As the new year begins, it’s an opportune time for self-examination and planning. Regardless of your stance on resolutions, make 2020 the year you prioritize your website and avoid neglecting it.
Your website has room for improvement despite its current performance. You may be aware of this and understand that your website needs more focus, however, it can be challenging to begin without direction.
1. Conduct a Comprehensive Site Audit
Performing a thorough examination of a website, identifying inadequacies and potential enhancements, and ensuring conformity with industry benchmarks and optimal techniques is what a comprehensive site audit entails. This evaluation of a website’s progress and present situation is impartial. Its motive is to ascertain that operations adhere to agreed-upon deals and are executed competently.
A site audit can be performed by utilizing a site audit tool to crawl the website and produce a report containing all website complications based on the website URL provided.
2. Analysis and Enhancement of Keywords
The process of keyword optimization involves the exploration, assessment, and picking of relevant keywords to enhance a website’s search engine visibility and attract more relevant traffic. A crucial part of this procedure is keyword research, which is the initial phase in SEO copywriting. The purpose of this research is to identify the search phrases used by the intended audience, and these phrases are used as the keywords for the website.
To optimize keywords, one must conduct research to identify pertinent keywords for the intended audience, enterprise, and webpage materials. Subsequently, one must choose the keywords that are most likely to steer focused traffic to the site.
3. Enhance Website Content with High-Quality, Relevant, and Unique Content
For a website to perform well and succeed, it is crucial to have top-notch website content. This content must be authentic, pertinent, and valuable to the target audience. It ought to furnish essential details to users while also entertaining and retaining their interest. Website content can comprise written text, graphics, as well as audio or video components.
The usability of a website is also influenced by the quality of its content. High-quality website content helps to facilitate ease of use, navigation, and access to information.
Conversely, low-grade content is frequently generated rapidly and in large quantities with the goal of enhancing website rankings. Typically, this content omits vital details and fails to captivate visitors. It is imperative to furnish superior, pertinent, and distinctive content that meets the preferences of the intended audience to guarantee consistent and repeat website traffic.
Enhance website speed and enhance the user experience.
To attract traffic and retain visitors, it is crucial to enhance website speed and user experience. These measures can aid in improving website performance and enhancing the user experience:
- Test website performance using website speed tests
- Improve website speed by compressing images, making the website responsive and mobile-friendly, and optimizing landing pages.
- Implement UI/UX design practices, optimize content marketing, fix technical SEO issues, prioritize mobile-friendliness, and follow web accessibility best practices.
5. Make Use of Header Tags and Structured Data
Header tags are utilized on web pages in order to enhance readability and SEO by segregating headings and subheadings. The six header tags are arranged in ascending order of significance, with H1s frequently serving as the title of the page.
Data structured through in-page markup is information that characterizes the page’s content and is implemented on the page it pertains to.
Generating structured data is necessary without resorting to creating empty pages or adding structured data that the user cannot see. To add structured data, employ Google Tag Manager by setting it up on the website, inserting a custom HTML tag to the container, and pasting the preferred structured data onto the tag.
6. Optimize Images and Videos for Search Engines
Optimizing search engine content may significantly benefit from incorporating images and videos. These media help broaden the content and facilitate user engagement, possibly extending the time spent on a webpage. Resizing and formatting images appropriately, as well as eliminating metadata, can enhance image loading speed.
The website recommends using Google Images and selecting appropriate keywords and unique content to attract more visitors. To enhance the visibility of images for search engines, the website suggests incorporating the All in One SEO plugin and utilizing the Image SEO feature available with the Plus plan or higher.
Construct high-quality backlinks
When aiming to create backlinks of superior quality, contemplate implementing the subsequent tactics:
Develop extensive and informative content known as Skyscraper or Pillar content strategy. This method involves producing articles or blog posts that establish your website as an expert in a specific field or market by covering a particular topic in-depth and delivering valuable knowledge to your audience.
Position yourself as a reliable source for journalists and bloggers. By being a source for these individuals, you not only enhance your credibility within your industry, but you may also receive a backlink from their published work. Remember to request that your website be linked when consenting to serve as a source.
Create content in formats that can result in the generation of links. In other words, produce content that is designed to be shared and linked to. How-to guides, informative articles, tips, hints, tricks, and other thought-provoking pieces are commonly shared.
One way to perform link building is by incorporating links to other websites. The various popular strategies that belong to this group are the following:
Reword the following passage without altering its original meaning: Guest blogging
Exchange of links
Building links through broken links.
Link building for resource pages
8. Utilize Social Media for Link Building and Brand Awareness
Generating brand awareness and links can be achieved through social media. This involves establishing an online presence and engaging with your intended audience in order to create favorable perceptions and impressions of your brand.
Knowing your target audience and creating a successful marketing strategy is key for boosting brand recognition on social media. Another effective tactic is using social media as a means of building backlinks, taking advantage of the wide reach and popularity of these platforms to increase the number of links pointing to your site and improve your search engine ranking.
Keep track of and assess website traffic and rankings.
To manage and optimize a website, it is crucial to monitor and analyze its traffic and rankings.
Analyzing website traffic is crucial in maximizing marketing budgets as it allows for targeting high-converting market segments with low bounce rates. The aim is to gain insight into user behavior and site movement, identifying potential areas of enhancement.
Website ranking traffic is the traffic that a website receives from its search engine rankings or search engine result pages. If a person searches on Google and clicks on a link to a page on the website, it adds to the search traffic. Evaluating website ranking traffic aids in comprehending the success of the site’s search engine optimization (SEO) endeavors.
10. Level up Your Website Analytics
Chances are, you’re monitoring user conduct on your site, possibly through Google Analytics. Though, having done that, are you truly maximizing the potential of Analytics? Is it plausible to acquire more knowledge about the efficacy and inefficacy?
We need to discuss certain tracking functionalities offered by Google Analytics that you must utilize by 2023.
Goal and event tracking
Ensuring that goal tracking is set up on Google Analytics should be your top priority, especially if you haven’t done it yet. Failing to measure what is effective means that any alterations made to your website or marketing efforts are merely guesses.
By utilizing goal tracking, it becomes possible to inform Google Analytics whenever a desirable action takes place, such as filling out a contact form, signing up for your newsletter, or completing a purchase. This grants access to valuable insights concerning the site’s overall performance, the most effective traffic sources, and which pages lead to successful conversions.
If you’re already tracking your goals, you should also consider tracking events. Event tracking is simply the process of tracking specific occurrences, such as clicks on important buttons, video plays, downloads, and so on, instead of just the final goal. It involves tracking the events that precede the goal.
This provides a clearer depiction of what’s functioning well. For instance, if you have two “contact us” buttons on the website, placed in the header and footer respectively, event tracking will reveal which one is being clicked more frequently.
Go beyond Google Analytics
It’s advisable to broaden your options beyond Google Analytics when choosing tracking software. HotJar.com offers various tracking options that can provide insights that Google Analytics can’t. Heat maps, for instance, which records where individuals click, scroll, and move their mouse, are an excellent starting point.
HotJar’s heat maps reveal the user behavior on a page, whereas Google Analytics informs about the duration of a user’s stay. My preferred revelation from HotJar is noticing user clicks on non-link areas, an indication to augment the content or incorporate a link.
Session recording is an effective means of tracking user behavior on your website. Anonymous recordings are made of user visits, providing insights into how users interact with your content. This includes understanding where they pause to read, what they skim past, and at what point they exit the site. Thus, session recording helps to create a comprehensive picture of user engagement with your content.
11. Better Conversion Tracking
Blind spots in goal/conversion tracking are frequently encountered, indicating that not all goals are being accurately tracked even by those who are tracking them. Some examples may include:
- Clicks on emails
- Tap to call
- Clicks to third party distributors (where purchases can be made)
- Call tracking
- PDF downloads
Failing to monitor these factors will result in an inadequate understanding of your website’s performance, hindering your ability to make informed choices. Many of these objectives can be established for free utilizing Google Analytics, and third-party options such as CallRail begin at $45 per month. With a cost that is only half of a regular cable bill, it is a modest expense for your enterprise.
12. Run Your First A/B Test
Are you curious whether page A outperforms page B in terms of conversion rate despite the only difference being the color of the call to action button (red on page A, green on page B)? This comparison is made through A/B tests, which used to be challenging and costly, but not anymore.
Running A/B tests has become simpler with the availability of free tools such as Google Optimize. It is not necessary to have programming skills to conduct these tests as they can be done entirely using your web browser. In case you feel uncertain about how to go about it, trying a simple test involving two variations of your homepage’s main message would be a good beginning point. You can monitor user interaction by measuring statistics such as average pages per visit, time spent on the site, and bounce rate.
While you may assume that the variation would be insignificant, we have conducted identical experiments and witnessed substantial disparities. Begin with minor trials first, then progress to greater modifications and noteworthy objectives, such as generating leads and sales, once you feel at ease.
13. Start Using Design Psychology
Forrester market research indicates that incorporating an awareness of your target audiences’ psychology into your design can result in a 400% increase in website conversions.
Your website might be under-performing if you haven’t devised a model for your intended audience, haven’t pinpointed their motivators, and haven’t integrated compelling design strategies.
Incorporate design psychology into your website in 2023, starting with user research and developing a plan for iterative improvements, without the need for a complete website redesign.
14. Improve Your Calls to Action
Although one of the most crucial aspects of a website, calls to action (CTAs) are often overlooked. The purpose of a CTA is straightforward – it’s a component on the page that urges users to take a specific action, such as “contact us now.”
It is a common practice for CTAs to prompt users to become leads or make a purchase, which is advisable. Nevertheless, some make the mistake of requesting for a sale or contact details before the user has progressed sufficiently along their journey.
To nurture the user until they are ready to make a purchase or contact you, ensure that there is a call to action at every stage of the sales funnel. With the appropriate calls to action, you can then concentrate on optimizing execution, including:
- Are they obvious and hard to miss? (i.e. plenty of contrast)
- Have you placed them in the right spots?
- Do they address all possible objections?
- Do they adequately describe the benefits of converting? etc…
15. Monitor Search Performance on Google Webmaster Tools
Google had eliminated a popular function in Google Analytics in the past, where users could track the keywords that led traffic to their website. However, this attribute is now available again in Google’s Webmaster Tools.
Regularly checking Google Webmaster Tools is crucial if you prioritize organic search traffic in your marketing plan. Aside from providing information regarding search performance, the tool will also notify you of any problems that may have an adverse effect on your search performance, such as nonexistent pages or mobile usability issues.
Setting it up is both free and simple. Take action today.
16. Plan Growth Driven Design Iterations
In essence, GDD involves implementing incremental changes to your website utilizing data, instead of relying on significant overhauls every three years. If left unattended, a website’s efficacy will inevitably diminish as content becomes outdated, technologies evolve, user requirements shift, and styles transform.
By adopting Growth Driven Design, your website will experience a constant process of improvement and adaptation, resulting in a gradual increase in performance. Additionally, you won’t have to deal with the costly and time-consuming undertaking of completely redesigning your website every three years.
This chart can serve as a summary of the distinction.
To implement a GDD program, begin with mapping out a three-month plan for enhancements. Begin each month by determining the most impactful improvements and devising a strategy to carry them out. This approach follows a structured methodology for GDD.
Once you get used to it, you can delve deeper into the GDD methodology and learn about utilizing data to guide future design decisions and iterations.
