Keeping your website healthy is one of the most important things you can do for your website. By healthy I mean, functioning properly with no major errors, loading fast, providing the content website visitors want. But keeping your website healthy can be quite the undertaking, especially if you have other things to do.
In this post I’m going to give you some quick and easy ways to check the health of your website and keep its heart beating. My suggestion is always to get a web design firm (ahem — like mine) to manage your website’s health. This way you can stay in your zone of genius and not have to worry about website backups.
A Healthy Website is…
Search Engine Optimized
A truly health website is optimized for search engines. This means you are using the correct Hx headings in your content. using Hx headings helps you break up your content and make it easily skim-able. As well as, helps search engines identify the true topics for the page.
In addition to use of proper headings, SEO is all about the keywords. You will need to consistently set aside time to research the best keywords around your industry. Incorporating keywords, especially long-tail keywords, into your content will drive more traffic to your website. And in turn increase your sales.
Consistently Refreshed with New Content
Content is king folks! You should be creating and posting new content to your website on a regular basis. Videos, audios, blog posts, articles, downloadables, etc. are all pieces of content that can drive traffic to your website. You want to post fresh content on a weekly basis.
I know it seems like a lot of work to post new content every week, but I like to suggest to my clients to batch create content. This means you would take a weekend and write 5 blog posts, record a couple videos, design several social media tiles, and create a downloadable. Then schedule everything to launch over the next few weeks. You can usually do this using an editorial type calendar like CoSchedule.
Free of Broken Links & Other Errors
A healthy website is free from broken links, misspellings, poor grammar, and other simple errors. You should constantly be on the look out for errors. You can use various plugins to scan your website for broken links, misspellings and even grammatical errors.
There are other plugins available in the marketplace for plugins that scan your website for malware, which is malicious software that could be detrimental to your website’s health. Lastly, search out a plugin to assist you with uptime monitoring of your website. These plugins will help you keep your website healthy, happy and wise!
Loads a Lightening Speeds
Lastly, I wanted to talk a bit abut site speed. You only have a few milliseconds to attract the attention of a website visitor before they use the back button and leave your site. You want your website to move like lightening. The faster it loads the better chance you have of keeping your visitors on there.
Try using the Google Page Speed Tester and test out how fast your current site loads. The tester will give you a grade as well as a list of things you can do to improve the grade. Now, let me warn you. You’re going to need a web developer to assist you with some of the suggestions Google is going to give you. Just be prepared for that. But after you’ve sped up your site, you will know you’re providing your website visitors with a better user experience.
Keeping a healthy website is pertinent to having increased sales. The better the user experience is for your website visitors, the more apt they’ll be to explore your site and possibly make a purchase. It is your responsibility to keep a close eye on the pulse of your website’s heart. I suggest to my clients that they do these types of health checks at least once a month or once every other month. You can also hire a web design firm to complete these health checks for you. I believe in everyone working in their zone of genius. And if your zone of genius is not even close to being website design and development, pass it off to someone else.
