And it’s one of the easiest ones to improve, too!
First, scan your site with WebCEO’s Speed Optimization tool.
Screenshot from WebCEO, September 2024
Not only it measures your pages’ loading speed and Core Web Vitals, it also offers constructive criticism by detecting what’s slowing your website down. Just follow the tips from the report and watch your website soar.
And remember to be on constant alert for any slow loading site pages. Set the Speed Optimization tool to send you regular reports, and if you find a page that’s dragging its feet, help it take off.
Screenshot from WebCEO, September 2024
5. Audit Your Site For Errors — And Fix Them
Nothing is perfect, not even the best website in the world. Things break, errors appear. But no self-respecting site owner will let things stay broken – that’s recipe for losing your customers!
You are better than that, too. Scan your site for errors now with WebCEO’s Technical Audit tool.
Screenshot from WebCEO, September 2024
This tool detects all kinds of hiccups, from broken links to more serious issues like server errors. Look upon your report and do not despair. It’s merely a list of fixable things.
You can solve those problems yourself or send the report to your site admin and let them handle it. After the job is done, rescan your site and generate another report showing the drop in errors. Your client will love it.
And yes, the Technical Audit tool can also send automated scheduled reports.
Screenshot from WebCEO, September 2024
6. Check The Quality Of Your Backlinks
What do you think is the number one ranking factor? Which one of them can give you the highest ranking boost?
The hint is right there in the heading above. That’s right: backlinks.
Links from other sites pointing to yours. If your site isn’t on Google’s #1 page, then lack of good backlinks is most likely why (assuming everything else is okay).
To see if you have a backlink problem, you need to check the current state of your link profile.
How can you do that? Scan your site with WebCEO’s Backlink Checker.
Screenshot from WebCEO, September 2024
What should you be looking for there?
Total backlinks and linking domains. The ratio between them can give you a rough idea about how many links each domain gives you on average. If that ratio is too high (e.g. 1000 backlinks per domain), then most of those backlinks are probably of poor quality.
Loss of backlinks. Sometimes sites stop linking to you. Maybe they found someone with better content than yours, maybe they took down the page with the backlink, or maybe even their site died. Whatever the reason, it can affect you rankings negatively.
Backlink texts. A good anchor text tells users what they are going to find on the other side of the link. If it fails to do that, fewer people will click on the link. Look for non-descriptive anchor texts (such as “click here”) that are keeping your rankings down – changing those texts can be just what you need.
Harmful backlinks. Spammy links from low-quality sites will do you no favor. If you have too many toxic backlinks, you will have to take them down.
Knowing the state of your link profile opens two different paths to improving it: link building and link detoxification. Let’s start with the former.
7. Revise And Expand Your Link Building
If you want to gain new backlinks and increase your site rankings, you’ll want to do some link building.
Which sites give the best backlinks?
They are highly authoritative;
They are topically related to your site.
And the closer they fit these criteria, the harder it will be to land your backlinks there. Those sites have high standards.
Link building is a whole challenge of its own – but there are plenty of good strategies for that.
To name but a few:
Have high-quality (and ideally unique) content on your site that others will want to link to;
Find broken links on other sites and offer those sites’ owners to link to your content instead;
Find unlinked mentions of your site or brand and offer to add a backlink;
And we strongly encourage you to try out even more. You may find some of the link building strategies easier or more effective than others.
What About Steps 8-14?
You bet it’s just the beginning. Do you want to take up even more SEO techniques to start preparing for 2025?
Good news: the full SEO guide is exclusively available to WebCEO users in PDF format, and it’s completely free. Download it now and get a head start on your competitors!