When people talk about SEO, they talk about meta description, they talk about building backlink volume, they talk about canonicalization. All these are ranking factors. But they won’t work unless they’re used consistently.

Consistency is key

SEO is not a set up once and leave it thing. Nor is your website. As your business grows, you will be adding more content and more web pages to your website. All these need to be optimized from time to time to ensure your SERP rank.

When setting up a website it’s not only for the users. It’s also for crawlers. T

hat’s why it’s important to give the crawler all the correct and clear signs on what your webpage is. Crawler takes in a lot to consider as SEO ranking factors.

This includes keywords, fresh links, passing page rank, and for local SEO; uniformed information across multiple portals.

When all the little signs are pointing towards one, and one thing only. That’s when SEO shines and your page appears high on the SERP. Making all the pointer pointing at one thing requires patience, effort, and consistency.

Be consistent with your keyword usage

The consistent use of keywords remains one of the most important parts of SEO. Scattering keywords consistently across a webpage tell crawlers what this webpage is about. Which in turn helps it to rank higher in the SERP of a certain keyword.

Choose a keyword and stick to it.

Although Google IS getting smarter and smarter in understanding the content of each website. Still, the power of keywords should not be ignored.

Keywords give crawlers a sign about what the page is talking about. It acts as a pointer to the keyword that you want to rank.

Put keywords in your title, meta tags, meta description, in your article itself, in image ALT etc.

Consistently insert the keyword into where it matters. Combined, they’re screaming out signals to the crawler that this is what the web page is about.

In SEOPressor plugin, there exists a feature where it will detect your SQ Density automatically according to your word count and keyword position. All you need to do is input up to 3 keywords that you’re targeting.

SEOPressor automatically gives you an indication on SQ Density

However, we are also aware that a website is not only made up of one blog post or one webpage. That’s where consistency comes in. You gotta make sure that all your web pages are pointing towards one same thing.

Let’s say you’re a yoga instructor who runs a yoga academy. You will want your website to rank on the keyword “yoga instructor”. The page that ranks for this main keyword should preferably be your homepage. Where users can have an overall of what you can offer. Therefore, you would want to optimize your homepage for the keyword “yoga instructor”.

Get a list of LSI keywords of yoga instructor, utilize them if you can. LSIGraph in this occasion can help you immensely. That way you are clearly telling the crawler that “Hey, my website is about Yoga Instructor, you should show my website to anyone who made a related query.”

Be consistent with your content

SEO goes hand in hand with quality content

Quality contents that answer to what users want are those that rank.

Dishing out one after another quality content consistently is important. That tells Google that your website is relevant to queries. Not only that, you are always relevant because you are always updating.

That’s why you see so many SEO websites featuring a blog where they share knowledge and all things SEO with users for free.

You may get a sudden surge of backlinks and visit when you posted a piece of high-quality content. But you don’t want that to be a one-time thing. You want those fresh links that can keep your blog post ranked high at the SERP.

Once again, consistency is key.

There are two ways to do this. When Google updates their algorithm you gotta update your SEO accordingly. Other than that, constantly check for broken or bad links. A link can change over time, making sure that they are not affecting your web page needs a lot of consistent patience and work.

You can update your website monthly, weekly or even daily if you want. What we need is consistency.

Revamp your website maybe once a year. Get rid of all those bad links or bad code that is not contributing to your SERP.

Google likes fresh content. They like to see frequent activity on a website being signaled to their crawlers. It’s like telling them that your website is active and in use. It’s relevant, and relevant web pages rank higher.

However, don’t update your page for the sake of updating.

The main purpose of creating a website in the first place is to communicate. You want to tell the community something, whether it be telling them to take yoga classes with you or sharing tips on SEO.

That’s why you gotta feed them quality content. Good content that matches to users search intent.

So one point to remember is to not just be consistent with your updates or publishes, you also want to be consistent with the quality.

Everyone loves a quality content, optimizing it is just putting the jewel on the crown while consistency is king. Be consistent with your quality first, then comes frequency and optimization.

Be consistent with your website structure

One of the most common problems that give out a mixed signal to crawlers and affecting ranking is duplicated content.

Why is it confusing to crawler? Because it’s inconsistent!

You have one page displaying the same thing but with 3 different URLs. Why not make it consistent and only having one URL? We know the problem is not as simple as that.

Duplicate content IS a problem on the internet.

It’s such a big problem that Google made a whole help page for it. As you can see, Google asked you to be consistent.

You may not have created duplicated intentionally, but that doesn’t mean that crawlers won’t treat them as unique sites with duplicated content. That will confuse the crawlers as to which one should be preferred and ranked.

Example of duplicated URLs that may affect SERP

All these web pages will be showing the same thing to the users. But to the crawlers, they are three different unique sites. However, they’re showcasing the same contents! So which one is the real, original one that has more authority?

Which one should be ranked?

There are many ways to solve this problem as listed out by Google.

But in my humble opinion, a rel=”canonical or 301 redirects are one of the more direct solutions to a problem like this.

Utilize these commands to consistently refer crawlers to put the priority on the page that YOU WANT. Put these command in ALL the relevant web page. Not just one. You want to go through all the duplicates and make sure they’re all consistently pointing to the same thing.

To put it lightly, if you want users to stay on the page, but pass page rank to another page, then use rel=”canonical. If you don’t want users on that page AT ALL and also want to pass page rank, use 301 redirects.

Of course, this the very surface of how these things work. They are obviously much more complicated but we are not going to talk about that. What I want to talk about is consistency.

You are communicating and sending signals to the crawlers on which page is the one you think should be ranked. Instead of letting them decide. If you want to have full authority over your web pages, you gotta bark out clear directions.

Crawlers will be confused when given mixed signals thus affecting your page ranking

Be firm and sure on which webpage you want to pass page rank to. Don’t give out mixed signals like pass it from A to C then B to C and C back to B. You want everything to be pointing back to A and A only.

Choose one copy of the duplicates as genuine and original. Pass it page ranks. Be consistent throughout. You can see that your SERP started favoring the page that you’re pointing towards. That’s what being consistent can do.

You’re telling the crawlers to scoop up all that are scattered, and put it all on ONE webpage only. There are many SEO ranking factors, by uniforming them one by one you can gain great strength.

Be consistent with your NAP

Now we’re gonna touch a little on local SEO.

Every business wants to rank on the near me SERP. Every business wants to be discovered online by potential customers. You ask for reviews, you communicate with customers and tend to their needs. All of those are good for your business.

But the most basic of putting your business out there on the internet is the NAP. Make a quick search for your business on Google. Are there duplicates? Are there different listings with different details?

Again, consistency is key.

Be consistent with your NAP is one of the easily overlooked fine print.

Your premise might have a name change, so you updated your Facebook page. But have you also updated your Google listing, Yelp listing, Foursquare listing and so on and so forth?

If your Facebook page has a different name with your Yelp listing, that’s telling Google that they are two different businesses. That will not only confuse Google, it will also confuse potential customers.

Providing the exact information across multiple portals in important for both ranking and securing customers

Make sure that the information you have on the internet is uniform and consistent is important. However, that can be a tricky thing to do.

With so many review sites out there making sure you have claimed your listing is enough work already. Updating all of them accordingly is gonna take up a lot of time and requires a lot of patience.

There is a couple software out there that can help you manage all your listings from NAP down to verification.

Like this one from MOZ or this one from bright local.

A little effort can pay off in the long run. Making sure the information you’re putting out is uninformed can do wonders to your rank on SERP which in turn brings in more business.

TL;DR

At the end of the day, consistency is key in being ranked on SERP. Dishing out consistently high-quality contents is only one among the many SEO ranking factors. Revamp your website consistently to follow updated Googe algorithm and clearing out bad links. In the case of duplicated content, signals to crawlers should be clear and consistent. Be it 301 redirects or rel=”canonical. You need to make sure they’re all pointing to the same page to pass page rank. NAP is the most basic yet crucial part of a local business listing. Keep it consistent throughout every review sites as to not confuse both crawlers and potential customers.

SEO Guide: Perfecting On-Page SEO Optimization

An ultimate guide for every marketer to optimize your on-page SEO perfectly.
• Identify all the SEO elements to optimize it the right way
• Improve your traffic and ranking with this actionable step-by-step guide
• 20 on-page SEO tips are included to help you get on the road to your SEO success

Updated: 21 November 2024

About Lo Jia Thong

A polyglot plummeted into the deep blue world of SEO and inbound marketing armed with a burning passion on letters and a fascination on how thing rolls in the world wide web.

Follow on Twitter