Live workshop to go over a checklist for revamping your old content.
The slide presentation notes are below the video.
It does not contain the deeper info that is presented in the workshop, but will be an easy way for you to copy the checklist format.
Presentation Notes
Slide 1
Welcome
Slide 2
What we’ll dive into today
All of this is covered in the regular workshops. Today is just a checklist.
- User Experience and Conversion
- Accuracy
- Scan-ability
- First words
- Images
- Links
- Title
- Headings
- Answer a questions
- Load time
Slide 3
User Experience and Conversion
The more engaging, entertaining, and informative your post is, the more time a visitor will spend on it.
- Time on site is an SEO ranking factor.
Slide 4
If the user experience is high, a visitor is more likely to follow you.
- Repeat traffic means you don’t work as hard to get traffic to your site. Keep what you do get.
- Google may see your repeat/new traffic percentage.
Slide 5
Strive for an awesome user experience that:
- Keeps the visitor on the post longer
- Encourages them to click through to more posts during that visit
- Encourages them to convert to a regular follower
Slide 6
Check the content for accuracy
Read through and ensure what you have said is still true.
- Also check for non-evergreen content. If you have a time reference, ensure that it is evergreen so you don’t have to keep updating.
- For example, if it’s a reference to when you started your site, then use the year instead of saying “2 years ago”.
Slide 7
Check for scan-ability
Is your content visually interesting?
A great way to check is to stand 3-4 feet away from your monitor so you can’t read the text. Then take note of what your eye naturally gravitates toward.
Slide 8
Big eye catchers:
- An image
- Large, colored, bold text
- Headings
- Bullet points
- Text with a colored background
- Text that is indented
- Single line text if surrounded by paragraphs
Slide 9
One line of text between huge images gets lost.
- Super problematic for tutorials.
- Images have little context for Google.
- Bad for how-to schema format.
- Risk of thin content
Slide 10
Check first words on page
For SEO, it doesn’t matter if you put an image first or a few lines of text first.
- Google will crawl both and does not give preference to the order, as far as ranking your post.
- Words first can make for a better user experience, though.
Slide 11
It is CRITICALLY important that the first words on your post give a clear indication of what this post is about.
- Do not put your affiliate disclaimer as the first words.
- Do not put a table of contents as the first words.
- Do put an excerpt and/or teaser as the first words.
- This is a GREAT place to use synonyms of the main keywords
Slide 12
Check images
This will be different for everyone.
First – determine why you have images in this post – what is the goal you are trying to reach with them?
- For those who run ads, more images means more page real estate for ads to be inserted.
- For how-to posts, images show steps in the process.
- For affiliate marketers, images show products or the use of them.
- For local, images show people, places, things.
- What are your reasons for images?
Slide 13
Make photojournalism a priority.
- Tell a story with your images.
- Ensure what’s in the image matches the surrounding content.
Slide 14
For recipes
- Show us how to make it.
- Do not show 10 images of it already made!!
- That is a horrible user experience.
- Training visitors to scroll fast to the bottom for the recipe.
Slide 15
Captions
- Does your image need it for clarity or local?
- Never use captions on images you most intend to be shared.
Slide 16
File name
- Are you getting max SEO from each image’s file name?
- Does your logo have a proper SEO file name?
- What about your bio image?
Slide 17
Display size and orientation
- Ensure the display size is the same as what your content area allows.
- Do all of your images have to be tower size for Pinterest? It’s boring.
- Consider mixing up image size and orientation and even layout in Gutenberg to make the post more visually interesting.
Slide 18
Check Links
- Are there opportunities to use text links in the content to more of your content?
- Are there any broken links?
- Are links opening in a new tab?
- See guide on creating links https://blogaid.net/ultimate-guide-for-creating-links-in-wordpress/
Slide 19
Check the title
It’s okay to change it.
You do not have to change the permalink to match.
- If you do change the permalink, do a redirect.
Slide 20
Headings
- How many are in the post?
- Need 1 for every topic change.
- Keywords and synonyms
- Draw interest
Slide 21
Answer a question
What is the primary question your content answers?
Find a place in your content to succinctly answer that question.
- Featured snippet
- Voice search
Slide 22
Check your load time
See this post on how to run a site speed test accurately. https://blogaid.net/how-to-test-your-site-speed-accurately-with-webpage-test/
Get a site audit to find all of the security and performance drags. https://blogaid.net/site-audits
Slide 23
Homework
- User Experience and Conversion
- Accuracy
- Scan-ability
- First words
- Images
- Links
- Title
- Headings
- Answer a questions
- Load time