Signs that your website requires optimization

Signs that your website requires optimization

As the saying goes “If momma isn’t happy, nobody is happy,” it also applies to your website. Do you enjoy your website? Is it representative of who you are and what you stand for? Is it simple to use? If you were a first-time visitor, would you recommend your own website to someone else? Here’s where the rubber meets the road: if you can’t answer yes to any of the above questions, chances are your viewers do as well. And, because the goal is to generate leads rather than just visitors, you may want to reinvest in your website by optimizing it or completely redoing it.

It’s one thing to track visitors and see if your web traffic is increasing; it’s quite another to convert the arriving traffic into leads and generate a response in your viewers, whether that’s filling out an email form, contacting you, making a purchase, or scheduling a meeting, as action is the end goal. If you’re not getting the desired results, it’s time to make some changes.

Load time is low

Page speed is an official Google ranking factor that can have an immediate impact on your SEO.

Sites that load quickly outperform in a variety of marketing and SEO metrics, including organic search results, site engagement, conversion rate, bounce rate, abandonment, and loyalty. Most online customers will abandon a website if the load time exceeds three seconds. In fact, studies show that 53% of users will abandon a mobile site if they have to drum their fingers for 3 seconds or more while it loads.

But how do you determine the speed of your pages in the first place?

There are many paid and free tools that can be used to check, but Google Pagespeed Insights may be the most relevant. This is a free tool from Google that runs a performance test on your site and provides recommendations and insights on how to improve performance. It is compatible with both desktop and mobile versions.

You have one too many broken links

We’ve all experienced it: you click on a link and it takes you to a “404 error” or a different page than you expected. Broken links on your website can harm your business in two ways:

They create a negative user experience – When users click on links and get 404 errors, they become frustrated and may never return.

They undervalue your SEO efforts – Broken links restrict the flow of link equity throughout your site, which has a negative impact on rankings.

They are also an indication that your website is not optimized and can occur when you rename or move a web page and forget to change the internal link.

The source deletes the video, article, or PDF to which you had linked.

A third party relocates or changes the URL of the page to which you had linked.

W3C link checker is a well-known application for verifying links on websites and is a free tool for checking broken links. W3C Link Checker, with its simple and easy-to-use interface, automatically detects errors in links, anchors, HTML, and CSS elements, and even makes recommendations for updating links.

High bounce rate

Your bounce rate is an important metric to monitor alongside your traffic. The bounce rate is the percentage of website visitors who leave after only viewing one page. A high bounce rate indicates that visitors are uninterested in remaining on your website, whether due to its content or poor performance. Accepting that your site has a high bounce rate is akin to admitting that your child isn’t the most attractive kid in school. Sure, you think your precious little angel (your website) is just adorable, but when you go into Google Analytics to check the numbers, your bounce rate tells a different story.

It is difficult to accept. After all, if you enjoy your website, why shouldn’t everyone else?

A high bounce rate can be caused by a variety of factors, including:

Relevance and content: Most people visit websites to learn more about a specific topic. They won’t stick around if your content doesn’t meet their needs. They’ll most likely find a competing site with better content.

Inadequate user experience: If the colours aren’t appealing, the layout isn’t well-organized, and your navigation isn’t simple and intuitive, your visitors are more likely to click the back button than continue.

There is no clear call-to-action: A call-to-action that is unclear or overly complicated can confuse the visitor, leading to a higher bounce rate.

Low SEO rankings

Search is a powerful tool for any business that wants to be seen online, guiding large audiences to your website via search engines like Google. With 68% of online experiences starting with a search, getting SEO right is critical, as it impacts businesses by improving your ranking in relevant search results and assisting in achieving increased visibility on search engines.

If your website ranks for the wrong keywords, such as on page one, you will be unable to use SEO to bring qualified traffic to your site, resulting in a loss of leads, sales, and revenue for your company. You’re either aiming for competitive keywords, your content is thin, or your on-page optimization is poor.

Some of the on-page optimization you can do to rank for the right keyword include:

  • Create enticing, concise, and natural title tags
  • Add unique meta descriptions that influence people’s clicks
  • Add keywords to Alt tags
  • Create an XML sitemap with canonical tags to avoid duplicate content

In addition, target low-competition keywords, make your posts at least 2,000 words long, and double down on backlink building. Longform content allows you to delve deeper into a topic and include more keywords to relevant content. And by constructing backlinks, you can absorb the SEO juice of high-quality sites, which will aid in your online ranking.

Low pageviews

Another sign that your website isn’t optimized is a decrease in the number of page views. A decrease in pageviews results in low subscriber/conversion rates, which may harm your revenue. It also means that no one is engaging with your website, which is bad in general.

A drop in page views can be caused by a variety of factors, including a recent search engine algorithm update (like the Google Panda or Penguin update). Redirects, Google penalties, ranking losses, and incorrect robots.txt rules are some of the other causes.

To address a decrease in page views:

You can track the number of visits or sessions to identify areas of the website that need to be improved.

Evergreen content is content that will be relevant for months, if not years, to come. Many blogs discover that creating evergreen content generates the majority of their web page views as well as a consistent search engine and social media traffic.

Incorporating fewer social media links to your website

Not creating and populating each major platform that resonates with your audience can result in a lack of connectivity with your readers as it does not encourage them to follow you on social media.  Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are good places to start, but depending on your niche, you may also find success with Pinterest and LinkedIn.

 To entice readers to follow you on social media, provide value that can only be accessed by following specific platforms, such as releasing links to specific deals and discounts available only on social media.

Having an active and successful social media strategy will help your website.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]