How does your website stack up?
Is your website looking a bit lackluster? If so, you may be losing out on attracting new customers to your business, gaining their trust and encouraging them to make purchases from you.
So, what are the tell-tale signs that your website needs a refresh? For one, it might have become incompatible with emerging SEO techniques. It may be slow to load or difficult to navigate. Or perhaps, it simply doesn’t offer a fun or engaging experience to your site visitors.
Let us take you through the five reasons your website might be underperforming and how you can fix them with a website refresh.
1. Your website isn’t SEO-friendly
Search engine optimization (SEO) has become one of the most widely used digital marketing tools today. For your page to climb the search engine rankings, your website must be search engine compatible, or in other words, SEO-friendly. If you’re not doing SEO, chances are your website won’t even be found by the audience you are trying to reach!
But what does it mean to have an SEO-friendly website? This essentially means that it is optimized to meet the technical specifications and characteristics search engines prefer.
Some of these aspects include:
Making sure your website is structurally sound
If you want your website to be built so it is structurally sound, it pays to engage the services of the experts. For instance, Melbourne web design and development professionals can assist with locally-based site-building services to ensure your site is built correctly and meets the structural requirements that will make it SEO-friendly.
Making sure search engines can index your website
A big part of having an SEO-friendly website is ensuring that your site can be indexed by search engines. This means that your website coding needs to be created in such a way that search engines can not only find and access your site but will also store it in their database.
Making sure your website’s on-page content is keyword-optimized
Keyword optimization is a central component of good SEO. Ensuring that the written copy you upload to your site contains trending keywords is essential. To do this most effectively, SEO experts will perform keyword research to uncover which search terms are most frequently looked up by online users. They will then select the most relevant ones to include in your website’s on-page content.
Making sure your website meets technical SEO specifications
Technical SEO refers to, unsurprisingly, the technical aspects of your website. These include elements such as page loading speed, internal navigability and user experience (UX).
UX, of course, refers to the experience users have when they interact with your website. Ensuring on-page elements such as images, graphics and animation are visually exciting, enticing and engaging is key to having visitors stay on your page.
2. Your website isn’t enticing visitors to stay on-page
As mentioned earlier, cultivating a positive UX on your website is the best way to get visitors to your site to stick around.
While fancy graphics and exciting animations will help grab them in the first moments, what constitutes a good UX is the usability of your site. This includes how easy it is to navigate between the internal pages of your website and also how fast your website loads.
3. Your website doesn’t load quickly enough
How quickly your internal pages load is another essential element in ensuring that people engage with your site. Ideally, a website page should load within three seconds of opening it. This metric is referred to as page loading speed.
The page loading speed metric breaks down further into:
- Time to first byte (TTFB): The speed with which the page begins loading.
- First contentful paint (FCP): The time it takes for the first element of a page to appear.
- Onload time: The duration it takes for the entire page contents to load.
4. Your website doesn’t navigate easily
Internal linking, also known as internal navigability, is especially important for eCommerce websites. Allow your customers to jump quickly between collection pages by strategically linking key landing pages. For example, create links from your homepage to your most popular product collections.
5. Your website isn’t attracting or generating new leads
Ultimately, the goal of a business website is to attract new sales leads, especially if you are in eCommerce.
Of course, SEO makes up a big part of generating new business. But another factor is how reputable and trustworthy your website appears. By taking the advice we’ve outlined above, you’re more likely to convert site visitors into sales.
To recap:
- Make your website SEO-friendly.
- Cultivate a positive UX on your website.
- Ensure your website loads quickly and has good internal navigability.
All of these elements combined will create the best website experience for your visitors and will ensure your site appears fresh, up-to-date and enticing to customers.
Also read:
- How to Optimize Your Website for Better Search Engine Rankings
- 9 Essential SEO Tools to Boost Your Brand Reputation
- What Are the Common SEO Mistakes Startups Should Avoid?
- The Synergy of Skills: Why Content Writers Should Learn to Code?
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