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How To Do A Complete Local SEO Audit: 10-Point Checklist

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How To Do A Complete Local SEO Audit: 10-Point Checklist

At its core, SEO is a multi-faceted keyword, content, and competitive analysis exercise.

Local SEO, by extension, includes several specific tasks geared to establishing the relevance and authority of a business within a targeted geographic area.

Even before you can convince a local consumer your search result is the best answer, you must it prove to the search engines and earn a high enough ranking to get in the running.

Search engines like Google reference many different data points to determine who gets top billing in organic search engine results, featured snippets, maps, local packs, image, video, or other SERP features.

How can you identify and prioritize optimizations with the greatest potential to deliver converting traffic to your website and your door?

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In this column, we’ll walk through an evaluation of each key facet of your local search presence and uncover your best opportunities to improve search rankings.

What does a comprehensive local SEO audit checklist entail?

  1. Keywords/SERPs.
  2. Website.
  3. Google Business Profile.
  4. Review management.
  5. Local business listings and citations.
  6. Local content.
  7. Google Search Console.
  8. Analytics.
  9. Backlinks.
  10. Competitor analysis.

These tasks are listed in typical order of completion during a full audit, but some can be accomplished concurrently.

1. Keyword/SERP Audit

The natural place to start a local SEO audit is in SERPs for the keywords and phrases you are hoping your business will be found for, in order to identify where you stand relative to your competitors and other websites/content.

This research can help you quickly identify where you have established some level of authority/momentum to build on, as well as keywords upon which you should not waste your time and effort.

SEO is a long-term strategy so no keyword should be summarily dismissed. Even so, it’s generally best to focus on those keywords you realistically have a chance to rank and drive traffic for.

You may determine some keywords are better pursued in the short term via a paid Google Ads strategy until you are able to build up your local organic authority.

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There are several excellent SEO and keyword research tools available to automate the process of gathering search results for specific or topical groups of keywords and assigning value to keywords based on metrics such as search volume or keyword difficulty.

Ideally, you’ll choose a tool that will break down the different types of search features, so you can understand whether you or a competitor has secured any of this search real estate and then devise strategies or tactics to proceed accordingly.

Alternatively, you can conduct your own searches manually. In that case, do so in an Incognito Window in Google Chrome or Private Window in Safari to remove potential bias/personalization tied to your Google login, location, or personal search history.

Most automation tools have processes in place to do the same.

For those businesses also running PPC campaigns, close attention should be paid to the keywords and search terms working there.

It’s likely that top-performing PPC keywords will also be top performers from an SEO perspective.

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SEO and PPC should complement each other for optimal results.

Different people search in different ways and it’s important to not limit your research to single keywords, but rather account for the various ways and phrases your audience may use to try to find you or your offerings.

Your keyword analysis and the resulting content you create should address the intent of searchers, which will vary depending on where they are in the buying cycle.

Some are just beginning their search for a product or service and are simply looking for information e.g. “Where can I find x?”, while others are ready to buy now e.g. “Order x near me.”

A broader keyword view will provide a better picture of the overall strength of your presence and where to best focus your attention.

2. Website Audit

With your focused keyword data in hand, you can now conduct a full keyword and technical website audit to ensure your site is optimized for maximum crawlability, indexability, and visibility.

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A typical audit is designed to analyze the underlying structure, content, and overall site experience.

Here again, there are many site auditing tools that will crawl a  website and then identify issues and prioritize actions to be taken based on SEO best practices.

A website audit and optimization can be broken down into several buckets.

Page Optimization

Web page optimization is all about ensuring pages are well structured, focused around topical keywords and provide a positive user experience.

As a search engine crawls a web page it looks for signals to determine what the page is about and what questions it can answer.

These crawlers analyze the entire page to determine its focus but specifically focus on Page Titles and Headings as primary descriptors.

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Ideally, pages are keyword-focused and unique.

As such, keyword variations should be used consistently in Titles, URLs, Headings, and meta descriptions.

Google, and the other search engines, appreciate well-structured pages and will grab or create the components they need to construct a search engine result similar to the one below for “breakfast in Barrie.”

Note how the keyword “breakfast” is highlighted in the meta description.

Screenshot from search for [breakfast in Barrie], Google, February 2022

 Specifically, an audit will highlight issues related to:

  • Missing Title tags, or those that are too long (60 characters max) or duplicated.
  • Headings (particularly H1s) that are missing or duplicated.
  • Meta descriptions that are missing, too long (160 characters max), or duplicated.

Another important potential tag issue raised in an audit, depending on the nature of your local business, is image alt text.

As a best practice, all images should include relevant descriptive filenames and alt text, which may include pertinent keywords.

This becomes particularly important when images (e.g. product or service photos) are central to your business, as image carousels can and will show up in Web search results.

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In every case, attention should be paid to the images appearing on your primary ranking pages.

Internal Link Audit

Over time, the various links within a website can become stale or outdated as content is moved or deleted.

A link audit will help you quickly identify any potential misdirected or broken links, which can create a less than optimal experience for your site visitors.

Links are likewise signals the search engines use to determine the flow of a website and its ability to direct searchers to appropriate, authoritative answers to their questions.

Part of this audit should include the identification of opportunities to crosslink prominent pages.

For example, if a page within your site has keywords that reference content on another page a link may be created.

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This can have the effect of boosting both pages, provided the link logically guides users to more relevant content or an appropriate conversion point.

External links should also be considered, especially when there is an opportunity to link to an authoritative source of information.

From a local business perspective, this may include linking to relevant local organizations or events.

Pro tip: These links should ideally be opened in new browser windows, so your site visitors are able to continue on your site after they have explored any external links.

Schema Review

Featured snippets are increasingly superseding traditional organic search results in Google, as the search engine aims to provide the answers to questions directly within its SERPs.

Local businesses have an opportunity to have their content highlighted as featured snippets if they:

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  • Publish highly authoritative and relevant content.
  • Use structured schema markup to tag content such as their local business details, products, events, FAQs.

An effective local SEO audit should include the identification of content within a website to which schema can be applied.

Mobile Audit

As more consumers begin searching via their mobile devices – especially for local services – it naturally becomes important for local businesses to provide a positive mobile web experience.

It will, in turn, affect how they are viewed and ranked by the search engines.

In short, websites need to load quickly, be easily navigated, and enable seamless user interaction.

Google offers a range of free mobile testing and three mobile-specific monitoring tools (Page Experience, Core Web Vitals, Mobile Usability) in Google Search Console.

More on this toolset below.

More in-depth user experience and SEO analysis can be done via Google Lighthouse, though a local business owner will likely want to enlist the help of a web developer to action any of the recommendations this tool provides.

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Duplicate Content

High-quality, authoritative content is, by definition, original content.

As such, it’s important to let Google know if your website contains any content/pages which you did not create, by adding a canonical tag to the HTML header of the page.

Not doing so can have a detrimental effect on your authority and, by extension, your ability to rank.

Most site auditing tools will flag content that requires or has malformed canonical tags.

3. Google Business Profile Audit

A Google Business Profile (GBP) effectively represents a secondary website and highly visible point of presence for most local businesses.

An accurate, comprehensive GBP is critical to establishing visibility in Google Maps and organic search results.

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A Google Business Profile audit should focus on the accuracy and completeness of the various components within the profile including:

  • Business information and location details.
  • Correct primary business category.
  • Hours of operation.
  • Correct pin location in Google Maps.
  • Proper categorization as a physical location or service area business.
  • Products.
  • Services.
  • Photos.
  • Offers.
  • Updates.
  • Events.
  • Appointment link(s).
  • Informational content.

The more complete the profile is, the more likely it will be viewed as a reliable local resource and be given appropriate billing in the search results.

Assuming you have claimed and are authorized to manage your GBP, you can access and edit your info directly within the search results.

Google Business ProfileScreenshot from Google Business Profile, February 2022

4. Review Management

Another very important aspect of a GBP is reviews.

Local business customers have an opportunity and are increasingly willing to write reviews, which appear on the GBP for other customers to view and play a significant role in determining visibility in the local map pack.

Google will notify business owners as soon as reviews are submitted and they should be responded to ASAP. This goes for negative reviews just as much as positive ones.

However, we all get busy and so a complete audit should include an analysis of your reviews to ensure none have fallen through the cracks. This will also help determine whether there are recurring customer service and satisfaction issues or themes that need to be addressed.

Of course, there are also several other places for consumers to submit reviews including Facebook, local review sites like Yelp, and industry-specific sites such as TripAdvisor and Houzz.

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A full audit should take inventory of reviews left on any of these services as they can show up in search results.

The search engines and savvy modern consumers will most certainly find them.

A quick way to discover what reviews you may have on lesser-known properties is to simply search “‘your business name’ reviews.”

Alternatively, here too there are several good software platforms designed to help business owners ask for and manage their reviews on GBP and other review sites.

Pro tip: Request positive reviews from all customers and politely suggest they reference the product or service they are reviewing, as this can have a positive effect from a keyword ranking perspective.

5. Local Business Listing/Citation Audit

Local business listings and citations provide search engines with a way of confirming a business are both local and reputable within a specific geographic region.

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It is important to have a presence in reputable local directories, review sites, business directories (e.g. Chamber of Commerce), or local partner sites.

Depending on the size and scope of your local business an audit of your listings and citations can be done in an automated or manual fashion.

Business listings and citation management tools can be used to find, monitor and update all primary citations with your proper Name, Address, Phone Number (aka NAP), and other pertinent business details found in broader listings (e.g. website address, business description.)

If you manage a limited number of locations and have the time, one quick method of identifying where your current listings can be found is to simply conduct a search on your business name.

The first 3-4 pages of search results should reveal the same.

If the goal is to understand where you are missing listing and citation opportunities, you can conduct a search on the list of keywords you have researched and want to be found for.

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The most valuable directories and listing sites will be those which appear in the search results for these keywords.

It’s also important that you find and resolve any duplicate listings to prevent confusing customers and search engines alike with outdated, inaccurate information.

6. Local Content Audit

As noted, people search differently and require different types of information depending on where they are in their buying journey.

A well-structured local web presence will include content tailored and distributed for consumption during each stage of this journey, to bolster visibility and awareness.

You want to be found throughout your customer’s search experience.

A content audit can be used to make sure you have content for each of the journey buckets your audience members may find themselves in.

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Informational content may be distributed via social or other external channels or published on your website to help educate your consumers on the products, services, and differentiators you offer at the beginning of their path to purchase.

This content ideally answers your prospects’ why, how, and what type questions.

Transactional content is designed to address those consumers who already know what they want, but are in the process of deciding where or who to purchase from.

This type of content may include reviews, testimonials, or competitive comparisons.

Navigational content ensures when people click through from Google after having searched your brand name or a variation thereof, they land on a page or information validating your position as a leader in your space.

This page should also include a clear call to action with the assumption they have arrived with a specific goal in mind.

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Commercial content addresses those consumers who have signaled a strong intent to buy.

Effective local business sites and social pages must include offers, coupons, discounts, and clear paths to purchase.

Quality content is content your audience wants to consume, like, and share. In 2022, for many businesses, this means considering and experimenting with content beyond text and images.

Video content shared via platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and others is easier to consume and generally more engaging.

YouTube videos, in particular, can be optimized and do appear within organic search results.

Keep in mind, each social network includes a search function and any content distributed here should incorporate targeted keywords and hashtags to enhance visibility.

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Pro tip: Make it easy for your readers to like and share your content by including visible share buttons; a simple best practice missed by far too many website owners.

While social signals are not a search ranking factor, shared content has a higher chance of being linked to, which in turn can positively affect authority and organic visibility.

7. Google Search Console Review

Google Search Console is an invaluable free resource for data related to keyword and content performance, indexing, schema/rich results validation, mobile/desktop experience monitoring, and security/manual actions.

A complete local SEO audit must include a review and analysis of this data to identify and react to strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats outlined in each section.

Website owners and managers will want to pay particular attention to any issues related to pages not being crawled/indexed or manual actions having been taken based on questionable practices, as both can have a detrimental effect on search engine visibility.

Google Search Console does send notifications for these types of issues as well as regular performance updates, but an audit will ensure nothing has been overlooked.

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Google Search Console OverviewScreenshot from Google Search Console, February 2022

8. Analytics Review

Whether you are using Google Analytics or another site/visitor tracking solution, the data available here is useful during an audit to validate top and lesser-performing content, traffic sources, audience profiles, and paths to purchase.

Findings in analytics will be key to your content audit.

As you review your site analytics you may ask the following questions:

  • Are my top-visited pages also my top ranking pages in search engines?
  • Which are my top entry pages from organic search?
  • Which pages/content are not receiving the level of traffic or engagement desired?
  • What is the typical path to purchase on my site and can it be condensed or otherwise optimized?
  • Which domains are my top referrers and are there opportunities to further leverage these sites for backlinks? (see Backlink Audit below).

Use Google Analytics (or another tool of your choice) to find the answers to these questions so you can focus and prioritize your content and keyword optimization efforts.

9. Backlink Audit

Backlinks or inbound links are similar to citations but are effectively any links to your website pages from other third-party websites.

Links remain an important factor in determining the authority of a website as they lend validity if they come from relevant, reputable sources.

However, links from non-relevant or non-reputable sites can do more harm than good from an SEO perspective, and sometimes these links can be created without your knowledge.

It is therefore wise to conduct a backlink audit every six to twelve months depending on the size and scope of your website.

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As with other components of an audit, there are several good free and paid backlink tools available, including a link monitoring service in Google Search Console, which is a great place to start.

Google Search Console LinksScreenshot from Google Search Console, February 2022

In terms of auditing linking domains, you should quickly determine if there are any you don’t recognize or those which appear non-reputable or irrelevant to your local business.

Depending on the source, nature of the link, and the content it links to, it may be necessary to inquire about having the link removed.

An effective backlink audit has the dual purpose of identifying and building links via potentially valuable backlink sources, which can positively affect your ranking and visibility.

For local businesses, reputable local sources of links are naturally beneficial in validating location.

Potential backlink sources can be researched in a variety of locations:

  • Free and paid backlink research tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush, or Majestic. Identify any domains where your primary competition has acquired backlinks, but you have not.
  • Any non-competitive sites appearing in the organic search results for your primary keywords are, by definition, good potential backlink sources. Look for directories you can be listed in, blogs or articles you can comment on or publications you can submit articles to.
  • Referral sources in Google Analytics may reveal domains where you already have links and may be able to acquire more.

10. Competitor Analysis

A comprehensive local SEO audit would not be complete without identifying and reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of your competition.

You may already have a good sense of who your competition is, but to begin it’s always a good idea to confirm who specifically shows up in the search results when you enter your target keywords.

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These businesses/domains are your true competitors and the sites you can learn the most from.

A recent Google algorithm update appears to signal more emphasis is being placed on results tied to the immediate proximity of a business, which means the most attention should be paid to your closest high-ranking competitors.

If any of these competitors’ sites and/or pages are ranking ahead of yours, you’ll want to review what they may be doing to gain this advantage.

You can follow the same checklist of steps you would conduct for your own audit to identify how they may be optimizing their keywords, content, Google Business Profile, reviews, local business listings, or backlinks.

In general, the best way to outperform your competition is to provide a better overall experience online and off, which includes generating more relevant, high-quality content to address the questions your mutual customers have.

Prioritizing Your Action Items

A complete local SEO audit is going to produce a fairly significant list of action items.

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Many of the aforementioned keyword, site, content, and backlink auditing tools do a good job of prioritizing tasks; however, the list can still be daunting.

One of the best places to start with an audit action plan is around the keywords and content you have already established some but not enough authority for.

These are your keywords, webpages, and content assets sitting on the cusp of prominence in the local organic search results and Map Packs.

Determine how to best address deficiencies or opportunities to optimize this content first before moving onto more competitive keywords or those you have less or no visibility for, as we all know, SEO is a long-term game.

These audit items and should be reviewed every 6-12 months, depending on the size and scale of your web presence, for the best chance at being found by your local target audience.

More resources:

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How to Revive an Old Blog Article for SEO

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Step-by-Step: How to Optimize Old Blog Posts for SEO

Quick question: What do you typically do with your old blog posts? Most likely, the answer is: Not much.

If that’s the case, you’re not alone. Many of us in SEO and content marketing tend to focus on continuously creating new content, rather than leveraging our existing blog posts.

However, here’s the reality—Google is becoming increasingly sophisticated in evaluating content quality, and we need to adapt accordingly. Just as it’s easier to encourage existing customers to make repeat purchases, updating old content on your website is a more efficient and sustainable strategy in the long run.

Ways to Optimize Older Content 

Some of your old content might not be optimized for SEO very well, rank for irrelevant keywords, or drive no traffic at all. If the quality is still decent, however, you should be able to optimize it properly with little effort. 

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Refresh Content 

If your blog post contains a specific year or mentions current events, it may become outdated over time. If the rest of the content is still relevant (like if it’s targeting an evergreen topic), simply updating the date might be all you need to do.

Rewrite Old Blog Posts 

When the content quality is low (you might have greatly improved your writing skills since you’ve written the post) but the potential is still there, there’s not much you can do apart from rewriting an old blog post completely. 

This is not a waste—you’re saving time on brainstorming since the basic structure is already in place. Now, focus on improving the quality.

Delete Old Blog Posts 

You might find a blog post that just seems unusable. Should you delete your old content? It depends. If it’s completely outdated, of low quality, and irrelevant to any valuable keywords for your website, it’s better to remove it. 

Once you decide to delete the post, don’t forget to set up a 301 redirect to a related post or page, or to your homepage.

Promote Old Blog Posts 

Sometimes all your content needs is a bit of promotion to start ranking and getting traffic again. Share it on your social media, link to it from a new post – do something to get it discoverable again to your audience. This can give it the boost it needs to attract organic links too.

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Which Blog Posts Should You Update?

Deciding when to update or rewrite blog posts is a decision that relies on one important thing: a content audit. 

Use your Google Analytics to find out which blog posts used to drive tons of traffic, but no longer have the same reach. You can also use Google Search Console to find out which of your blog posts have lost visibility in comparison to previous months. I have a guide on website analysis using Google Analytics and Google Search Console you can follow.

If you use keyword tracking tools like SE Ranking, you can also use the data it provides to come up with a list of blog posts that have dropped in the rankings. 

Make data-driven decisions to identify which blog posts would benefit from these updates – i.e., which ones still have the chance to recover their keyword rankings and organic traffic. 

With Google’s helpful content update, which emphasizes better user experiences, it’s crucial to ensure your content remains relevant, valuable, and up-to-date.

How To Update Old Blog Posts for SEO

Updating articles can be an involved process. Here are some tips and tactics to help you get it right.

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Author’s Note: I have a Comprehensive On-Page SEO Checklist you might also be interested in following while you’re doing your content audit.

Conduct New Keyword Research

Updating your post without any guide won’t get you far. Always do your keyword research to understand how users are searching for your given topic. 

Proper research can also show you relevant questions and sections that can be added to the blog post you’re updating or rewriting. Make sure to take a look at the People Also Ask (PAA) section that shows up when you search for your target keyword. Check out other websites like Answer The Public, Reddit, and Quora to see what users are looking for too. 

Look for New Ranking Opportunities

When trying to revive an old blog post for SEO, keep an eye out for new SEO opportunities (e.g., AI Overview, featured snippets, and related search terms) that didn’t exist when you first wrote your blog post. Some of these features can be targeted by the new content you will add to your post, if you write with the aim to be eligible for it. 

Rewrite Headlines and Meta Tags

If you want to attract new readers, consider updating your headlines and meta tags. 

Your headlines and meta tags should fulfill these three things:

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  1. Reflect the rewritten and new content you’ve added to the blog post.
  2. Be optimized for the new keywords it’s targeting (if any).
  3. Appeal to your target audience – who may have changed tastes from when the blog post was originally made. 

Remember that your meta tags in particular act like a brief advertisement for your blog post, since this is what the user first sees when your blog post is shown in the search results page. 

Take a look at your blog post’s click-through rate on Google Search Console – if it falls below 2%, it’s definitely time for new meta tags. 

Replace Outdated Information and Statistics

Updating blog content with current studies and statistics enhances the relevance and credibility of your post. By providing up-to-date information, you help your audience make better, well-informed decisions, while also showing that your content is trustworthy.

Tighten or Expand Ideas

Your old content might be too short to provide real value to users – or you might have rambled on and on in your post. It’s important to evaluate whether you need to make your content more concise, or if you need to elaborate more. 

Keep the following tips in mind as you refine your blog post’s ideas:

  • Evaluate Helpfulness: Measure how well your content addresses your readers’ pain points. Aim to follow the E-E-A-T model (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness).
  • Identify Missing Context: Consider whether your content needs more detail or clarification. View it from your audience’s perspective and ask if the information is complete, or if more information is needed.
  • Interview Experts: Speak with industry experts or thought leaders to get fresh insights. This will help support your writing, and provide unique points that enhance the value of your content.
  • Use Better Examples: Examples help simplify complex concepts. Add new examples or improve existing ones to strengthen your points.
  • Add New Sections if Needed: If your content lacks depth or misses a key point, add new sections to cover these areas more thoroughly.
  • Remove Fluff: Every sentence should contribute to the overall narrative. Eliminate unnecessary content to make your post more concise.
  • Revise Listicles: Update listicle items based on SEO recommendations and content quality. Add or remove headings to stay competitive with higher-ranking posts.

Improve Visuals and Other Media

No doubt that there are tons of old graphics and photos in your blog posts that can be improved with the tools we have today. Make sure all of the visuals used in your content are appealing and high quality. 

Update Internal and External Links

Are your internal and external links up to date? They need to be for your SEO and user experience. Outdated links can lead to broken pages or irrelevant content, frustrating readers and hurting your site’s performance.

You need to check for any broken links on your old blog posts, and update them ASAP. Updating your old blog posts can also lead to new opportunities to link internally to other blog posts and pages, which may not have been available when the post was originally published.

Optimize for Conversions

When updating content, the ultimate goal is often to increase conversions. However, your conversion goals may have changed over the years. 

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So here’s what you need to check in your updated blog post. First, does the call-to-action (CTA) still link to the products or services you want to promote? If not, update it to direct readers to the current solution or offer.

Second, consider where you can use different conversion strategies. Don’t just add a CTA at the end of the post. 

Last, make sure that the blog post leverages product-led content. It’s going to help you mention your products and services in a way that feels natural, without being too pushy. Being subtle can be a high ROI tactic for updated posts.

Key Takeaway

Reviving old blog articles for SEO is a powerful strategy that can breathe new life into your content and boost your website’s visibility. Instead of solely focusing on creating new posts, taking the time to refresh existing content can yield impressive results, both in terms of traffic and conversions. 

By implementing these strategies, you can transform old blog posts into valuable resources that attract new readers and retain existing ones. So, roll up your sleeves, dive into your archives, and start updating your content today—your audience and search rankings will thank you!

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How Compression Can Be Used To Detect Low Quality Pages

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Compression can be used by search engines to detect low-quality pages. Although not widely known, it's useful foundational knowledge for SEO.

The concept of Compressibility as a quality signal is not widely known, but SEOs should be aware of it. Search engines can use web page compressibility to identify duplicate pages, doorway pages with similar content, and pages with repetitive keywords, making it useful knowledge for SEO.

Although the following research paper demonstrates a successful use of on-page features for detecting spam, the deliberate lack of transparency by search engines makes it difficult to say with certainty if search engines are applying this or similar techniques.

What Is Compressibility?

In computing, compressibility refers to how much a file (data) can be reduced in size while retaining essential information, typically to maximize storage space or to allow more data to be transmitted over the Internet.

TL/DR Of Compression

Compression replaces repeated words and phrases with shorter references, reducing the file size by significant margins. Search engines typically compress indexed web pages to maximize storage space, reduce bandwidth, and improve retrieval speed, among other reasons.

This is a simplified explanation of how compression works:

  • Identify Patterns:
    A compression algorithm scans the text to find repeated words, patterns and phrases
  • Shorter Codes Take Up Less Space:
    The codes and symbols use less storage space then the original words and phrases, which results in a smaller file size.
  • Shorter References Use Less Bits:
    The “code” that essentially symbolizes the replaced words and phrases uses less data than the originals.

A bonus effect of using compression is that it can also be used to identify duplicate pages, doorway pages with similar content, and pages with repetitive keywords.

Research Paper About Detecting Spam

This research paper is significant because it was authored by distinguished computer scientists known for breakthroughs in AI, distributed computing, information retrieval, and other fields.

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Marc Najork

One of the co-authors of the research paper is Marc Najork, a prominent research scientist who currently holds the title of Distinguished Research Scientist at Google DeepMind. He’s a co-author of the papers for TW-BERT, has contributed research for increasing the accuracy of using implicit user feedback like clicks, and worked on creating improved AI-based information retrieval (DSI++: Updating Transformer Memory with New Documents), among many other major breakthroughs in information retrieval.

Dennis Fetterly

Another of the co-authors is Dennis Fetterly, currently a software engineer at Google. He is listed as a co-inventor in a patent for a ranking algorithm that uses links, and is known for his research in distributed computing and information retrieval.

Those are just two of the distinguished researchers listed as co-authors of the 2006 Microsoft research paper about identifying spam through on-page content features. Among the several on-page content features the research paper analyzes is compressibility, which they discovered can be used as a classifier for indicating that a web page is spammy.

Detecting Spam Web Pages Through Content Analysis

Although the research paper was authored in 2006, its findings remain relevant to today.

Then, as now, people attempted to rank hundreds or thousands of location-based web pages that were essentially duplicate content aside from city, region, or state names. Then, as now, SEOs often created web pages for search engines by excessively repeating keywords within titles, meta descriptions, headings, internal anchor text, and within the content to improve rankings.

Section 4.6 of the research paper explains:

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“Some search engines give higher weight to pages containing the query keywords several times. For example, for a given query term, a page that contains it ten times may be higher ranked than a page that contains it only once. To take advantage of such engines, some spam pages replicate their content several times in an attempt to rank higher.”

The research paper explains that search engines compress web pages and use the compressed version to reference the original web page. They note that excessive amounts of redundant words results in a higher level of compressibility. So they set about testing if there’s a correlation between a high level of compressibility and spam.

They write:

“Our approach in this section to locating redundant content within a page is to compress the page; to save space and disk time, search engines often compress web pages after indexing them, but before adding them to a page cache.

…We measure the redundancy of web pages by the compression ratio, the size of the uncompressed page divided by the size of the compressed page. We used GZIP …to compress pages, a fast and effective compression algorithm.”

High Compressibility Correlates To Spam

The results of the research showed that web pages with at least a compression ratio of 4.0 tended to be low quality web pages, spam. However, the highest rates of compressibility became less consistent because there were fewer data points, making it harder to interpret.

Figure 9: Prevalence of spam relative to compressibility of page.

The researchers concluded:

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“70% of all sampled pages with a compression ratio of at least 4.0 were judged to be spam.”

But they also discovered that using the compression ratio by itself still resulted in false positives, where non-spam pages were incorrectly identified as spam:

“The compression ratio heuristic described in Section 4.6 fared best, correctly identifying 660 (27.9%) of the spam pages in our collection, while misidentifying 2, 068 (12.0%) of all judged pages.

Using all of the aforementioned features, the classification accuracy after the ten-fold cross validation process is encouraging:

95.4% of our judged pages were classified correctly, while 4.6% were classified incorrectly.

More specifically, for the spam class 1, 940 out of the 2, 364 pages, were classified correctly. For the non-spam class, 14, 440 out of the 14,804 pages were classified correctly. Consequently, 788 pages were classified incorrectly.”

The next section describes an interesting discovery about how to increase the accuracy of using on-page signals for identifying spam.

Insight Into Quality Rankings

The research paper examined multiple on-page signals, including compressibility. They discovered that each individual signal (classifier) was able to find some spam but that relying on any one signal on its own resulted in flagging non-spam pages for spam, which are commonly referred to as false positive.

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The researchers made an important discovery that everyone interested in SEO should know, which is that using multiple classifiers increased the accuracy of detecting spam and decreased the likelihood of false positives. Just as important, the compressibility signal only identifies one kind of spam but not the full range of spam.

The takeaway is that compressibility is a good way to identify one kind of spam but there are other kinds of spam that aren’t caught with this one signal. Other kinds of spam were not caught with the compressibility signal.

This is the part that every SEO and publisher should be aware of:

“In the previous section, we presented a number of heuristics for assaying spam web pages. That is, we measured several characteristics of web pages, and found ranges of those characteristics which correlated with a page being spam. Nevertheless, when used individually, no technique uncovers most of the spam in our data set without flagging many non-spam pages as spam.

For example, considering the compression ratio heuristic described in Section 4.6, one of our most promising methods, the average probability of spam for ratios of 4.2 and higher is 72%. But only about 1.5% of all pages fall in this range. This number is far below the 13.8% of spam pages that we identified in our data set.”

So, even though compressibility was one of the better signals for identifying spam, it still was unable to uncover the full range of spam within the dataset the researchers used to test the signals.

Combining Multiple Signals

The above results indicated that individual signals of low quality are less accurate. So they tested using multiple signals. What they discovered was that combining multiple on-page signals for detecting spam resulted in a better accuracy rate with less pages misclassified as spam.

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The researchers explained that they tested the use of multiple signals:

“One way of combining our heuristic methods is to view the spam detection problem as a classification problem. In this case, we want to create a classification model (or classifier) which, given a web page, will use the page’s features jointly in order to (correctly, we hope) classify it in one of two classes: spam and non-spam.”

These are their conclusions about using multiple signals:

“We have studied various aspects of content-based spam on the web using a real-world data set from the MSNSearch crawler. We have presented a number of heuristic methods for detecting content based spam. Some of our spam detection methods are more effective than others, however when used in isolation our methods may not identify all of the spam pages. For this reason, we combined our spam-detection methods to create a highly accurate C4.5 classifier. Our classifier can correctly identify 86.2% of all spam pages, while flagging very few legitimate pages as spam.”

Key Insight:

Misidentifying “very few legitimate pages as spam” was a significant breakthrough. The important insight that everyone involved with SEO should take away from this is that one signal by itself can result in false positives. Using multiple signals increases the accuracy.

What this means is that SEO tests of isolated ranking or quality signals will not yield reliable results that can be trusted for making strategy or business decisions.

Takeaways

We don’t know for certain if compressibility is used at the search engines but it’s an easy to use signal that combined with others could be used to catch simple kinds of spam like thousands of city name doorway pages with similar content. Yet even if the search engines don’t use this signal, it does show how easy it is to catch that kind of search engine manipulation and that it’s something search engines are well able to handle today.

Here are the key points of this article to keep in mind:

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  • Doorway pages with duplicate content is easy to catch because they compress at a higher ratio than normal web pages.
  • Groups of web pages with a compression ratio above 4.0 were predominantly spam.
  • Negative quality signals used by themselves to catch spam can lead to false positives.
  • In this particular test, they discovered that on-page negative quality signals only catch specific types of spam.
  • When used alone, the compressibility signal only catches redundancy-type spam, fails to detect other forms of spam, and leads to false positives.
  • Combing quality signals improves spam detection accuracy and reduces false positives.
  • Search engines today have a higher accuracy of spam detection with the use of AI like Spam Brain.

Read the research paper, which is linked from the Google Scholar page of Marc Najork:

Detecting spam web pages through content analysis

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New Google Trends SEO Documentation

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Google publishes new documentation for how to use Google Trends for search marketing

Google Search Central published new documentation on Google Trends, explaining how to use it for search marketing. This guide serves as an easy to understand introduction for newcomers and a helpful refresher for experienced search marketers and publishers.

The new guide has six sections:

  1. About Google Trends
  2. Tutorial on monitoring trends
  3. How to do keyword research with the tool
  4. How to prioritize content with Trends data
  5. How to use Google Trends for competitor research
  6. How to use Google Trends for analyzing brand awareness and sentiment

The section about monitoring trends advises there are two kinds of rising trends, general and specific trends, which can be useful for developing content to publish on a site.

Using the Explore tool, you can leave the search box empty and view the current rising trends worldwide or use a drop down menu to focus on trends in a specific country. Users can further filter rising trends by time periods, categories and the type of search. The results show rising trends by topic and by keywords.

To search for specific trends users just need to enter the specific queries and then filter them by country, time, categories and type of search.

The section called Content Calendar describes how to use Google Trends to understand which content topics to prioritize.

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Google explains:

“Google Trends can be helpful not only to get ideas on what to write, but also to prioritize when to publish it. To help you better prioritize which topics to focus on, try to find seasonal trends in the data. With that information, you can plan ahead to have high quality content available on your site a little before people are searching for it, so that when they do, your content is ready for them.”

Read the new Google Trends documentation:

Get started with Google Trends

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