As the year draws to a close, it is time that we review our SEO strategy to ensure that the New Year goes better with more visibility and larger organic traffic volumes. Website optimization is not a one-time job that you can complete and forget about.
Tasks that do not need daily attention often tend to be pushed to the background and thereafter, completely forgotten until there is an emergency. A proactive stance to website maintenance can give you the competitive edge that is usually so elusive. Some prime examples:
Identify Broken Links
Over time, it is natural for a large number of links, both internal and external, to stop functioning. While these may seem to be minor irritants, it can result in a significant impact on the website performance. When a site has a number of broken links, users get irritated and think that the site maintenance is not up to the mark and even the contents may not be updated. The negative impact on the site’s performance and reputation can be very easily avoided if you take care to update the main navigation when any of the core pages are moved or even deleted.
However, broken internal links within the main content can be more difficult to identify by manually reviewing each page, especially as typical websites may run into thousands of pages. For this task, it is better to use automated software that can do the job faster and without missing out any broken link.
Assess the Content to Ensure It Adheres To Quality Standard and Is Still Relevant
It is quite possible for contents to become dated and not relevant to the current requirements or even fail to meet quality standards. A review may also reveal the need for content editing; the existing matter may be too sketchy or too long. The year-end is a great time to evaluate how your content has performed and what the weaknesses are. Websites that report on developments in a particular industry have to be really vigilant as old news may no longer be relevant.
A review can also find if there is any content that really should not have been there at all. Once content that has no relevance or does not meet current quality standards has been identified, it should be removed and replaced with fresh content. If the page itself needs to be deleted, you should set up a proper redirect to a page that will most likely be relevant to the users. In case, there is nothing that is really relevant, you should just delete the entire page.
The fresh content should be supported by statistics to give it more credibility as well as images, infographics or even videos as value addition. Needlessly long contents do not boost user stickiness; you should try to address the requirement of the user as crisply as possible, generally, about 1000 words should suffice. To know more visit Golden Search Seattle SEO.
Test for Page Loading Speed
With an increasing number of information searches being conducted on mobile devices, users have become even more demanding as they seek to get rapid search results, pay bills quickly, and read up on a book, movie or vacation review, or even order food on the go. Slow loading pages increase the bounce rate, which then affects the page ranking negatively. Since slow page loading speeds have multiple ramifications, it is really very important to test the website to find out if the loading speed is up to the mark or not.
If the website has less than 1000 pages, it is worthwhile testing all the pages but for sites that have more pages, you should first test pages that account for most of the traffic and then progressively test the remaining pages. If testing a large number of pages sounds frightening, worry not since the process can be automated and executed right from the inside of Google Analytics. Pages that load under three seconds are fine, for the pages that do not pass muster, go ahead and identify the problem elements with tools like GTmetrics or WebPageTest.org.
Appraise WordPress Plugins
WordPress plugins can slow down the page loading considerably because often they include CSS as well as JavaScript files and libraries that are already included in the theme, the WordPress core, or other plug-in being used. Remote loading of uncommon fonts also affects the page-loading speed a lot. Changes in web browsers, HTML standard, PHP and JavaScript, and even in WordPress itself may require the plugins to be updated regularly.
Further, plugins that are not updated regularly or even been abandoned by their authors may adversely affect the performance of the website, its appearance, technical SEO or even prevent the entire website from being accessed. During the course of the plug-in review, you should also examine if there is actually any real need for the plug-in at all. Eliminating unnecessary plugins not only improves performance and page loading speed but also reduces maintenance requirements and improves site security.
Test If the Site Works On All Major Browsers
Site maintenance and small tweaks made by web developers may bring about the desired changes but unknowingly the cumulative effect could have some disastrous impact on the layout and even functionality of some pages that you may not even know about.It is a good maintenance policy to first test the top pages that account for one-third of your traffic that they are displaying properly on all the major browsers and then move onto the pages that are not so important. Be prepared for the long haul, as this aspect of testing cannot be done automatically by any software.
Conclusion
If a properly functioning website is critical to your business, you should pay a lot of attention to ensuring that it is performing at its peak capability. Poor or out-of-date content, broken links, slow page loading, or malfunctioning plugins can undo all the effort and investment that you have put into your digital marketing. Periodic reviews and maintenance will ensure that your website continues to perform at its peak efficiency.
Double Your Growth.
We curate the best of inbound marketing news and send over the top 10 we know will contribute to your growth - once a month.
