Slow, cluttered websites are killing your SEO
The impact of website functionality on SEO really can’t be overstated. The truth is that slow, cluttered websites are killing your SEO and making organic traffic a near-impossibility. Today, we’ll look at the things you can do to clean up an old website so it achieves a better SERP but if you don’t have the bandwidth to look at this yourself, let us help you with website support and maintenance. The more quickly these issues are dealt with, the faster you’ll see the upside.
Website speed optimisation tasks
With a slow website, the first step is to get it running more rapidly. You can do this by using tools like PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix to identify issues. Even just basic plugins that will compress your images or reduce the number of scripts and styles on your pages will help. You’ll always want to enable browser caching so return users have the best possible experience and perhaps even move to a content delivery network (CDN) so your website content is spread across multiple servers worldwide for lower latency.
Decluttering & organising
Do you have ads, popups and widgets? What about animations or big auto-play videos? Do you need that or could you streamline the experience and remove distractions for users? Are your menus clear? Can people find out how to buy from you? Make sure to use proper heading tags (H1, H2, etc.) to organise your content. Don’t forget to write relevant meta titles and descriptions for each page and include your keywords. If you have Yoast SEO installed, make sure it’s working and USE IT!
Mobile-friendly design and performance
Google practices mobile-first indexing. That means a poor mobile experience can significantly impact your SEO. Try Lighthouse to check your website’s mobile compatibility and fix any issues you find. Then, look at your latest website uptime reports. Do you need to change providers? Are you getting consistent performance? How about peak times? Is there any drop-off? Change hosts if you’re seeing a lot of problems. Lastly, check for crawl errors and fix any broken links using tools like Google Search Console. Do little maintenance tasks like making sure your robots.txt file and XML sitemap are properly configured, any plugins are up to date and old tools are removed. You may also want to implement a structured data markup (schema.org) to help search engines understand your content better.
Account for the journey
Just as important as the technical aspects of your website, you need to have engaging content for users when they get there. Analyse user behaviour, bounce rates and other metrics to identify areas that need improvement within your buyer’s journey and track the impact of your optimisations over time. Remember not to change too much at once. User experience testing can help you find the quick wins that can ensure more of the traffic you do get is converted. Remember to create content that touches all the points in a user journey so you’re not missing out on possible searches that are higher up in the sales funnel.
Would you feel comfortable implementing these fixes if slow, cluttered websites are killing your SEO? Come join the convo on LinkedIn or Twitter. Or, if you would like support to speed up your website so you can improve your SERP, reach out to the team here.
