Top 10 website tips for reviewing your site – Part 2
I was asked to give a talk recently on my top 10 tips when reviewing your own website.
The tips were really well received – I posted the first 5 website tips here, and this post now discusses the second 5 tips.
Whether you are highly experienced, or new to the wonderful world of website marketing, reviewing some fundamentals on your website is always a good thing to do every now and again! Especially this time of the year!
So onto the tips…
TIP 6: Where do your site visitors come from and what are they doing on your site?
If you don’t know, then this can be easily remedied by installing Google Analytics on your site. I am unashamedly a huge Google Analytics fan, and urge you to make sure you have some type of analytics on your site to help your decision making.
For example:
- What articles are being read on your email newsletter, and which are driving visitors to your site?
- Which of your blog posts are really resonating with your readers?
- Is social media working for you?
To find out more about how to install Google Analytics, you can look here. And also check here for self help in understanding your Google analytics.
TIP 7: Checking words your customers are using to search
In order to try and attract the visitors you want to your site from the search engines, you need to understand how they think, speak and ultimately search.
Try experimenting with Google’s keyword research tool. You can find this by doing a Google Search for the term Google keyword research tool. The tool allows you to check the demand for whichever search term you like, and will also give you suggested alternatives.
It can be amazing to see which terms are actually being used to search rather than the ones you think are being used. Only once you have identified some good terms, should you start making sure these terms are used on your website, following standard SEO principles.
For more help on Keyword Research or DIY SEO follow the links to my other blog posts.
TIP8: Title Tags and Meta Descriptions for EACH page of your site.
If you do nothing else, then please check your title tag! This is probably the most important aspect of your website (along with the content) when it comes to SEO and being ranked in the search engines. Make sure it is unique on each page and includes your keywords for that page, with the most important being first if possible.
For more information on how to find your title tag and what makes a good title tag, check out my blog post
With regards to Meta Description, this is your chance to ‘sell’ in the search returns. Your meta description generally appears as the ‘snippet’ of text under the link to your site. As such, you can use this text to help persuade a reader to click on your link rather than a competitor’s.
TIP 9: Keyword Rich Content
Once you have addressed TIP 7, you will know what keywords you will want to optimise for on your site. Review your content, page by page, and see how you can integrate the keywords into the body of the content.
Word of warning though, don’t put a particular phrase in so often that it reads really badly – search engines don’t like that! But you can repeat words in different orders, or use synonyms and Google will understand!
Also, don’t be tempted to try and optimise one page for more than 3 or so keywords. You won’t be able to get the traction or focus you need.
TIP 10: Check out the links into your site.
Unfortunately Yahoo has discontinued the useful tool that they had that would show you which websites were linking into your site, and more importantly who was linking into your competitors.
However this is still an important area to address, as the quality of the links pointing into your site can make or break the ability of your site to rank for particular keywords.
SEOMOZ has a very useful tool that allows you to check the sites (and pages) linking into a site. You can run the tool for your own website or for one of your competitors. Once you understand what websites are pointing into your competitors, you will get a better idea of what you could be targeting yourself.
So there you have it – my top 10 website tips:
- Checking for fresh content
- Checking for broken links
- Getting a custom 404 page
- Use the Wewe tool – see how customer focussed you are
- Do some usability testing – how easy is your site to use
- Where do your site visitors come from and what they doing your site?
- Checking words your customers are using to search
- Reviewing your content
- Checking your title tags and meta descriptions
- Checking to see what links are pointing into your competitors websites!
As a reminder the first 5 tips can be found here.
Do yourself and your website a favour – go take a look and get all spruced up ready to attack 2012 with verve and vigour!
If you would like help with any aspect of improving your site, you can find out more about my services here.
