Over time, websites can accumulate outdated content, broken links and technical issues that hinder search engine rankings. A thorough SEO spring cleaning can help solve many of these problems, but where do you start?
Time for the SEO audit
First up is a comprehensive SEO audit, which can identify any issues and areas for improvements. This will give you a deeper understanding of site performance and put in place the foundations for the next steps. Uncovering issues such as broken links, slow pages, duplicate content and crawl errors will lead to a better user experience and make your website more optimised as a whole. You may not need a full audit – some minor checks and changes could be all the site needs to make a significant improvement.
Optimise content (again)
As you create fresh content, you don’t want to forget about previously published pages. Your site needs to stay relevant, so that means reviewing blog posts and landing pages for example refreshing traveller data year on year, or updating FCO travel advice for a particular destination, to ensure everything is up to date. This may seem like a herculean task, but taking the time to update outdated information and refreshing keywords can breathe new life into pages. According to HubSpot, updating and reoptimising old posts increased their number of monthly organic search views by an average of 106%.
Freshen things up by updating statistics, reworking stale content with new insights and ensuring everything is accurate. Optimising older pages for more relevant or trending keywords may also give your site a boost. And don’t be afraid to remove or redirect any low-performing pages that can’t be saved.
If it’s broken, fix it
No one likes hitting a dead end, which makes broken links really annoying for users when they’re trying to get from one page to another. What’s more, having broken links can negatively affect your ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs) by reducing crawl efficiency. You should scan your website for broken or outdated internal and external links using tools such as Screaming Frog and Google Search Console – especially if you removed any pages, as mentioned above.
Strengthen on-page SEO
Your pages should be complete with unique and compelling meta titles and descriptions to encourage searchers to visit your site – and meta titles and meta descriptions should all fit within the character limit to fully appear on SERPs. Another tip is to optimise your heading structure with H1, H2 and H3 tags to keep content organised and easily readable.
The way users search is dynamic and changes over time, so checking that your titles and headers still match with their intent will keep your content relevant. Additionally, look at any current pages that are working well and have a high click through rate – can you apply the same ‘formula’ to other meta descriptions and titles?
Adding descriptive alt text to images can make your site more accessible while giving search engines more context to what your content is providing.
Make mobile work
With mobile devices accounting for over 60% of website traffic and nearly 50% of all digital travel sales, you cannot neglect the importance of creating a mobile-friendly website. It needs to be fully responsive, with easy navigation, clear call to actions and a readable font size with properly spaced design elements. According to Google, 53% of mobile users abandon a site if it takes more than three seconds to load, demonstrating the importance of doing it right.
Get busy with internal linking
An internal linking strategy can guide users to important content while strengthening SEO. The key consideration here is to check that key pages are properly linked, using descriptive and natural anchor text. If you discover orphaned pages, connect them to relevant content to bring them back into the fold. A well-structured strategy also makes it easier for search engines to find and index important pages.
A spring clean isn’t just about tidying up, it’s about future-proofing your website. Regular maintenance ensures your site stays visible, relevant and competitive in an ever-changing digital landscape. In fact, by making SEO part of your ongoing strategy – rather than a once-a-year task – you’ll not only boost rankings but also enhance user experience, drive engagement, and ultimately, convert more visitors into customers.
The digital world moves fast, and if your website isn’t keeping up, you’re falling behind. So, don’t wait – start optimising today and set your site up for long-term success.
