The new financial year is here,

it’s about time you cleaned up your website in preparation.

In this article, we will highlight several areas that every business should focus on this year.

On-site Updates

Below are points that could enhance your websites online existence.

Online Authorship: This point is of great importance since Google Authorship plays a vital role in your websites ranking. It’s mostly used for SEO purposes since you tend to receive a vast increase in click throughs.

Google +1: Going forward you should have Google +1 buttons on your web pages and post pages since this a ranking metric that Google is monitoring closely.

Pinterest Button:  You maybe on Pinterest already, however, if you’re not then you are missing out. People love to pin pages and posts and this will boost your SEO efforts.

Metadata: Many content management systems such as WordPress allow you to use themes, some of which have meta data settings already set up. Through experience most themes standard SEO settings somewhat lack in effectiveness. I advise all WP website owners to opt for well-developed SEO plugins such as ‘All in One SEO’ & ‘WordPress SEO by Yoast’.

Website Speed: Test how quickly your website loads. You can use the Google Speed Test to identify what maybe causing your site to load slowly. In some cases, small changes can increase your load speed considerably. In other cases your website may require more advanced onsite developments. Website loading times are becoming a very important Google ranking metric. Google is aware that users leave sites that are slow – so get yours checked!

Broken Links: To find broken links log into Google Webmaster Tools and look for any 404 errors. You can fix the broken links by either creating a new page or you can redirect users to a different page using a 301 redirect. If you use WordPress you can a plugin such as ‘Link Checker’ to identify and fix broken links easily.

Indexed Pages: Have you checked whether Google has indexed all of your web pages? To discover what pages have been indexed use Googles’ Webmaster Tools. Unfortunately many websites prevent important pages from being indexed – check now and fix any errors.

User Experience: This is a an area that everyone can assess. Take a look at your website and analyse how good your websites user experience is – ask yourself, would you stay or leave? Google tracks how long users spend on your website, Google uses this data to compare your website against others and becomes another ranking metric. The easier your website is to use and the more valuable information it contains, the longer users are likely to stay.

Off-site Updates

Below are further points to embrace in order to increase your websites online existence.

Social Marketing: Social signals are playing an important role in the overall ranking of a website in SERP’s. It does make sense to use this metric since; good content would be shared, right?

Guest Publishing: Writing high quality content on related websites is a powerful way to build quality links to your website. Webmasters are hesitant accept guest posts since it is their website, however if you produce high quality content the Webmaster is likely to embrace you as a guest writer.

Summary

All websites require an update once in a while. I appreciate that most website owners struggle to find the time, however these requirements must be fulfilled, otherwise your website will get left behind.

You should review your website every 3 months, you will always find areas to improve. Alternatively book your web developer to go through your website for you.

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