5 Ways To Get Your Website In Shape For 2019

The New Year means the start of a new marketing strategy for many businesses. It’s a time to try new things, explore new channels online – and an important chance to ensure your strategy is fully-aligned with your business goals and mission.

But, even with the freshest marketing strategy, how can your website perform well if its foundations aren’t in good shape? Faults, errors and general bad practice can dramatically impact your online visibility and user experience, limiting the outcome of even the most focussed marketing efforts.

The next month is a great time to get your website working optimally and have the foundations sorted before taking on the challenges and opportunities that January bring! See ten of our top suggestions for getting your website in order before the New Year:

Top Tips For Optimising Your Website

1. Alt Tags, Heading tags and Meta Descriptions

It’s important to keep on top of your general onsite housekeeping – with every item that’s added to your website, such as a media image, new post or page, you should be taking the time to fill in key optimisation details. Whilst only taking a few minutes individually, if you leave these for a while they can quickly build into a time-consuming task. Make sure you’ve added alt tags to all the images in your media library, ensured your heading tags are implemented correctly on each post or page and that each page also has its own unique meta description.

2. Broken Links and Forms

There’s nothing worse than leading users to a page where they’re unable to take an action, or greeted with a 404 error. Check that all of your buttons, contact forms and links (both internal and external) are working on your website. Try filling out your enquiry forms and newsletter subscription buttons to check that these are all linking into your backend properly. If you’re an e-commerce website try making a test purchase to check that your cart, shipping and payment features are all working correctly. Don’t forget to check this process on several different devices – if your site isn’t correctly optimised for mobile you can sometimes end up with buttons inaccessible or features not working correctly on the smaller screen.

3. Page Speed

Google’s statistics estimate that 53% of mobile visitors leave a site if a web page takes longer than three seconds to load – which makes it vital to fix your page speed as a priority. Your marketing activities won’t be able to perform effectively if visitors bounce straight back off the site due to low loading speeds – and this will also affect your online visibility, particularly now that Google has moved over to a mobile-first index.

4. Content

Web pages with low content will struggle to rank or convert. Ensure that your web pages are filled with rich engaging content that targets your desired keywords and give your customers plenty of useful information that will drive them through to conversion.

5. Poor Backlinks

Not all links are good for your website. A spammy or low domain backlink pointing from a risky website can lower your trust in the eyes of Google, and have a negative impact on your online visibility. Monitor your backlinks and disavow any that are harming your SEO performance.

Need Help Getting The Foundations Of Your Website Sorted?

If you want to get your website performing optimally and in the best condition possible, then speak to our experts today! We can help you create solid foundations for your website – auditing your online visibility and technical performance to establish the keys areas that need to be optimised. Speak to our team today to find out more!

Ready To Take The Next Step?

Once your website foundations are in a good condition, it’s time to start thinking about your next steps! Are you looking to start a new channel, like SEO, PPC or affiliate marketing in the New Year? Need to realign your existing strategy with new marketing goals? Or want help spotting opportunities from your freshly optimised website? Our experts can help you plan now. Get in touch today!