Quick Wins for SEO – How to best rank sites

All of us who work in the field of SEO sooner or later encounter the same problem – how do we achieve results quickly? In all other spheres of marketing, you can more or less easily see the fruits of your labor, but SEO always has that “long haul” aspect to it was something where a completed task this month only shows results in the following month (and sometimes later). Now we who’ve been in this field for a while understand that this is simply how it works, but our clients or bosses aren’t always aware of this in the same capacity. One of the best ways to hold on to a client as an SEO freelancer or agency is to show the results as soon as you possibly can.

In this article, I’ll show you a few ways you can do that.

Is it possible to rank a site quickly?

Of course, it is! It’s possible, but it depends on your definition of “quickly.” In my agency, for example, I sign contracts with clients to last a minimum of 6 months. But nothing keeps my clients from backing out 2 or 3 months in if they’re not satisfied with something. That’s why I always make an effort to showcase growth within the first 3 months. This builds trust and shows them that we’re capable of gleaning results. This strategy has been key to growth in my agency, since a large part of acquiring clients is currently achieved through referrals.

Alright, below is a screenshot of how we, with a few simple adjustments, tripled the traffic on our client’s site within 3 months.

Locating “quick win” opportunities

Every time we have a potential client, the first thing we’re going to do is determine how much work would need to be done for them. Through these analyses, we’ll try and sniff out any potential SEO problems that may significantly hinder ranking the site. If these problems are within set acceptable parameters, we put them in our “Quick Win” category. To make it into the “Quick Win” category, they have to meet these requirements:

• Heavily affect ranking the site
• Changes are implemented quickly
• Implementing changes isn’t technically demanding

What I’m about to show you in the following text are the most common problems in today’s websites and how to fix them.

Quick Win – Redirections

Redirections are one of the first things we want to look at when first analyzing a site. These are the three types of redirections to pay attention to:

WWW to Non-WWW redirection

Google sees www.domain.com and domain.com as two different sites. It’s important to check if there’s a redirection to the preferred site version, so you’ll manually type both versions in your browser. “But Darko, which is the preferred version?” you may ask. There is absolutely no difference between WWW sites and Non-WWW sites these days, so the preferred version is whichever has more good links. The tool we use to check the number and quality of links is Ahrefs. If you’re not sure how to do this on your own, you can ask for help from a developer, or try using a line of code in the .htaccess file which works for the majority of WordPress sites.

HTTP to HTTPS redirection

The HTTPS protocol is one of the main ranking factors since a Google update in 2014. Most sites these days use HTTPS but there’s always the question of whether or not the site is set upright. A common mistake is forgetting to redirect all HTTP pages to HTTPS before implementing the SSL certificate. This can be checked the same way you check WWW / Non-WWW redirections, or through the use of a tool called Screaming Frog:

Chain redirections

Chain redirections don’t carry SEO juice the same as a 301 redirection. This is what chain redirections look like:

You’ll often be working on a site that’s been through various changes, which got new pages made, and has string redirections from one page to another. This can trigger string problems on the site:

• Problems with internal links and the site’s architecture
• Problems with external links and transmitting its strength from the second to the third redirection

A good way to detect these redirections is through the use of Screaming Frog and Ahrefs.

• Screaming Frog has a report that can show you all these types of chain redirections that its bot catches on a site and it’s excellent for fixing issues with internal redirection.

• Ahrefs has an excellent report that shows all links coming to the page with the 301 redirect code.

Quick Win – Cannibalization

Cannibalization is when two or more pages on the same site are competing for the same keyword.

Why is cannibalization bad? Google and other search engines don’t like showing more than one page from a single site for the same keyword. They don’t feel it provides the best user experience and often treat it as a case of search manipulation.

Why does cannibalization happen? Because, as opposed to 5 years ago when nearly nobody knew what SEO was, these days even my mom knows that if you enter a keyword Google will rank it. This type of superficial knowledge of SEO is what made people start putting keywords everywhere they possibly could.

How do you detect cannibalization? As I do for many things, I use Ahrefs. When looking at their organic position report, you’ve got the option to open a graph that shows you the rank movement for a specific keyword. In this graph, you can see if any other pages are competing for the same keyword and if one of them is outperforming the other.

There are other ways to detect cannibalization without Ahrefs for those of you who don’t have access to it. You can use the Search Console which is a free tool provided by Google. All you need to do is filter your Performance report in GCS and see which pages have a similar amount of clicks and impressions:

Quick Win – Links

Anyone who does SEO work knows that one of the biggest challenges is Link Building. Links are one of the primary signals for Google’s algorithm and are often the deciding factor when it comes to positioning competitive keywords. I started my SEO career as a “link builder” and it used to be relatively simple to link. You send two e-mails, find enough “submission” sites, and possibly come up with some interesting content that makes the whole process a little easier.

These days, making links has become an “expensive sport.” That’s why I, as well as my other colleagues, look for ways to get the most possible use from the links we buy.

How to get the most from linking in the least amount of time:

Analyzing your backlink profile

One of the basic things we base the client’s budget on is their existing link building profile. Analyze your link profile, figure out which pages are the main ones with links, determine the quality of those links, and what your “anchor text” profile looks like.

One thing that can bring instant results is checking links in Ahrefs to see if they lead to 404 pages. This is an untapped potential that can significantly influence the positioning of your site. All you need to do is locate these pages and redirect them to pages that could benefit from those links.

Conclusion

SEO is a competitive industry and it’s becoming more and more difficult to navigate the sea of SEO agencies and freelance specialists. Showing results is something that will always make you stand out from the rest. Through the course of my career so far I’ve learned one very important thing, and that is that skepticism is one of the best traits for good SEO. Always test, always research, try everything others tell you but believe only the things you can see with your own eyes. 🙂

This year I’ll leave you with some wise words from the modern zen master, Leo Babauta:

“Rip off the greats, and the goods as well. Mimic and make it your own. Try and err.”