The start of the spring is a time of renewal and rebirth, out with the old and in with the new, and traditionally a time to give your house a good clean now that the days are brighter and you can see the dust! This can be applied to the cobwebs lurking in the dusty corners of your website as well. The spring is a good time to have a look at your site with a view to some housekeeping.
First impressions count
Try to see your website through fresh eyes and view it as visitors do. Your homepage is the first impression and, much like a house with a weed filled front garden, first impressions can be very off-putting. Take a look at the images on your site – do they look dated? Can they be replaced with better, higher resolution versions? Does your site look untidy and cluttered? Is it obvious what your site does? Take steps to improve the first impression you give to website visitors. They need to know that they are at the right place and also that your business is engaged with customers and on the ball.
Update your CMS
Are you running the most up to date version of your web CMS, is your security up to date with the latest patches? Updating your CMS to the latest version means that you will be benefiting from the most up to date security as well as any new features and functionality updates.
Update your content
Take a look at your blog, when was the last post you uploaded? Generally speaking, your blog needs to be updated a minimum of a couple of times a month, if it was more than a month or so ago you last posted a blog you should consider posting an update. If you are struggling for inspiration, take a look at an article, like this ultimate list from Buffer to get some ideas, as well as giving a good impression of your website and adding value to your user, fresh content is one of the most important elements of a successful SEO strategy and will mean more indexed pages.
Out with the old…
Out of date staff bio’s, ‘Latest News’ items which were posted last year, events listings which have come and gone, broken links, products and services which you no longer offer, email addresses for old members of staff. All websites are likely to be harbouring one or two of these horrors. Take a look over your site and clear out anything old which is out of date. A website which appears to be poorly maintained and out of date gives the impression of a business which is not on top of things or is sloppy about its website, either way – not a great look!
Take time to audit your SEO
SEO is not a static thing which you can ‘do’ and then forget about. It’s a good idea to check over your site by using an SEO checker tool, there are a number of free options online where you can run an instant SEO check which will give you some basic information. Most free SEO checkers will look at Keyword Penetration, the number of backlinks, the number of indexed pages, check your meta descriptions, page speed and that alt tags are present on images and allow you to identify areas where you need to spend some time. Google webmaster tools can be utilised to provide some great insights into your website’s health and for checking that your site has a registered site map and that Google is indexing your content (look out for our upcoming blog on Google Webmaster Tools)
If all this seems daunting, and you don’t feel like you have the time to do the spring cleaning yourself, consider drafting in some outside help - contact us for a free site assessment and recommendations.