The Internet is full of guides for B2B marketers who are looking to get their start with search engine optimization (SEO). But what if you’ve made a commitment to SEO already…and it just sucks? Maybe you’ve analyzed your website with a tool like Hubspot’s Website Grader or Moz Pro’s Open Site Explorer and your score was dismal. Maybe your keywords were selected some time ago and search trends have moved on since then. Or maybe you see your competitors dominating search and are wondering how to keep from getting left behind. Whatever the case, you’re looking for some SEO fixes to help your website get back on track.

While a total, long-term overhaul of your SEO strategy might be required, there are some short-term things you can do to revitalize your SEO. Here are a few SEO fixes to help you get started.

Snoop on your competitors’ sites. If other companies in your industry have strong SEO, you may feel like you’ll never be able to catch up. But these competitors can actually be a great resource for you. Take a look at their sites to see what their content is like. Do they have pages that you don’t, which could be opportunities to rank for new keywords? You can also analyze competitors’ sites using a tool like KeywordSpy, which shows you which keywords a website ranks for. If it’s been a while since you implemented your SEO strategy, looking at these results may show you how important keywords in your target market have changed. Use the keywords your competitors are ranking for as jumping-off points for your own SEO research or inspiration for content.

Link to your website on your social media. When many people think of SEO, they think of on-page optimization: selecting keywords and inputting them into the website content and structure. But off-page SEO is also a crucial factor for Google ranking. Off-page SEO strategy involves building inbound links to your website, which can be done through a variety of ways. One strategy every company can execute is incorporating links from its own website into its social media posting. When you write a new blog post or have company news to share, link to it on your social media accounts. Don’t spam people with links every day—that’s a sure way to lose followers, and it’ll look suspicious to Google. But including weekly links to your own site as part of your social media strategy can give your off-page SEO a boost.

Double-check that your keywords are in the right places. Depending on how and when your website was designed, your focus keywords may be present on only one aspect of a given page. Go through your pages and make sure that your text has an appropriate keyword density, your images feature the focus keyword in the alt text, and the URL and meta description contain the keyword. If your focus keywords are only in the text and not in the backend, or vice versa, it could be the source of your SEO troubles.

Launch some new content focused on keyword groups. Trying to get more than one page to rank for the same keyword is bad strategy—it means your site will compete against itself. But targeting a group of keywords related to a broader subject can be a good strategy. One way to target a group of keywords like this is to develop content based on those keywords. Writing a series of blog posts using different keywords but centered around the same subject not only positions you as an authority on that subject, it also gives you the opportunity to rank for important keywords.

SEO can be challenging to fix, especially since there are many ranking factors that aren’t all under your control. But with the help of these SEO fixes, your site will get a much-needed boost.

Image Credit: SEOPlanter (Creative Commons)