Spring Cleaning for Your Website: Six Simple Steps to Clean Out the Cobwebs and Boost Performance

As winter finally releases its icy grip and spring sweeps in with its sunny days and warm breezes, we all feel the urge to refresh our homes, from scrubbing the floors and windows to touching up paint and washing down siding.

Just as the cold months of winter can take a toll on your house, they can also have an effect on your website. From the busyness of the holiday rush to year-end tax planning and new-year forecasting, by the time spring arrives, your site may well be showing the signs of neglect as a result of your preoccupation with other areas of your business.

But as they say, there’s no time like the present, so why not take up your virtual broom and clear out the cobwebs? Here are six quick fixes you can implement today to give your site a boost in performance that will benefit your business for months to come:

1. Publish a new press release or blog article.

If the date on the last new piece of content published to your site was six months ago or more, that’s a glaring red flag to visitors that your site has gone stale and there’s no fresh information for them to find there. But in just a few hours’ time, you can eliminate that red flag by updating your company news section and publishing some interesting new content to your blog.

2. Update the copyright statement.

While you may not have given a second thought to the copyright statement on your site since it launched, don’t underestimate the impact this seemingly small detail can have on visitors’ perception of your site.

If your copyright statement is a year or two out of date, this is a glaring sign that indicates to a new visitor (whether accurate or not), that this site hasn’t been touched in ages. And, following that logic, they’ll question why they should bother to delve further into your site if you can’t even be bothered keep it current.

Bringing your copyright statement up to date won’t take more than a few minutes, but it will make a big difference in convincing visitors that the site is current.

3. Change the home page image.

In the world of website design, large, visually rich images are en vogue these days. This trend, however, is a bit of a double-edged sword. While these large images make a strong first impression, for repeat visitors, they can cause design fatigue and lose their impact altogether.

Don’t worry, though. You don’t need a complete redesign to breathe new life into your site. Simply replacing the primary image on the home page can make your site feel rejuvenated and prompt visitors to view its content with fresh eyes.

4. Visit the site on a mobile device.

How well does your site work on a mobile device? Better yet, when was the last time you actually tried to use your site on a phone or on a tablet?

Many website owners do not visit their own sites on mobile devices with any regularity – but your customers certainly do. In fact, industry experts predict that over 50 percent of all web traffic will come from mobile devices by 2015 (yes, folks, that’s next year!). Is your site ready to handle this influx of mobile traffic and provide a consistently good experience across a wide range of devices and screen sizes?

The only way to be sure is to visit your site on a few different mobile devices to get a feel for what your customers see. If it’s hard to navigate from one page to the next, if the text is difficult to read or if certain content elements (such as videos) don’t work at all, now is the time to start making plans for how you will adapt and evolve your site in order to accommodate this rapidly growing percentage of mobile visitors.

5. Install Google Analytics.

Do you know how many visitors are coming to your site each month? Do you know how long they stay on the site and how many pages they view before they leave? Do you know which pages are being visited most often?

This information and much more can be found simply by adding analytics software to your site. While there are a number of different options available, Google Analytics is an industry standard tool that is both free to install and intuitive to use. You can even set up automated reports so that you receive a consistent stream of data on your site’s performance and the traffic it is generating for your business.

Setting up a Google Analytics account and installing it on your site is a quick and easy process, but it does require adding some code to your site, so it’s best to seek the assistance of your web developer in the initial set-up. Once it’s up and running, however, you’ll have a wealth of useful information at your fingertips at the cost of $0.

6. Run a performance test.

How quickly does your site load for your visitors? Website performance is one of the most often overlooked aspects of a site’s success when, in fact, a site that loads quickly not only provides a better user experience for your customers, it can also help boost your site’s search engine rankings.

Pingdom offers a free website speed test that will give you invaluable information on how quickly your site loads, how large it is, how its performance stacks up against other sites and which elements of your page are the largest (and thereby have the greatest impact on load time). Based on the results of this test, you may be able to identify certain items, such as large images or videos, that could be compressed or eliminated entirely to give your site’s performance a much-needed shot in the arm.

Each of these six steps will take just a few minutes or, at most, a few hours of time to implement, but if you seize the day and do them now, you’ll reap the benefits for months to come of a site that’s fast, up-to-date and easily accessible to users regardless of device or screen size.

---

SEO 101: A Plain-English Primer

In today’s marketplace, when people have a question, want information or need to find a product or service, they don’t flip open the Yellow Pages. They don’t scour online directories. In May 2010, Americans conducted 15.9 billion searches*Instinctively, they turn to search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. As a result, these sites hold the keys to targeted encounters between you and prospects who are looking for a solution that you can provide. In May 2010, Americans conducted 15.9 billion searches* using the five major search engines. Of those, 63.7 percent were executed on Google sites, while Yahoo and MSN sites claimed 18.3 and 12.1 percent, respectively. That’s a tremendous pie, and you undoubtedly want a piece. Unlike in the days when the Yellow Pages ruled the world, you can’t buy your way to prominence on an organic search results page. Fortunately, you can take a proactive approach to determining where you land in the ranking for applicable product- or service-related keyword phrases through the practice of search engine optimization, known as SEO. Much is to be gained by appearing in the first few results of a search. Users want immediate answers and are not likely to wade through pages and pages of listings. Furthermore, because the major search engines have built their reputation on returning quality results, the higher your ranking, the more apt the consumer is to assume that your site will deliver the solutions they are looking for. Therefore, in the simplest form of the equation, a higher ranking equals greater probability of a user coming to your site, more prospects seeing what you have to offer and increased opportunities to convert visitors into customers. As a result, garnering a favorable position in the results for select search terms is one of the foundational aspects of effective marketing today.

What SEO is and what it is not

SEO is not a turn-key solution.Let’s be clear: SEO is not a turn-key solution. There’s no SEO magic dust that you can sprinkle over your site and instantly advance from page five to page one. The value of Google from the user’s perspective is the efficiency of entering search terms and receiving relevant and trustworthy results without having to sift through a sea of unpopular and unhelpful spammy sites. In fact, the major search engines are constantly advancing and sharpening their algorithms in order to ensure that they protect their stature as the gatekeepers of good information. What does this mean for you the business owner? Achieving the top spot does not come easily, and it takes an ongoing, dedicated investment of time and resources to work your way up through the rankings of a search. After all, if just anyone could fake their way to number one, Google would be worth nothing. Unfortunately, because of the growing importance of SEO, it has become a lucrative field for marketing agencies looking to make a quick buck. There’s a proliferation of snake-oil salespeople who would have you believe that SEO is a simple, one-time fix that will launch you to the top of the list and send your traffic numbers through the roof. This is for their benefit, not yours. As a result of the misinformation and half-truths preached by these shysters, it can be difficult to separate truth from fiction, both in terms of what it takes to improve your standing and what to expect once you do. SEO is a complex process, but you certainly don’t need to become an authority in the minutiae to grow your business successfully. However, you should have a foundational understanding in order to sort out the legitimate practices from those that will only waste your time and money.

The anatomy of a search engine

At a basic level, all search engines operate the same way. The Web encompasses billions of documents that are bound together through links. Search engines use these links to find and access individual web pages and files, using automated “spiders” to crawl and index the content contained therein. All of this information is stored in trillions of records that are tied to specific keywords or phrases. Therefore, when a user initiates a search, the engine doesn’t have to scan all of the many billions of web pages in existence. Instead, it must only access the particular record that holds the index of information pertaining to the terms entered, making it possible to retrieve vast amounts of data in mere fractions of a second. However, search engines do much more than pull back data and generate randomly ordered lists of links that are related to the terms entered in the query. Rather, the results are sorted and ranked based on importance, which is gauged according to relative popularity, following the assumption that a site or page is popular due to the quality of the information it contains. Therefore, the objective of SEO is not only to ensure that the major search engines identify your website content as being relevant to the keywords that pertain to your products or services but also to increase the perceived importance of that content.

Turning the tables on search

You are undoubtedly very familiar with the mechanics of using a search engine. These days, online search is as deeply ingrained in our daily lives as eating or sleeping. However, as one who is charged with growing a business, it is a useful exercise to take a step back and seriously reconsider the search process, looking at it through the eyes of a prospective customer. Sure, it’s possible that a user might search for your business by name – “Sally’s Bakery,” for example. It’s easy to land at the top of those results. However, in that case, the searcher essentially knew what they’re looking for already, perhaps because they are a returning customer, they’ve seen your sign while driving down the road or they’ve been referred by another customer. The brass ring of SEO is capturing organic traffic – prospects that may never even have heard of you before.These types of visitors are good, but they aren’t necessarily the primary target of your SEO efforts. Instead, the brass ring of SEO is capturing organic traffic – prospects that may never even have heard of you before. These are users that are searching with more generic keyword phrases like “birthday cakes Charlotte” or “cupcakes Charlotte.” It’s not as easy to climb the rankings of these results, but it’s conquerable – not to mention profitable. It’s important to understand that each and every one of the billions of searches conducted each month begins with an identifiable need. Therefore, first and foremost, you should ask yourself two questions: “What types of problems do people have for which I can offer a solution?” and “What words or phrases would they use to express that need?”. The answers might not be quite as straightforward as you think. Let’s say you own a professional landscaping company. Certainly there are people who will search for “Charlotte landscaping” or “Charlotte lawn care,” and without question you want to make sure that your site is optimized to be ranked high among the results. But there are many, many other search terms like “landscaping ideas,” “garden,” “roses,” “weeds,” “fertilizer,” “insect control,” “How do I make my home more energy-efficient?” and even “How do I sell my house?” that are still relevant to your business. After all, chances are good that you would have something of value to offer anyone in your area that was experiencing a need related to one of those ideas or questions. Therefore, you should take all of these into account when developing your SEO strategy.

What’s next?

Now that you have a deeper understanding of the fundamentals of search, you’re well-armed to apply that knowledge to the practice of SEO. The great news for you as a business owner or marketer is that there are actually many things you can do yourself to improve your standing with the major search engines. Even better, many of these tactics also serve double-duty in supporting and reinforcing your other marketing efforts. Before you get started, be sure to read SEO 102: 13 Steps to Improve Your Ranking the Right Way. While there’s no instant formula that will launch your site to number one, by implementing these tried-and-true SEO techniques with patience and persistence over time, you can be confident that you will yield real results. * Source: comScore

---