Imagine not having a website on Google. No more traffic, nowhere to send potential customers, and no more online conversions that lead to sales. That doesn’t sound all that great, and what could potentially happen, or what is happening right now if your website is unhealthy. This may seem trivial, but if your business is not maximizing its online visibility, you are losing profit.
How healthy is your website? This is a very important question. It is also a difficult question to answer due to the wide ranging list of ranking factors. One of the biggest optimization problems when it comes to website health is that business owners run businesses and not SEO agencies.
If you are not in-tune to the ebb and flow of optimization, it is pretty hard to define if your site is performing at top-notch levels. You could look into SEO pricing and order out when it comes to optimizing your website, but it is also a good idea to know a few optimization issues you want to address.
From site speed to content value, we compiled a list of SEO diagnostics every business owner or manager should be checking weekly, and at the very least, once a month. Let’s get your website back into shape.
1. Site Speed
This is one of the most important ranking factors these days. If your site is not lightning fast, you could be losing a lot of traffic, and subsequently a lot of conversions. Why? Simply because users want to access a web page in three seconds or less. It is part of that whole user experience thing you have probably heard about.
According to Search Engine Journal, if your site loads in three seconds or less, your bounce rate probability will be around 30 percent. If your site loads within five seconds, you can expect a 90 percent bounce rate. That is a massive difference with profits hinging on a few seconds. Check your site speed using Pingdom.
2. Website Navigation
How your site visitors interact with your website, your site’s navigation, is another health diagnostic check to look at closely. Once again, it is a key aspect of providing a powerful user experience to your target audience for maximum conversions. For example, if a site is too messy with no clear navigation points, like a main menu stuck to the top of your web pages, users will get frustrated.
Why? Because they can’t find the information they came to your site for in a fast amount of time. Make navigation easy with plenty of links to internal pages with clear anchor text, a robust main menu, footer information, and lots of CTA buttons.
3. Have a Call To Action (CTA)
While on the topic of navigation and CTA buttons, let’s dive a bit deeper. If you’re wondering what a Call To Action is exactly, you definitely need to know. Especially if you want to have a healthy website. A CTA is a very defined, quick, and clear call to action that is used to get users to click through to another page. They are often part of the website’s customer journey.
For instance, a user is on your home page, and then wants to learn more about a service he or she is reading in a section like “Learn More About This Service” and clicks the button. It is that easy, and by using more CTAs on your website, it becomes more navigable and more conversion friendly.
4. Get Serious About Content
Another huge factor when it comes to having a healthy website that outranks and out converts competitors is content. Believe it or not, but text content is still very much king, despite the world of visual content we live in today. And the more quality content you have on your website’s pages, the better and more healthy your site will perform and be. This is a must-do SEO diagnostic check-up and tweak.
Why is this so important? Well, one reason is that web pages and blogs in the 2000+ word count range have more page one Google rankings than lesser word counts. However, this doesn’t mean that your content can be just any babble. It has to be actionable, informative, and cover the topic and title perfectly. And having more long-form content helps you hit more great keywords, also increasing ranking chances.
In Conclusion
Having a healthy website is critical to the success of your business. Implementing essential SEO diagnostics can help you identify optimization issues and allow you to know just what needs to be fixed prior to consulting with an SEO specialist. This can save you time and money. How healthy is your site?