What Can Be Done When Nothing Can Be Done? – A Practical Guide to Taking Optimisation Into Your Own Hands

It can be so frustrating to work with a client that no matter how hard you try, push and argue, due to their sheer size or processes, they just cannot manage to assign resources and implement your suggestions. The same is true for the client. They certainly don’t want to be paying for recommendations that cannot be implemented! As SEOs we need to recognise that there are always other priorities and considerations that come into play, so we need to be able to adapt in these instances to retain our value?

Of course, before you carry out any activity for your client, you should always seek permission/approval, but once received here are some ways you can push forward. Assuming you have access to Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) and Google Analytics (GA), there is actually quite a bit of work you can do without requiring access to a client’s site or CMS. Try out these five tips:

1) Parameter Handling

This is a nifty tool found in GWT, which allows you to suggest how Googlebot should treat parameters within your sites URL’s. Often large sites will contain thousands of unique URL parameter that simply sort, reorder or change the same content in some way. This confuses Googlebot. You can use this tool to show Google the correct URL which should be indexed and how to treat all subsequent parameters of that URL. This will give more authority to the correct page and help it rank better. No development work required!

To find this report sign in to GWT, click on ‘crawl’ then select ‘URL parameters’

From my experience, it’s best to check with the development team first to find out what each URL parameter actually does. This is not labour intensive, simply export all the parameters from this GWT report and pop it into a quick spreadsheet, in the next column, input what you think the parameter does. You could show this to a dev when you ‘accidentally’ run into him or her over a ‘chance’ cup of coffee and get their confirmation.

Once approved you can enter the data back into GWT and safely give instructions to Google bot on how to treat these parameters.

I’ve had first-hand experience with larger sites, in fact one of the biggest publishers in Australia, where once we gave instructions through this tool on how to treat parameters across the website we saw large increases in rankings for the affected pages.

If you want you can Read more about URL Parameters

2) Structured Data Markup

Google’s new data highlighter allows webmasters to markup their site with structured data using a simple point and click option. Google can then apply data about authorship, products, local business, events and other properties across the whole site. This can save a ton of development time and get your rich snippets and other data showing in the SERPS. This has been shown to help click through rates to your site.

Here’s how it works: You need to sign in through GWT, then go to ‘search appearance’ and select ‘Data highlighter’, then select ‘start highlighting’. You then type in the page of your site and the type of structured data you want to add to that page. You can also duplicate this across other similar pages.

For example, for an ecommerce site, with many similar product pages, which all have product ratings and other relevant info, you would select ‘product’ and also ‘tag this page and others like it’

Note that the same process can be used for authorship, events, local business, movies, restaurants and other information you want to markup on your site.

From here on it is fairly straight forward, you now highlight the relevant text/data on the page that you want to markup, when you let go of the mouse button after highlighting, you will be given an option to select what data it is you have highlighted.

The opposite screenshot shows how you could highlight a star rating on a product page, select average rating.

Google will then prompt you to apply this to a set of similar pages which you can either agree to or not. The last stage will be to review your work and then publish.

My experience with this tool has found it to be a little finiky. Sometimes it is difficult to get the exact markup that you want or for Google to recognise it how you want it to.

Another option, which works better in a lot of cases, is Google Structured Data Markup Helper. This works in exactly the same way, the only difference is that the end product is HTML output which you can export and then upload to your site manually. Although, yes, this may require dev, it is easier to troubleshoot if there are any issues.

The below video gives Google’s own introduction to structured markup:

3) Content Suggestions

Even though it may be hard to get dev time on the site, it is usually much easier to change existing content or add new pages. Using GA and GWT it is easy to find the keywords that are bringing traffic to individual pages. These keywords can be cross-referenced with rankings for those keywords. (The fastest way to do this is to use vlookups in excel).

In GA, you can select ‘site content’ –> ‘landing pages’, and then add a secondary dimension for ‘keywords’, then filter this using the advanced segment on ‘non-paid traffic’. These steps are outlined in the screenshot below. The blue bubbles show the steps, the orange ones, show the data that you can use

This will give you a good indication of which keywords bring traffic to which pages on your site. This technique is also explained in more detail here

Any keywords that drive a significant amount of traffic to a certain page, and where the keyword is ranking higher then position 3, should be optimised for by adding that keyword to key spots on a page such as the title tag, H1, H2, image alt tag and within content.

The same is true for new pages. Basic keyword research using the google keyword tool, your own analytics and GWT data can help identify keyword niches that you are not talking about on your site already, if you can put the content together you’ll be able to target keywords you were not before.

4) Local SEO

Local SEO mostly requires offsite activity. Submitting the site to Google Places and building local citations will help the business rank for local search terms. It is also important to optimise local landing pages, but local SEO can still be effective without much onsite work and very little development work. I’d recommend this guide to building up your local SEO.

5) Link Earning

Often requiring no on-site activity at all, earning links to your site through outreach is best done in complement with on-site optimisation, but can also serve as a great alternative in being very effective in improving rankings. You have to be very careful with this type of activity. Link earning can be done by creating fantastic and interesting content on your own site and then spreading the word about it to attract natural links. Creating this content may not require dev, but rather the creative elements of the client team, so this can be a way around dev hold ups.

Link earning can also occur through contributing to the online community, such as guest posting on relevant blog sites in your nice and participating in forums and directories. The Moz blog has a comprehensive list, known as link building 101, for those that want to learn more and try out different strategies.

In conclusion, it can be frustrating for both the SEO and the client to be investing time and energy into research and recommendations, where at the end of the day, we find ourselves back at the same point we left off.

These five strategies are intended as an overview for SEO’s who have hit that brick wall and no longer no what else they can do to improve the current situation. I have tried to keep it brief to serve as a strategical overview. I have also included relevant links, so that if any particular strategy interests you more, feel free to learn about it where it has been covered well and in greater detail.

I hope this helps you find your way, let me know how it goes!