The dog days of summer are here, and as the sun shines bright outside your office window you are probably thinking about the trip to the beach you have planned this weekend.
Of course, you could use the last of your PTO and punch out a bit early. Or you could finally tackle some of those pesky tasks that have been itching like a flea you can’t scratch.
Sure, backlink management, image optimization and email maintenance can be boring and a bit monotonous. But in the long run, they are well worth some dogged work.
1. Backlink Management
During this slow time of year, make sure you’ve got your finger on the pulse of your website: backlinks. Why? Because backlinks are among the most powerful ranking factors for search engines.
Knowing the kind of links that are pointing to your site can help you avoid messy issues like a Google penalty or worse, a complete de-indexing.
There are a few different types of backlinks to be weary of:
- Poor quality directories
- Blog comment spam
- Spun article spam
- Hacked websites
- Blackhat SEO links
Our favorite way of evaluating links is to ask ourselves, “If Google didn’t use links in their algorithm, would we want this link to exist?”
Thankfully there are several tools that help you examine the backlinks that are pointing to your site. Tools such as AHREFs, Moz’s Open Site Explorer and Majestic all help you sniff around and see which sites are linking back to you.
2. Buyer Personas
Marketing gurus at HubSpot have been barking the importance of buyer personas for years. But as crucial as it is to create buyer personas and use them in your subsequent marketing efforts, getting started on them can be a daunting task.
Whether you have never made a buyer persona, have additional profiles to create, or want to update your existing personas, it’s time to get your paws dirty. Working on your buyer personas now will make prepping for the busy holiday shopping season a breeze.
3. Image Optimization
Images optimization is a simple and sometimes mindless task that is easy to bury for later, however this SEO tactic has worthwhile benefits.
Properly optimized images are easier for Google to “see” and “understand”, which impacts your organic rankings. They are also more likely to appear in Google’s image searches, providing you with additional opportunities to be found.
Additionally, screen readers can scan image alt text as long as it is accurate and not spammy, describing the image to those who are visually impaired.
4. Email List Management
When is the last time you cleaned your email lists? If the answer is more than two months ago (or never!) it’s time to throw the dog a bone and give this task another go.
Why is clearing inactive and invalid emails from your list so important?
- Reduces Bounce Rate: The higher your bounce rate, the more likely your emails are to be flagged as spam, and the less likely your customers are to receive them. You can reduce your bounce rate by removing emails that are inactive, undeliverable or non-existent. Also check for misspelled emails – it’s all too easy to type .con instead of .com.
- Decreases Cost of Sending Emails: Depending on the size of your list, email services can be expensive! Cut costs and keep your focus on targeted leads by eliminating invalid email addresses and those that have never opened your mail.
While we’re on the subject of email, now is a good time to make sure the forms on your website are properly connected to your email marketing service. Also, double check that your forms are linked to the proper list and the default “opt-in” button is checked to grow your email list.
5. Ranking Reports
No one wants to sit in front of their computer typing keyword after keyword into search engines, but knowing where your website ranks is incredibly important. You should be reviewing your keyword rankings on at least a weekly basis, watching your report for changes in metrics related to the SEO work you are doing.
Tired of checking your keywords the old fashioned way? Sign up for a service like ahrefs or AuthorityLabs. These sites can track your keyword rankings for you, giving you more time to analyze the data and make proper adjustments.
Every dog has his day – and today is yours! Now that you’ve been reminded of a few mundane (but important) marketing tasks you can work on, pick one and get started.