Every day here at Seven Creative, people show us their sites that were built by other companies and ask us things like “why doesn’t my website appear in Google” or “Why do I hardly ever get any calls from my website” so we thought we should produce a quick check-list to help you evaluate your website and hopefully spot the areas stopping your website from indexing properly in search engines and hindering the site’s conversion rates.
This is by no means an exhaustive list; however, these are some of the most common problems. Don’t forget to let us know if you think we’ve missed something important!
1 – Contact details
There is a good chance that a lot of the visitors to your website are simply looking for your contact details. Other visitors are there evaluating you deciding if your the right one to ‘buy’ from. Your contact details, therefore, need to be available at the moment the site visitor makes the decision that they want to get in touch. Making it tough to find your contact details, hiding them or even requiring the website visitor to ‘click’ to find them can irritate and annoy – and this is the last thing you want when your competitors are only a ‘back click’ away!
Make your contact details prominent throughout the site. This will not only allow a potential customer to get in touch with you easily and quickly, it will also show potential customers that you have clear communication channels which will help to quickly establish trust – which is vital!
2 – What do you do?
I’m amazed. I’m staggered! The amount of sites I visit every day and I sit there thinking ‘what do you actually do?’ Every time we approach a new project we reverse engineer it from the point-of-view of the potential customer. By firstly profiling the customers you are able to build in a flow toward the website goals, avoid jargon which confuses people, and massively increase usability which means you’re much likely to end up with a website that actually works (provided your developer know what they are doing, of course!)
It’s really not rocket science – just say what you do and make it prominent. People love useful snippets but get turned off by big paragraphs. Get the important stuff ready-summarised and you’ll be amazed about how much of a better on-site experience your potential customers will have!
3 – Keywords and phrases
Before you built your site, did you check what people were actually searching for in relation to your products and services? It’s staggering how many people don’t! What is the point in having an all-singing-all-dancing website if no one can ever find it because it doesn’t match the phrases they’re using to find your products and services!
It’s very simple; find out what your potential customers are searching for and then make sure those phrases appear in your website (of course, in a natural context) on the relevant pages. Websites that don’t work don’t do this. It’s a simple as that.
4 – Social media
Use the social channels that suit your audience. They can help people discover your work and ask questions, but a missing social profile is not proof that Google will suppress your site. Keep genuine active profiles linked where useful.
5 – Images
Use relevant images, prepare suitable dimensions and compression, and describe informative images accurately for people who cannot see them. Do not stuff location or service keywords into every alt attribute. Check that the image actually loads on a phone.
6 – Content optimisation
Explain the subject clearly in the title, headings and body. Match the information to the reader’s question rather than aiming for a keyword density. Useful details, working links and an obvious next step matter more than repeating a phrase.
7 – Compliant and well formatted code
Well-structured code helps the browser, assistive technology and maintenance work. Check actual errors and user journeys rather than promising that an HTML-validation score guarantees indexing or ranking. A visually tidy page can still have broken controls or inaccessible content.
8 – Counter-intuitive navigation structure
There is very little as frustrating as trying to navigate your way around a site with a poor navigational structure. We encounter these every day and it’s something that will certainly be losing you customers! What does it say about your company if your site is confusing and it’s sometimes impossible to find the page you’re after?
When building a site, the site navigational structure needs to be designed with scalability and usability in mind. It needs to be simple and easy to use otherwise your site visitors will simply hit ‘back’ and click on the next link in Google. Usability testing is something that can highlight this; however, it’s a much better (and cheaper) idea to get this right from the start.
9 – External links
Link to a useful original source when it helps readers check a fact or continue a task. An external link is not automatically bad for SEO. Review paid, user-generated and untrusted links appropriately rather than applying one rule to every destination.
10 – Domain name
Keep control of your domain, contact details and renewal date. Choose a name people can recognise and use. Neither an exact-match name nor paying for extra registration years guarantees search rankings.
11 – Bonus mistake – Poor quality SEO
How could we possibly have a list about mistakes you may be making from an SEO point of view. The new Google algorithm updates mean that many people who have been paying for SEO over recent years have suddenly plummeted out of the rankings. Why? Because Google isn’t stupid. It knows that many people have been trying to manipulate their rankings by building hundreds of links from external sites whilst putting very little emphasis on good quality content – and now they’re paying the price.
‘Cheap SEO’ isn’t synonymous with ‘poor SEO’; however, they are very often the same thing. Good quality SEO does and always has had an emphasis on high quality content.
More information? Get in touch with us
Seven Creative in Sheffield provide the full spectrum of web marketing services such as SEO, social media optimisation, web site development and usability testing.
Call us today on 0114 383 0711, visit our website at sevencreative.co.uk or email us at info@sevencreative.co.uk for more information.
Use symptoms to choose the next check
Ask someone unfamiliar with your business to find a service and explain how they would enquire. Check failed form journeys, missing calls to action, browser errors and slow mobile pages. Compare enquiries with the purpose of the site; do not apply a universal bounce-rate threshold or a fixed click-through percentage to every business.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.