Spring has sprung and with the warmer weather many folks decide to spruce up their home or office. But spring cleaning shouldn’t just be reserved for buildings or grounds. Your marketing materials and small business website should also get a thorough “cleaning”.
Here are tips and tools for how to “spring clean” your business’ website:
- Test for broken web links. Not only is a broken website link annoying for your customers, Google and other search engines look unfavorably on broken web links. Here is a free tool from Dr. Link Check to test for broken links on your small business website
- Are you using the correct keywords on your business website? Your pages and blogs should use the keywords that rank highest for your industry. Keyword Tool Dominator can help you pinpoint the best keywords for your business’ website based on Google search traffic. If you are not using the best keywords for your small business website, edit your pages and blog posts appropriately.
- Check your website media files for outdated images. This would include anything with a date or timeline on it. For example, I recently saw a website for a Louisville based HVAC contractor whose homepage slideshow included an image promoting a “fall tune-up”. Given that 4 months have passed since fall, this not professional. In addition, if you attend trade shows, make sure you’ve deleted any images promoting the shows, as these will typically have dates on them. Also, make sure any stock photography shows the current season. No need to have images of snow, fireplaces, holiday trees or any other winter related images on your website unless they directly relate to your product, services or a blog post.
- Is your news or small business blog outdated? If it’s been months since you’ve written a new blog, start thinking about a seasonal topic that relates to your industry. If you have a “news” section on your homepage where the latest story is more than 4 months old, find a more recent story. Or, don’t show news on your homepage. It’s OK to have time delays between stories on an internal “news” page. But, unless you are the type of business that has frequent updates, your news should be relegated to an internal page on your site not your homepage.
These are just 4 tips on how to freshen your website with a spring cleaning. Keep in mind, your websites’ visitors will have a better browsing experience the more often you fine-tune or update your site.