By helloDarwin
July 12, 2018
30 Simple Ways to Improve Your Website - Marketing Toolbox
Is your website not up to scratch? Has it been a long time since you last updated it? Are you receiving negative feedback from users? If one or more of these situations apply to you, then it might be time to make some changes to the site. Many people wait a long time to make changes to their website, fearing that it will involve too much expense and complicated efforts. However, sometimes all it takes is a few changes that only take a few seconds to apply to see a noticeable improvement. So here are a few tips on how to improve your website by optimizing SEO, using the right technical tool and improving the user experience. Using the right tool to analyze and modify your site can simplify the process. A content management tool, a traffic analysis tool and an SEO optimization tool are essential for making effective improvements. By integrating this tool into your website strategy, you can not only save time, but also make the improvement process more efficient and less daunting.
Here are 30 easy steps to improve your website, taking into account digital marketing, the use of WordPress, and SEO techniques :
What are the objectives of a website? The answer to this question may vary according to individual needs. However, there are a few common goals that all site owners and creators have (or should have) in mind:
- Get lots of traffic;
- Ensure a good user experience (UX);
- Have a quality website;
- Have a good domain authority;
- Cultivate your brand image;
- Building visitor loyalty.
The following steps are designed to achieve these marketing objectives by using effective SEO techniques, server-side tools, and ensuring that every second spent by visitors on your site is rewarding. By optimizing URLs, carefully choosing content and using WordPress, you can transform your site into a high-performance, engaging platform.
1) Aerate site pages
A site that's too busy will be unpleasant for visitors to navigate. Without evacuating relevant content, it's preferable to opt for a more airy design. This can take the form of more widely spaced elements, empty sections or a color palette that gives the visitor's eye a break.
2) Choose a color palette
At the same time, if you haven't already done so, you should choose a color palette that represents your brand image. This color palette will serve to give visual coherence to the website, making it more attractive.
3) Add visual elements
People who visit websites are attracted by visual elements, which make the pages more dynamic and pleasant to consult. When we talk about visual elements, we're mainly talking about photos and videos. Of course, it's important that these visual elements are relevant and add something to the content you're presenting.
4) Improve the home page
The home page is often the first thing people see when they arrive on a site. It's this page that serves to make a first impression and give an overview of the site's mission and, where appropriate, introduce the company.
5) Integrate infographics
Infographics are very popular as visual elements, as they are both useful and visually appealing. They can be used to illustrate articles or to enhance content pages.
6) Reorganize site pages
Over time, we sometimes create a lot of new pages to meet momentary needs. If we're not careful, the site's structure can become confused, detracting from certain sections that deserve more attention. Sometimes, therefore, we need to take time to restructure the site, removing unnecessary pages and duplicates and bringing the most important pages to the fore.
7) Improve site navigation and UX
If you've done any research into web design, you'll probably have heard of UX (User Experience). As your aim is to ensure that visitors have a pleasant experience when they visit your website, this is something you'll need to take into account when thinking about site navigation. See the following article for some tips:
8) Add menus
Menus can be very useful in helping to direct people to the right places on the site, so that they don't have to take eternal detours and get discouraged before they get to the point where they might convert as customers. Make sure you use them strategically and effectively. For example, you should put a menu on the main page, and include some in articles so that people can quickly find the information they're looking for.
9) Reorganize the tabs on the main page
Still with a view to improving the site's main page, if you already have a menu with tabs, it might be worth considering whether you should reorganize the tabs. Are they all relevant? Should they be placed in a different order? To find out, you can consult other people's opinions, or use a "heat map" to find out which are the main points of interest for site visitors.
10) Increase site loading speed
Loading speed is one of the most important aspects of a website's success, both for the user experience and for Google's search engine algorithms, which increasingly take this aspect into account when analyzing and ranking websites. There are several practices you can put in place to optimize your site's loading speed. Here are a few tips:
11) Compress image and video data
One of the best ways to improve your visitors' user experience and increase site loading speed is to compress the image and video files on your site. By reducing the size of these files, you optimize loading performance. Compressing these multimedia files is essential to avoid overloading server files. It's important to strike a balance between visual quality and file size to ensure optimal user experience while maintaining fast file loading speeds on your site.
12) Get rid of unnecessary pages and content
Spring-cleaning your house feels great! Why not do the same for your website? If there's any content that's misleading, poorly expressed, badly presented or useless, it's time to get rid of it and make room for more relevant content! A word of warning: if you remove pages, don't forget to redirect them so that people don't land on pages that don't exist, thus increasing your bounce rate.
13) Create or expand your About page
No need for an About page? It's not that obvious! In fact, this page is very interesting, even important, because it allows you to present your company and give it a more human image. You can stick to the basics, presenting the company's mission, history and team members. However, if you feel like being rather original, this is a page of the website where creativity can be the order of the day to give a glimpse of the company's personality.
14) Add a FAQ page
The "F.A.Q." page (Frequently Asked Questions) page is very useful, as it allows you to answer the most frequently asked questions you receive about your company. You're not available 24 hours a day to answer questions from potential customers browsing your website? The FAQ page can be used to answer the most pressing questions.
How do you choose the questions you present? Ideally, you should select a limited number of questions. If you receive a wide variety of questions, you can divide them into categories so that visitors can quickly find what they're looking for. Brainstorm topics that your current and potential customers often ask about. Then present the questions and answers clearly and concisely.
15) Write blog posts
Haven't thought about integrating a blog into your website yet? It's a great option, both for your website's SEO and for your company's credibility. Blog posts can help you rank for a wider variety of keywords. What's more, they're great for sharing useful and interesting information with your site's visitors. Finally, you can share them on your social networking accounts. For more reasons to have a blog, see the following article:
So, you decide to start a blog, but the question arises: who's going to write the articles? Do you have the time and talent to do it yourself? If not, can someone on your team do it? Of course, you can also call on external copywriters.
16) Put more written content on pages to enrich content
Written content is essential for SEO, providing more useful information to visitors through rich, relevant content. If your landing pages and homepage contain little written content, it's crucial to take the time to flesh out this content. Ideally, pages should be at least 600 words long, as this provides more material for the algorithms that analyze page content to determine rankings. Without overloading your pages with superfluous written content, adopt a considered strategy to integrate more text and enrich the content of some of your pages.
17) Check for spelling mistakes
Ah, those pesky spelling mistakes! The more written content you have, the more likely it is that a mistake will slip in and go unnoticed. A small mistake is fine, but if texts are full of errors, the reader will tend to get bored and the company's image will suffer. If you're not good at spelling, you can hire an editor to proofread your texts for typos. You can also use software that can flag up the majority of errors.
SEO optimization
18) Improve meta descriptions
Meta-descriptions are short descriptions that generally appear on Google search engine results pages and in publication previews on social networks. They are used to give an overview of the content of the page discovered when the link is clicked. For example, in the case of an article, this is used to make people want to read it. There are several possible approaches to writing meta-descriptions.
Some may prefer clickbait, while others may prefer a more general description. If you haven't yet taken the time to write meta-descriptions for your site's pages, you should! It's a pretty simple task, but an effective one.
19) Add internal links
Internal links help reinforce the site's structure, as well as redirecting people's attention to other pages on your site that might be of interest to them, or that lack visitors. For example, if you've written an article on steel roof repair, you could (and should) link to your article on different roofing materials, as this article might be of interest to readers, as well as offering additional information. Vous verrez d'ailleurs de nombreux exemples de liens internes dans cet article! Certains affirment aussi que la présence de liens internes peut avoir un impact positif sur le SEO du site, mais cette affirmation n'est pas confirmée. Il ne s'agit donc pas de la raison principale pour intégrer des liens internes, mais cette pratique est néanmoins importante.
20) Target specific keywords
The importance of keywords for SEO is currently being called into question, given the changes Google has been making to its algorithms over the last few years.It's fair to say that they don't quite play the same role, or operate in the same way, as they did a few years ago. That said, keywords, especially long-tail ones, are still very useful, both for attracting visitors and for creating a kind of consistency throughout the site.
21) Inserting tags into your content to stand out in Google searches
Haven't taken the time to place tags in your written content? Then this is clearly one of the priorities to put at the top of your list. Tags, particularly h1, h2 and h3, are used by the robots that crawl your sites to identify the main subject and the secondary topics covered on each page. So you need to include an h1 tag, as well as a few h2 and h3 tags to better structure your content. Here are two articles on the subject:
22) Adapt your site to your target audience
Arguably, this point will have been implied throughout the rest of the article, but it's still important to mention. Indeed, you absolutely must ensure that all aspects of your website are adapted to the kind of target audience you're trying to reach and convince.
This includes the aesthetic aspect, the written content and the user experience you offer, but there are also aspects that touch on SEO, not least because Google targets advertising and search results according to a person's age group, gender, interests and geolocation. In this regard, you can implement practices to optimize local SEO. Here's an article on the subject with recommendations you can apply:
23) Identify 404 errors and correct them by managing URLs
404 error pages, in addition to being tiresome for users, can harm your site's SEO, especially if they result from broken or misconfigured URLs. As soon as you notice 404 errors on your site, you need to act fast. One solution is to create URL redirects that take visitors to other relevant pages on your site. This corrects broken URLs while improving the user experience.
Another approach is to design 404 error pages that are fun and engaging, while providing URL suggestions or links to other parts of your site. Indeed, one of the most common problems with 404 errors is that visitors leave the website before finding what they're looking for. So it's crucial to develop a way of avoiding this situation, by effectively guiding users to valid and useful URLs.
24) Study your site's statistics and note any areas for improvement
Any serious website owner will take the time to analyze their site's statistics. With tools like Google Analytics, we have access to very precise data on visitor behavior. So we can see what's working and what's not. This information can be used to make adjustments, by working to optimize certain pages that aren't getting the desired results, or by giving even more prominence to the most popular pages!
Website hosting
25) Determine whether your accommodation is right for you
Is the type of accommodation you have still right for you? Sometimes, we choose a hosting package based on our current needs, but the features it offers no longer meet our expectations a few months or years later. That's when it's a good idea to re-evaluate your options, to see what can be done to keep your website running as smoothly as possible.
26) Test the mobile version
As the proportion of people browsing the web on their phone or tablet continues to grow, it's becoming increasingly important to have a mobile version for your website. What's more, depending on your target audience and their browsing habits, you may even need to put more energy into the mobile or "responsive" version than the desktop version of your website, in order to ensure the maximum number of visitors. In the following article, you'll find more information on this subject:
The sales tunnel
27) Include calls to action
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Are calls to action too tiring to use on your site? On the contrary! When they're well integrated into the content, you could say they're effective, even essential when you're trying to create an effective sales tunnel. Take a look at the ones you've already placed on your website. Are they strategically placed? Could you improve the way they're formulated to make them more convincing?
28) Add exit pop-ups or push notifications
You haven't managed to convince customers with your on-site content? Why not try push notifications and exit pop-ups? These tools can be extremely effective, provided they're used in a way that doesn't bombard visitors. We've written an article to help guide you through the process of integrating exit pop-ups on your website.
29) Present testimonials
Customer testimonials and reviews help lend credibility to your business. They also add a layer of authenticity to your website, whereas corporate sites can sometimes look too promotional or artificial, undermining consumer confidence. Don't hesitate to approach your customers to write testimonials to share on the site. You can also use comments left on social networks or on Google search engines, which will be used for SEO purposes.
30)Optimize forms for better technical performance
Does your website contain forms that visitors have to fill in to contact you or access your services? Then take the time to ensure that these are optimized and easy to use, for optimum technical performance! Without realizing it, you may be losing potential customers because your forms aren't accessible, pleasant to fill in and well integrated with your site's technology and server.
The performance of each form, measured in seconds of response time and ease of use, is crucial. Don't just rely on your own impressions! Ask your users and friends what they think about the technical performance of your forms. You can also run A/B tests to see which type of form achieves the best results in terms of server performance and user experience.
Every second counts when it comes to the effectiveness of forms on your site. Careful technical optimization can reduce form loading times, improving the overall user experience and boosting your server performance.
Bonus: Optimizing Your Site for Mobile and Search Engines with WordPress and Data Management
A crucial point often overlooked in website optimization is adaptation for mobile devices and search engine optimization, especially for sites built on WordPress. Here's how you can do it:
- Mobile optimization with WordPress: WordPress offers a multitude of themes and extensions that are optimized for mobile devices. Make sure your site is responsive and displays correctly on all devices, as a large proportion of searches are now done on mobile.
- Data management for better mobile performance: Large amounts of data can slow down your site on mobile devices. Use data compression tools to reduce the size of images and videos, and ensure that data loading on mobile is as efficient as possible.
- Search Engine Optimization on WordPress: WordPress, as a CMS, offers excellent opportunities to optimize your site for search engines. Use dedicated plugins to improve your SEO, particularly with regard to title tags, meta-descriptions, and data structuring.
- Data Analysis to Improve Mobile Experience: Use analytics tools to understand how visitors use your site on mobile. This data can help you identify areas for improvement to deliver a better user experience on mobile devices.
By integrating these strategies into your WordPress site, you'll not only improve your visitors' mobile experience, but also your site's ranking in search results. Effective data management and mobile optimization are essential to staying competitive in today's digital world.
Here, then, are our 30 approaching strategies for making your website more interesting, more attractive, and more marketable, with a particular focus on technical performance and server response speed. If you have any suggestions on how to further improve these aspects, please let us know, as we're always open to ideas. We hope we've helped you in your efforts to optimize technical and server performance!
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helloDarwin
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