The time and money that you spend on your business’s website should have provided you with a more than substantial return on your investment. However, have you recently reviewed it? Would you employ a member of staff without ever reviewing their performance? The answer is, of course, no.
How do I know when I need to review my website?
A site that met your business needs three years ago is unlikely to meet them now. There are some clear indicators that your site needs to be reviewed, and they include:
- You want to increase traffic to your site.
- Your site’s traffic has significantly diminished.
- You want to make more sales from your e-commerce store.
- Traffic to your site does not lead to conversions.
What can I do?
All of these indicators point to your website not working to its full potential, and this is when you need to spend time to understand what you can do to improve its performance. You have two options. You can either employ a professional to audit your site, or you can see if you can rectify any errors yourself. If you go down the DIY route, here are 4 areas that you need to consider:
Changes to Google Algorithms
Google’s search algorithms are regularly updated, and often they are major amendments such as Google Panda, Google Penguin and Google Hummingbird which have caused many sites to lose visitor numbers. You may inadvertently have fallen foul of the updated algorithms and have been penalized by Google. To be ranked highly within Google’s pages, you must ensure that your website displays content that is quality, relevant and that it provides value.
Content
It is a given that your website must be SEO friendly. Once upon a time, it was enough to frequently post keyword rich content that would help to get your site ranked highly, in light of the changes to Google’s algorithms it is certainly worth your time to review your site’s content. It should:
- Use headlines and subheaders.
- Have internal and external links to previous and relatable content of quality websites.
- Be shareable.
- Include images.
Widgets and Apps
The technology world innovates with an alarming speed, and you may find that widgets and apps that you have on your website may not be using the latest updates and versions; in fact, they may not be working at all. Search engines do not like websites that do not work properly, they are all about the user experience, so if your visitors are unable to complete a function that they were expecting to, your site’s ranking position may be penalized.
Links
Error message 404 is the death knell for visitors to your site. Not only do visitors get frustrated by links not working as they should do, but it can seriously impact on your rankings and devalue your SEO efforts. The links on your website need to be checked regularly so that you can confirm that they are in full working order. This can be a tiresome task, but thankfully Google Analytics is a great tool for tracking website performance and identifying broken links. You can even set Google Analytics to provide you with regular reports so that you can keep your website 404 free.
Your website is a tool that can seriously impact your business, both positively and negatively. Once you have addressed these issues, you are able to develop a strategy for using your website to drive your business forward. Read reputable resources to develop your understanding of growth hacking and how you can use your website to its full potential to achieve the sales that you desire.
Changes in technology, updates and innovations can quietly affect your business’s website performance, and while you are focusing on the operational side of your business, the very vehicle for your company’s success may just be hindering it. It is imperative that you pay attention to your website’s ability to perform the functions that you need it to. It can be daunting trying to understand how to get the best from it, but there are several great and informative resources that you can access to enable you to maximize the profit you make from your business.
