Hey y'all welcome to another WordPress Wednesday. My name is Kori Ashton
and this week we are looking at 8 different things that you should be doing
on your website.
Last week we covered the 8 things you have to stop doing on your website.
Be sure to checkout that video. I'll put it in the description box below so you
can watch that
and go today and make sure that those 8 things are not happening on your current
website.
Looking forward though as to what things you should be doing.
Let's take a look at it.
The very first thing we want to talk about is mobile friendliness.
Of course, everybody knows your website has to be responsive.
You know that you should be looking at a theme for WordPress that allows that type
of cool structure so that it looks great on a cell phone.
There's a lot more you should be thinking about as well.
You don't just want to think about how it looks on a cell phone this way or that way.
You want to be checking it on iPhones.
You want to be checking it on Androids.
You want to be checking it on an iPad- vertical and horizontally.
You want to also be checking out your
website across different browsers.
You want to be looking at Safari.
Make sure that everything on your website functions well for mobile friendliness.
Google is watching that
and they want you to get it right.
I'll put the link to this option for you.
This is Google's mobile friendly test.
You can come here and just type in your
web address
and click analyze and it will run Google.
Google will go over and kind of review your website
(see if it's good or not.)
It will give you a great report.
Check that out.
The other thing I want to suggest doing #2 is be sure that your phone number
and your address on your website (if they're visible on there)
are all clickable.
While
smart phones these days do in fact read phone numbers,
some do not.
You want to be sure that there might be some nerd code behind the scenes
to allow that to happen.
I'll show you what I mean.
Over here on WebTegrity's website
(if you scroll down to the bottom of our website)
you'll see that our phone number is in fact clickable
and so is our address. Our address actually links over to Google Maps.
If somebody is on their cell phone, they can click on that and get directions to
our office.
This right here is are click to call phone number is clickable.
It has the nerd code behind the scenes.
I have a video that I've already made about what type of nerd code to put behind
there and I'll put that in the description box below as well
so you can go check that out and be sure that your website is in fact
clickable
and user friendly.
#3 Social Media- We've really got to talk about this because
even though in our no no's last week I mentioned don't let social media be a
distraction; there is a correct way to allow social media on your website
that can be an advantage.
Google definitely wants to see social media links happening on your website.
One of the examples I can give you is here on WebTegrity's site we have our Twitter
feed that happens inside of our blog area over here in the sidebar.
We just have a free plugin that we're using for Twitter.
It pulls in our dynamic feed right there.
That's pretty cool.
Of course you can always have your links across the bottom.
Last week we spoke about the placement of these icons not being a distraction.
You'll want to look at these and be sure that they're clickable, mobile friendly and
nice big links (that people could see them.) I would suggest using the
actual icons instead of just linked text over to your social media accounts so that
people quickly and easily see those.
Another version that you can do for social media is Instagram.
There are several really cool free plugins that you can do and
basically plug it into your website and pull
your feed over from your Instagram channel directly into your website.
That's really cool! You could take a picture from your phone, upload it to
Instagram account
and dynamically it's over here on your website.
That could be an option for you having some really cool fresh content as well.
#4 Let's talk about this. Customer Reviews-
Google is looking for these types of things on your website as well
and so are your customers.
They're wanting to see what other people are talking about.
They're wanting to see people's interaction with you and kind of what their experience
was. On WebTegrity's website we have our client reviews page here.
We also link over to our Google reviews so people could check that out.
We've got both, written testimonials as well as video testimonials.
I think a blend of both are really cool to have.
Absolutely be sure to have something like that on your website.
#5 Major landing pages- You absolutely want to be sure that you're doing something
where every single key term-
wrap your brain around this for a second okay. We're going to talk about SEO.
Every key term that you want to rank well for,
(for WebTegrity we want to rank well for web design)
we want to be sure to have a major landing page or one single page on our website
that's dedicated specifically to that conversation.
We do have that.
If you come over here to our services
and WordPress Web Design right here, (you click on that)
this is our singular page that specifically talks all about our different projects that
we do. Every bit of text down the page specifically speaks to Web Design.
One of the reasons why we have this obviously is because
Google wants to be able to read what your services are.
It's difficult to read your services if all you have is one page that says
services and they're in a bullet point list
(Web Design, SEO, Social Media Marketing, Content Writing.)
That's silly. That's not even enough content for Google to really sink it's
teeth into and understand what you're doing.
When I'm saying major landing pages, I really want you to break out and create
different pages on your website that can speak specifically to the key terms that
you're trying to rank well for.
Talking about SEO I have to tell you, using the free plugin Yoast inside of
your WordPress website is absolutley one of the things you want to be doing
because it's like having somebody who's an SEO expert in the room with you
helping you write your content.
You want to have as many green lights as you possibly can. Once you start using
Yoast, you'll understand that green light statement.
#7 Google Analytics- If you are not currently tracking your Google Analytics,
you really don't know if all of this work that you're putting into your website is
even creating the traffic
to get your customers excited to get people to your website you don't even know.
You could be thinking, "You know I've been spending a lot of time writing blog
articles this month and I've spent 20-30 hours. Has it gotten me any new leads?
No not really." Well, you can then go look at your Google Analytics and see,
"Wow my traffic has gone up though. I did in fact get 500 new visitors to my
website this month."
Why didn't those convert?
You really need to be watching and seeing how much traffic comes to your
website.
Google Analytics can also help you with where they came from, what search term
they were using to find you, did they come from social media,
what type of browser are they using, how long did they stay on your website,
what pages did they click on inside your website?
It'll keep track of all of that and it's super important for you to understand.
If you don't have this linked right now to your current website, I've got another
video that we've already done about how to connect Google Analytics to your
WordPress website.
That will be in the description box down below. Check it out.
Drumroll! #8- This is one of the most important things you could ever be doing
and you must be doing on your current website.
That's to have some really great security in place and also have a backup game plan.
You know that WordPress always requires updates and if you don't have a backup in
in place and you go to click update,
you could very easily break your entire website and have what we call
"the white screen of death."
You certainly want to be paying attention to not only your security
improvements that you can do on your website. Be sure that your
username is not admin, be sure that your password is really secure
and also even look in potentially using a plugin called, Sucuri.
It's S-e-c-u-r-i.
I'll put the link to that in the description box below.
As for a backup plugin, I want to highly recommend UpdraftPlus.
This is a free backup plugin that you can install on your website.
Look how many active installs you guys. This is incredible. They're always
keeping it up to date.
One of the things that I love about UpdraftPlus is not only is it super simple
to install and activate but if something ever does go "wonkadoo" on your website
and you have to have a backup,
it is one click restore option and it will automatically roll back your website and
fix everything that was broken.
You'll want to be sure that you're backing up not only your files but also your
database. It gives you that option inside of it.
Check that box.
Alright y'all.
That's it! Those are my top 8 things that you have to be doing on your current
website.
If you have questions about these, throw them in the comments down below and I will
do my best to respond back to you.
I hope you're having a great WordPress Wednesday.
Stick around next week, it only gets better!
Subscribe. I'll talk to you guys later.
Bye, y'all!