Check that Your Website Does Contain Four Important Elements
Over the past decade, the online landscape has very changed due to the influence of new web technologies, mobile developments, and due to social media. Business organizations that have updated their websites with these new technologies have benefited from search engines with high SEO rankings, online brand recognition, conversions, and high ROI. However, those businesses that do not give much thought to their website allow it to become outdated and missing out important elements. These outdated websites are prone to get low exposure on Google and Yahoo, and even get penalized for lacking those aspects. This blog post is written for those who understand that their website may benefit from a modern design. Here are the four important elements to redesign your outdated website to acquire better online presence and to catch up with your competitors.
Design and Navigation
These days, internet users have little patience when the website they are visiting is still in the loading phase and they do not hang around it very long. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo does give importance to site speed as mentioned in their webmaster guidelines. Also, the aim of any website is to provide efficient user experience for people who are searching for information on a particular website. You need to start designing your website in preparation for resolving these issues and providing the ultimate user experience possible. Your navigation menu should be the primary gateway into different sections of content on your website. It should be easy to find, must have obvious section names, and be consistent across every web page.
Aside from the navigation menu, links can be strategically placed on pages to help lead the viewer into other content that might interest them. For example, on an online store, customers should be able to easily find the shopping cart and links to complete a product purchase. By keeping visitors interested and moving throughout your website, you gain more page views, better customer perception of your business, and more conversion sales.
There are many reasons why a well-designed site will attract more traffic, and it is important to have the site to be search engine optimized (SEO), and the content you choose to provide with your design should reflect this. Users will be impressed with your website only when there is great aesthetics and organization done on your site. A great website design with efficient navigation will guide visitors to take action with ease. While most navigation and design decisions may be made before the website goes live, the work does not stop there.
Relevant and Quality Content
The main purpose of website content is to provide visitors with the information they are looking for. The reputation of your brand will increase when you have great content on your website, and thereby results in increased visitor traffic, sales and other SEO benefits. Keep in mind that it is the content that gives your website substantially. Your website needs to filter the content that visitors are assuming they will find when they visit your webpage. If you are not doing this, visitors will leave your website before viewing more content, which may result in the loss of sale or advertisement revenue. Be careful that the content you post does not be promotional or sales-oriented rather be more informative and useful to those who are searching for it on the web.
Mobile-Friendliness
Due to the advent of technology, people have shifted from desktop to mobile devices for web browsing. Also, for the past few years, Google has been insisting website owners to optimize their website for mobile users. When users visit a web page it should be optimized to fit on the smartphone and tablet screens appropriately thereby giving them better user experience. Many experts believe that Google has some influence in the rising popularity of mobile search thanks to its Android devices. Also, two months ago, Google rolled out ‘mobile-friendliness’ algorithm update to make sure websites which have their mobile versions prominently visible on mobile search results. If you do not have a mobile version of your website, chances are that you will be penalized by Google after the algorithm roll-out.
Speed and Performance
It is important that your bandwidth limits and storage space (web hosting) is appropriate for your website. Bandwidth caps limit the amount of data that can be transferred over a period of time. Usually, most people pay for a certain amount of bandwidth per month. Unless the limit is raised or the limit period passes into the next, users will not be able to load your page if this is exceeded.
If you owned the smaller website in this case, you would be excited to know that so many people viewed your website. When you realize that your website has crashed and was unable to handle the visits to the webpage, you will be in a big pile of mess. It is quite common for website owners to underestimate how and in what ways their site bandwidth limits get used up.
Hosting is another important criterion you need to look into. If your website is hosted videos and media, you will need more storage space on your site than if you only had text. Once this space is filled up, you will not be able to add more content until more space is freed or the total amount of space is increased. If you do have videos, you can host them on YouTube or other social media sites, thereby taking the bandwidth load off of your own website. You need to monitor your bandwidth and storage space to determine if limits should be adjusted.
Conclusion
Some of the other vital elements you need to look into include integration of social media, website tracking, and web analytics. If these criteria are met successfully, your website will be ranked higher in Google and Yahoo search results, and start receiving high amounts of visitor traffic.
