8 Signs your website needs a maintenance tune up
- Your website is too wordy. Remember when the trend resembled a wikipedia page packed full of text? Trends now prefer more graphics, videos, and using negative space to draw the eyes in.
- Your mobile site is unfriendly. When your website tries to scale on a mobile screen, if some text disappears off the page or your navigation menu requires users to pinch and zoom, your mobile site is in trouble. Websites should offer a clean and clear design that’s user friendly on both desktops and mobile devices. In early 2015, searches on portables surpassed desktop googling for the first time and the rate continues to climb.
- Broken links. It’s normal to catch a broken link here and there as outside resources move, or after you’ve cleaned up internal images and attachments. But if you’re not checking your site on a regular basis there could be more broken links than you know and Google is keeping track of these and it’s negatively affecting your page rank and SEO.
- Bad Images. If a picture is worth a thousand words… what are your images saying? Images should have a purpose on your page, not just used for decoration. There should also be enough images to illustrate your company/brand/product. With the advances in cameras across the board, there’s no reason for a grainy-dark photo on your site. Go through your images and consider re-doing any photos that have poor lighting, clutter in the background, or simply do not reflect where your business is today.
- Site Speed. Visit Google’s Page Speed Test. If your website is scoring less than 90/100 there’s a few maintenance items you’re neglecting and it’s affecting your site speed. Users are not going to speed time waiting for your page to load.
- Does your website still reflect your company’s brand and goals? If it’s been over a year since the content has been updated on your webpage, you’re in need of an SEO Tune Up too my friend.
- Is the focus above the fold? Above the fold is considered the viewable content a visitor would see when they first arrive at your webpage, before any scrolling. Previous trends encouraged full width and height images, but this trend has been shown to make SEO efforts a little harder and if the image didn’t resonate with your visitor you lost a sale.
- Contact Information. Is it easy for a visitor to find your contact information and reach you? Is this contact information still relevant? New search algorithms are favoring websites with contact information clearly accessible and a physical address.
Websites need a little bit of maintenance here and there to keep them performing properly. Links break, rules change, and competition creeps in and pushes your site down the competitive ladder on search results. If you have a website, you need a maintenance schedule and you should be consistently viewing performance reports for your website. Change happens, and our clients know they’re covered because we have a maintenance plan in place.
