Is your website ready for 2021? Covid has increased the need like never before for businesses to reach their clients virtually. But what about your existing website? When was the last time you gave it a once over? Is your website 2021 ready?
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
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So, where do you start? It can seem overwhelming, but we have broken it down into some easy steps for you to follow to complete a full site audit in record time. Before you know it, your site will be up to date and ready to take on 2021.
I know nobody likes the word ‘audit’, but this will give you an overview of what is working well and what needs to be tweaked. Let’s start with SEO.
We use a great free tool called SEOquake that gives you some amazing insights into how your pages are ranking. It also gives you great tips on improving things like headers and alt tags to increase your rankings. Try it out. You will be hooked.
The next thing to review would be your content. Do you have any archived blogs that can be updated with new information and republished? Be careful not to copy content.
What about your services page? Many businesses have had to make changes to the way they provide their services over the last year. If your company has made changes, has it been reflected on your website? Also, is your service page easy to navigate? Are your clients able to click through with ease to find what they need?
A word of caution when it comes to adding content that is related to current social issues. If it has nothing to do with your business, steer clear. If you need to address a specific social issue that has impacted the way you do business, do it sensitively.
Most small to medium-sized businesses utilize themes. The first thing to do is a hotspot check to see if your current theme has areas not being clicked on. If your current design is killing your conversions, it is definitely time for a facelift. Themes have undergone some pretty impressive changes over the last few years, so if yours is 3 years or older, it may be time for an upgrade. The newer themes give you a lot more freedom when it comes to design, translating to a greater number of conversions.
Marketing Plug-in Tip: We love and use these two plug-ins on our sites and our clients. Not only do they provide great call-to-action options, but they also help build your customers’ trust. Up first is OptinMonster. Easy to use to get those signups or perhaps bring offers to your clients or customers. Along with that is their partner plug-in, Trust Pulse. This plug-in lets your site visitors know what other people are signing up for or purchasing, building that all-important feeling of trust.
Next up is page speed. This is important since this can directly impact your site’s ranking. Now, approach this with the following understanding; you will never get a perfect score unless you have nothing on your site. That being said, you still do need to make sure that your speed is optimal. Many site speed tools are free and can give you feedback on any speed-sucking problems your site has.
Have you ever been on a site where the content was choppy and it took forever to get to where you needed to be? Scroll, scroll, scroll. This site has not been optimized for mobile use. Given that statistics show that more and more people access the web via their mobile devices, this needs to be addressed. Not only do you want your content to stack nicely, but you also need to follow the ‘three scroll rule’ to ensure your customers don’t get frustrated and bounce off your site.
“Businesses that grow by development and improvement do not die” Henry Ford.
Still feeling overwhelmed? Hopefully not! But if you are, please reach out to your website specialist to ensure that your business doesn’t suffer but continues to grow in 2021.
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