Not Found” error? Does that person send you an email like this? “Dear Business Owner, I was on your website just now, searching for information about your new products and services, and I noticed that there’s a broken link on your Products page. It’s about halfway down the page on the left-hand side. It’s the link for the word “Custom Colors.” Just thought you would like to know. Have a good one! Sincerely Yours”

If you ever receive an email like this, please let us know so we can send that person a CyberCitizen of the Century award. In the meantime, however, we’ve come up with several ways you can learn about your SEO issues on your own. Learn how to know your SEO issues and be sure to check out our own Free SEO Analysis!

Use a Website Crawling Tool

When you’re trying to maintain a website and publish meaningful content, a lot of details can fall through the cracks. That’s why website crawling tools are so helpful and so important.

Broken links, orphaned pages, and forgotten files can be reclaimed and repurposed when you know about them, and that’s what this tool can do for you. A website crawling tool scans your website and alerts you to problems. Some website crawling tools are free and easy to use online. Others require an annual or one-time fee.

If you’re looking for a free web crawler, try Scrapy, WildShark, or Beam Us Up SEO Spider. Visual SEO Studio provides a full-service crawler for a fee and a free version for smaller websites. Screaming Frog has an SEO spider that you can install locally on a PC or Mac.

Discover Your Keyword Issues

One of the most important things you can do to help your website climb higher in the rankings is to effectively use keywords. But how do you know if your website is currently targeting specific keywords?

Start by using a keyword analyzing tool to figure out your current keyword density. There’s no single rule of thumb for what your keyword density should be, but you can search for your target keywords in Google and analyze the top five ranked pages from the search results to see what they’re doing. Trying to mimic their keyword density will likely help your site to climb higher in the rankings.

WordStream, SEO Centro, and Semrush’s Keyword Analyzer are all free programs you can use to discover your current keyword density. Knowing is half the battle. Once you know if you’re too high or too low, you can make adjustments to your current content and move forward with a firm idea of the keyword density you want in your new content.

Generate Effective Meta Tags

Meta tags provide information about your web page for both search engines and web page visitors. They should include title tags, descriptions, and keywords. Your title tags will appear in browsers that use bars to display the tags, and they’ll also show up in search engine results.

Title tags are the most important tags on your page, so they need to be effective. What makes a title tag effective?

• Length (maximum of 70 characters, including spaces)
• Keyword Placement (least important words last)
• Keyword Separation (use pipes | to separate important phrases)
• Wording (concise)
• Branding (company name if it’s a keyword)
• No Duplicates (each page must have a different title tag)
• Relevance (tags should match page content)

It’s a lot to take in, but fortunately, there are some great SEO tools out there to help you. SEO Book has a free Meta Tag tool that helps you to create effective tags. SEO Centro analyzes your meta tags and provides in-depth feedback for improvements you can make. Checking your website for these SEO issues will give you a good start on improving your rankings and conversions. For a more in-depth analysis, give us a call at Park Slope Softworks, an inbound marketing company in Brooklyn, and check out our Free SEO Analysis.  We can help you to improve your content marketing and reach more prospective customers