How often do you check your website?
I don’t mean take a quick peek at it to make sure it’s still working; I mean a thorough audit of it to make sure it’s working to its optimum.
Most companies pay out for a great design and professional content and then forget about it. OK, they probably add blog after blog (because that’s what the experts tell you to do), but without checking the basics are covered the extra content may not be doing any good.
You should audit your website about every six months to make sure any problems that could be hampering your rankings are dealt with quickly.
The kinds of things you should be looking for are:
- Unresponsive design
Why more people are now browsing the internet on their mobile devices, so it’s essential your website’s design is responsive (i.e. it adjusts itself to fit different screen sizes).
- Broken links
If a link is broken, it will result in a 404 page, which is rather annoying for your users. It could be caused when you move content on your site (an internal link), or when information on another site that you’ve linked to is taken down or moved.
- Meta data
An important SEO factor is your Meta data. This is stuff like your title tags, Alt tags, keywords, etc., which helps visitors find your information online.
- Keywords
Although not the be all and end all of your SEO strategy, your keywords are still important. Every page of your site (including blog posts) should be optimised for its specified keywords, and that includes long-tail keywords that are usually less competitive than specific words (e.g. ‘dog collars’ is a specific, generic term and therefore competitive, but something like ‘leather designer dog collars’ is a long-tail keyword that will bring in highly target traffic).
- Content
The one thing you don’t want on your site is duplicate content. That’s why you should go through your site to ensure none exists, and if it does remove it or add a noindex Meta tag to the page, you don’t want Google to crawl.
- Loading speed
A slow loading website will put users of quicker than anything, especially if they’re looking at it on their mobile or tablet. Large or excess images will have an effect on your site’s loading speed, so it’s important you compress big images.
- Navigation
The navigation of your site is what allows your users to move around freely. Make sure every page is easy to find, and it’s easy to return to the home page. Plus, ensure your contact details are easy to find.
If you have a website, you’ll benefit from carrying out this type of audit on a regular basis. Doing so will help you hone your content to match your readers’ needs and help maintain your site’s performance.
Get your audit done now and then set a diary note to repeat the process every six months to enhance your existing content while creating fresh content that will improve your online visibility.