We often are posed the question, “how can small teams, units or departments in the University implement SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for their websites?”

For context, SEO is a set of practices and strategies that help improve a website’s visibility on search engines. SEO is a valuable and cost-effective strategy. While it requires time and effort, it can deliver consistent, long-term results without having to pump in advertising dollars regularly. Managing SEO for a one- or two-person team can be challenging, but it’s certainly possible to achieve success with the right approach.

Here are some tips to help smaller teams effectively manage SEO:

Make your content accessible

Ensure that search engines are able to discover and index your website. Search engine bots (crawlers) hop from link to link in order to ‘crawl’ webpages, scanning information to store in their database. So, the first step in an SEO strategy is to ensure that there is nothing blocking search engine bots from accessing your web content. There are a couple of things you should absolutely do to make your content accessible to search engine crawlers:

1. Implement Robots.txt: Robots.txt is typically the first page that a search engine bot reads upon landing on a website. This text file has some instructions for the search engine bots on what content to index and what to skip. Learn more about the Robots.txt file and how you can use it for your website.
2. Implement Sitemaps: Sitemaps are lists of URLs available to either your website visitors or to search engine bots for easier website navigation. HTML sitemaps are visible to the user and XML sitemaps are visible to the search engine bots. Learn more about sitemaps and how you can set them up.

You will likely need to connect with your web developer to set up the sitemap and the robots.txt file, though there many plug-ins that do the job, too.

You should also manually check whether the most important pages of your website are indexed by Google. You can do this by prefixing a search operator site: to your website and search for it on Google. For CSU’s news website, source.colostate.edu, it will look something like this:

Prioritize and focus

Small teams should prioritize their SEO efforts by identifying the most critical areas or pages of your website. Concentrate your efforts on those areas rather than trying to do everything at once. Assuming your websites have a low page count, highlight your uniqueness. Place importance to pages such as the Homepage, the ‘About’ section and the Top Navigation. Your primary goal should be to at least be the top search position for your own brand keywords.

SEO is driven by content, but it’s not always possible for small teams to have a steady stream of content. Instead, whenever possible, concentrate on creating a rich mix of high-quality, informative, and engaging content that resonates with your target audience. Think about opportunities to incorporate videos, infographics, and images instead of long blocks of text.

Keep an eye on your competitors. Learn what they are talking about. If you are in an industry that is saturated or ultra-competitive, try to find different angles you can create or content gaps you can fill.

Keyword research and placement

Make efficient use of keyword research tools to find low-competition, high-value keywords. Focus your content and optimization efforts around these keywords. Google Ads’ Keyword Planner is a free keyword tool that’s excellent. Utilize Google Trends for monitoring your topics’ search interest over time.

Following are a few high-impact tips involving keywords:

Have a keyword-rich page title: The page title should be 50-60 characters and front-loaded with keywords. The keywords used should be reflective of the content on the page.

Break content into smaller chunks with sub-heads: Using search terms in headers is a great strategy for both search engines and for your website visitors. According to usability research, users scan websites in an ‘E’ or ‘F’ shape rather than reading out the whole page. So, it makes sense to split the page into smaller digestible portions and set the hierarchy with the most important keywords being placed at the top-left part of the page.

Use alt-text for images: Alt-text describes the content of images on the website. Alt-text is read aloud to users with screen readers and they are also indexed by search engines for  image search. This means that alt-text is an excellent opportunity for keyword optimization. Alt-text should be short, descriptive and it should accurately describe the image content to someone with impaired vision.

I would highly recommend utilizing Google Search Console for monitoring your site’s health and performance on search.

Build your content for people, not for search engines

There was a time when SEO was about keyword-stuffing and content overload. That’s not the case, anymore. Over the years, search intent has replaced keywords as the main SEO buzzword. While keyword research is still important, understanding what a potential visitor would be searching for to get to your website is critical.

Repurpose content

Maximize the value of your content by repurposing it in various formats (e.g., blog posts, videos, infographics). This approach can save time and reach a broader audience. This is also helpful if you have a blog, and know that you write about topics that are cyclical in nature. Refurbish old content – create a video or infographic to bolster it, add trending keywords to the content body, find internal linking opportunities to other pages on your website, etc.

Optimize for local search

This tip is especially relevant if you are a department offering degree or certificate courses. A lot of prospective students may be searching by location doing the “near me” searches.

Provide your contact information on the website, either on the website footer or dedicate a page to it. Embed a map with your location, if possible.

Make sure you have a local Google My Business profile built and maintained. More often than not, it is the first bit of information Google pulls from about your department. Encourage reviews from alumni or visitors to your unit.

In conclusion, SEO is not just reserved for large websites or teams. With prioritization and focus, smaller websites can also benefit from SEO by improving their online visibility, attracting targeted traffic, building trust, and growing their online presence.