What do you do when you’ve got the itch to organize, but your space is already in good order? Why not organize your website?

Yes, you read that correctly. Keeping your website organized can make a big difference to how it ranks in the search engines. To help you get started, here’s digital marketing consultant Geneva Bell. 

Optimize your Plug-ins

Technical SEO has a lot of moving parts. One of the most significant time wasters for bloggers is trying to get all their plug-ins in harmony.

There are thousands of plug-ins for WordPress alone and millions across the web for everything else. Don’t let yourself get caught up in sales pitches and try to use three plug-ins where one would suffice.

Make yourself a checklist of what you expect your plug-in to do for you. While it may seem like a challenge, or an expense, to find software that meets all your needs, you will thank yourself. There is no worse nightmare than having to check in with six plug-ins every time you post.

Don’t hedge your bets with multiple platforms or excessive freeware. Find yourself a one and done solution that will take care of you. Not sure what you need in an SEO tool? Here is a quick overview of the SEO best practices toolkit.

Speed test
Keyword density tool
Keyword research
Google indexing

Labels Matter

Your content should be easy to browse by topic. Not only will this help you keep track of your content, but your readers will also appreciate that you value their time as highly as your own.

Don’t hide your navigation tools. Build a top bar with searchability in mind. By placing your content in easily identified categories and using a tag system, your posts will be browsable by heading and searchable by tag.

This isn’t just for your readers! Next time you want to analyze how many closet organizing articles you have or how often you have pitched your favorite system, just check your tags.

Consolidate your Scripts

With the May 2021 Google algorithm update on the horizon, site speed is more important than ever. The new standard for Largest Contentful Paint is 2.5 seconds or less. If you aren’t meeting or beating that speed, you will need to get your scripts ready for the new decade.

When something breaks in your HTML or CSS, how long does it take you to identify and solve the problem? When your landing page and site design is built around multiple scripts of the same kind, you are not digitally organized.

This may seem unimportant when everything works right, but if you sweep your code under the rug for too long, eventually, you will waste a lot of time untangling when something stops working optimally.

Keep your code neat so that updates roll out smoothly and new criteria and speed requirements are easy to meet. You should be running one HTML and one CSS protocol per page, not several.

Know When to Delegate

One of the hardest parts about being a highly organized professional is knowing when to give over control. In a world with endless hours in the day, you COULD do everything yourself. Write terrific content, perform keyword research, apply technical SEO, and link to social media–all with stunning graphics and a bow on top.

Now, back to reality. If you are doing everything yourself, you are not scaling your business. Giving over control is challenging, particularly when you have painstakingly built everything you have.

Delegation doesn’t have to be a loss of power. When properly organized, delegation is empowering. Focus your energy on creating plans, checklists, and goals. Then, find the people who you can rely on to follow your master plan.

You know precisely the tools and preparation necessary to create stunning web content because you have done these things yourself. That means you are positioned perfectly to guide outside talent: writers, marketers, graphic designers.

This doesn’t mean you need to turn over your content and profit to a big name agency. By controlling your workflow and focusing on the master plan rather than the gritty details, you will find you really can do nearly everything yourself. Keep your goals in mind and control in hand by focusing on DIY SEO techniques.

When you start feeling the time crunch, it’s time to find the talent that goes with your tenacity.

Combine your Mobile and Browser Site

Here is a simple tip that so many of you desperately need. Stop having two sites!

Mobile-first indexing can only get you so far. The reality of SEO in the 2020s is that having two sites is unwieldy. You literally double your work when you manage two sites in tandem—each post, each graphic, each update, twice.

If you haven’t already (and I know many of you haven’t), it’s time to buckle down and consolidate your browser version and mobile version.

While mobile-friendliness requirements may seem hard to meet at times, let this be an opportunity to thin the fluff from your digital home and streamline your content. In a well organized and optimized site, this shouldn’t be a challenging task.

If optimizing for mobile is difficult, congratulations! You have just identified your organizational needs for the week.

Happy tasking!

Photo by Ekaterina Bolovtsova from Pexels