How To Increase Website Traffic - my list of free and paid for tools here: http://benlovegrove.com/audit-refresh-websites/
Websites are like plants, trees, and animals. They need to be nurtured, fed, and given regular
health checks. It's not a difficult task but it does need to be part of your routine.
It’s good practice to put some effort into a continuous cycle of improvement so with
that in mind here are some ways to audit and refresh your websites to give them more chance
of drawing organic traffic.
Note: the following advice will have to applied according to the platform on which you site
is built, be that Wordpress, Joomla, etc.
Website Audit and Review
The first task is to take a detailed look at your website and audit it. Before you can
make any improvements you need to baseline it to establish the current status so that
you can measure any progress.
Things to consider in this review:
Keywords
Is your site designed to attract traffic from particular search terms? Are these terms still
relevant? Should they be updated based on changes in the way people search and the terms
they use?
Content
How much new text and media has been added in the past 12 months? Was this too much or
too little? What would you change about the schedule in the months ahead?
Quality
How satisfied are you with the quality of the content added so far? Have you ever hired
a proofreader to have the site checked for spelling, grammatical, and punctuation errors?
Appearance
How about the site design? Does the current theme look dated?
Next, audit the site for technical errors that could effect its performance. There are
plugins and sites that will carry out these tests for you. Just google for the test term
with the keyword plugin or test to find examples:
Broken links
Are there any broken links, missing images, and videos that don’t run?
Code errors
Is the HTML, CSS and other code error free? How could it be improved?
Mobile friendly
How does your site load and display on smart phones and tablets? Put your URL into Google's
free tool and test it.
Forms and functions
Are all the contact, mailing list and other forms working correctly?
Reporting
Is your Google Analytics code reporting correctly and accurately?
Finally, don’t forget security and backups:
When did you last backup your website? Is the process automated? Where is the backup
stored?
How secure is your website? Are you plagued by spammers, spam comments, and spammy registrations?
Website Improvements
If you’ve checked all of this and found the site to be over 80% error free then well
done! It’s in very good shape and only needs a few other tweaks to optimise it. However,
if there are obvious areas for improvement then it’s time to work out a plan and implement
it.
You can make these improvements in any order but you might prefer to start with the design
first and then rearrange the content. Once you’ve decided on a new theme you rearrange
and amend the existing content. You’ve then got a fresh looking site that might inspire
you write more articles and blog posts.
You’ll need to address all and any of the items listed above. If this is beyond your
expertise or if you’re in any doubt about how to do it then hire someone to do it for
you. I would be happy to give you a no-obligation quote too.
Strengthen your site’s SEO by auditing and improving it
It’s easy to become obsessive about SEO and forget that the priority is simply to
create interesting and informative websites that answer your target audience’s need,
and which inspire visitors to return to your site and to share its contents.
Take care of that task and your site’s ranking will improve naturally.
Creating a site that is error free, loads quickly, is mobile friendly will help.
If you’ve audited, refreshed, and renewed it then you’ve already improved the SEO
to some extent.
Adding fresh and original content that people like and share will attract backlinks.
Writing articles and blog post, or creating videos, that are shared on social media will
also help.
However, you an dive much deeper into this subject and use tools that will analyse the
site, suggest improvements, and give you the means to implement those changes. Again, you
can learn to do it yourself or hire someone to do this for you.
Conclusion
As with houses, businesses, life habits and more, websites need annual audits, reviews,
and refreshment. You can make some or all of these changes yourself with free and purchased
tools. If you visit my blog you'll find the ones I use there.
Visit http://benlovegrove.com/audit-refresh-websites/
Alternatively, outsource the task and look forward to seeing a gleaming new website for
the year ahead. You can find people to this for you on freelancer sites like Upwork.com
and others like it.
Thanks for watching! I hope you found this interesting and useful. Please give the video
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