12 Ways To Give Your Website a Boost
Your website is the hub of your business, the place people turn to first when they need information, services, or products. You want your website to be attractive, engaging, and relevant, so people find you and find what they’re looking for as quickly as possible. You might offer a killer product or service. But if your website doesn’t show up when people are searching, you’re missing out on leads.
Try this simple website audit on your own to see how well your website is working and identify possible issues.
Remember, you can always reach out to a local website audit expert like Beanstalk if you need the professionals to handle it.
In the meantime, here are 12 easy things you can check to make sure your website is operating smoothly and maximizing conversions:
1. Does each page of your website have a focus keyword?
Each page of your website should focus on a keyword that highlights a specific aspect of your business. Even if you run a business that sells flowers and chocolates, you should consider making one page that focuses on flowers and one that focuses on chocolates. People searching for flowers don’t want to have to skim through information about chocolates to find what they need.
Creating a narrow focus for each page or aspect of your business allows for users to quickly find exactly what they’re looking for. Focus keywords provide a seamless experience from search terms to landing pages.
2. Do your website’s pages use <H1> headings?
An <H1> tag is an HTML heading at the top of a post or page that clearly conveys what the reader can expect to discover by reading the page. There should be one <H1> tag on each page of your website.
Interesting headlines can encourage visitors to continue reading and assure them that they have found what they are seeking. They provide a small SEO boost on each page.
3. Have you written meta titles and meta descriptions?
Meta titles and descriptions are what users see when they organically stumble across your website in search engine results. They should be clear, relevant, and unique to encourage people to click on your site.
Interesting meta titles and descriptions promote a positive user experience, are more likely to get clicks and lead to more conversions when the information on your website matches what people are seeking.
4. Do the images on your website have alt descriptions?
Alt tags are text descriptions of images. They convey the purpose of an image in situations where that image can’t be seen, like for the visually impaired and for search engine crawlers.
Images are a dynamic and effective way to convey a lot of information. When images aren’t available, alt tags allow you to convey some of that information with text. Alt tags are another place you can include important keywords in a post or page.
5. Does your website contain duplicate content?
Duplicate content is content that appears more than once on your website. It can happen if you update your site and don’t redirect your old pages to new ones, or if you include the same information on multiple pages.
Duplicate content makes it hard for search engines to determine which of your website’s pages are most relevant, so it can negatively impact your search engine rankings.
Use tools like Siteliner.com to find out how much duplicate content your website contains.
6. Does your website have a sitemap?
A sitemap is a roadmap of your website. It is a list of all of your website’s pages that tells search engines how your website is organized.
Sitemaps are highly encouraged because they boost SEO by allowing search engines to find everything on your website.
7. Is your website redirecting to a secure version?
The www resolve simply means that when you type in your website’s address with or without “www” at the beginning you’ll be redirected to the secure version of your website.
If your website doesn’t redirect to the secure version, when people type in different things to reach your website, they’re actually hitting different pages that look identical, meaning that your website is going to be interpreted by Google as having duplicate content.
To check this, try typing your website’s address without “www.” at the beginning. If your website is redirecting to the secure version, you should land on a page that begins with “https://”.
8. Do you need to renew your domain registration soon?
We recommend that you renew your domain for the longest amount of time possible. Your domain name gains authority as it ages, so websites that have been around longer are interpreted as more trustworthy than newer sites.
You can use ICANN Lookup to check when your domain was created and when it will expire.
9. Is your website mobile responsive?
A mobile responsive website automatically adapts to the size of a mobile screen. Viewing a website that isn’t mobile responsive from a phone is frustrating. Mobile users will likely click away from your website rather than mess around with small buttons and unreadable text.
The quickest way to test if your website is mobile responsive from a desktop screen is to reduce the size of your browser’s window to roughly the width of your phone.
10. What is your site speed?
Your site speed is a measure of how fast pages on your website load and how quickly users are able to interact with elements of your site.
A slow site can turn away users before they’ve even seen anything. And, with more users than ever before using mobile devices to access websites, mobile site speed has become critically important.
Use free websites like PageSpeed Insights to find out your site speed.
11. Do your pages and posts contain calls to action?
A call to action provokes an immediate response from your audience. After reading your great content, a call to action like “Sign Up,” “Call Today,” or “Buy Now” encourages your audience to complete an action.
Calls to action motivate customers. If you are selling a product or service, it is something a customer will expect to see. The call to action conveys the intent of a given page and boosts interaction on your website, helping you land more leads and conversions.
12. Is your website’s message immediately clear?
If a complete stranger stumbles across your website in their search results, is it instantly clear what your business does? People today expect to search for something, click on a search result, and immediately find what they are looking for. We live in a fast-paced world! If your purpose is not clear within moments of them landing on the page, they won’t hesitate to click away. Besides, there are millions of websites out there – they can easily find another similar company.
The point of SEO is to create a cohesive experience for the user, from the time they type something into Google until they are ready to take action on a page. Websites that get the most conversions make their path to conversion as simple and effective as possible.
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That about wraps it up! Take a stab at the tips above to check out how your website is doing. If you have identified any issues with your site based on this audit guide or are unsure how to proceed, contact your St. Louis SEO experts, Beanstalk Web Solutions! We’re here to help. Let’s grow your business together!