Spring Clean Your Website - Tips And Tricks For Practitioners
Spring has sprung! Many of us are inspired to start making changes and take actions within our lives. But why not look at your business as well? Together, Shonelle from Tech For Pracs and I have created a list of tips and tricks to spring clean your website.
5 Ways To Spring Clean Your Website
Check through your links
There is nothing more frustrating as a prospective client than clicking a link and landing on an error page!
But there are a number of reasons why it might happen. Even if you don't ever change your website links, other sites do. Or you could accidentally misspell a link.
So if you ever link to other sites (which you should) or change your website, you want to check through each link regularly.
The good news is that you don't need to crawl through dozens of blogs and webpages for this. There are many free broken link checkers available online. All you need to do is pop in your website and wait.
I used Broken Link Checker and found 11 broken links - including one on my About Page! So I fixed that up quick-smart.
Make sure each function is working correctly
Links make up a big part of your website function, but there are others as well. Videos, in-built booking systems, plugins that link to your social media or recipes are just a few you might have.
So every now and then, sign out of your website account and have a full crawl of each button and gadget on the site.
Check your SEO keywords
Shonelle says: Just like everything else, your SEO often needs a little bit of refreshing. If anything about your business has changed - location, ideal client or services - your SEO needs to change with it.
So go through the back-end of your website and check that each keyword or phrase is optimised and still relevant.
Once you've updated your SEO, you'll want to force Google to recrawl the site. That way, it can see the changes! You can learn a bit more about how to do that here.
Review your images
When you spring clean your website, you can't overlook the impact that images have. After all, we are very visual creatures! So take a little time to look at each image and make sure it's consistent with your brand AND with the page content.
Shonelle says:
Make sure you don't neglect the title and alt text of your images. You'll want to include your keyword(s), as well as a description of the image, in your alt text. This will help with optimising SEO for that page.
For example, this article's image has the title 'Spring Clean Your Website', and the alt text has 'laptop on desk showing healthy salad'. You can use up to 125 characters to describe the image.
Look through your About Me page
Humans grow and evolve, as people and as business owners. The About Me you wrote 3 years ago probably won't sum you up quite as nicely these days!
So read through your page, and see if anything needs an update. Has your ideal client changed? Do you have a more niched focus? Does it feel like something that will connect with others?
Once your written content gets the tick, look at your images. Make sure that you have at least one image of your pretty face, and that you feel confident with it. Ideally, it will be consistent with your branding in terms of colours as well.
Run an eye over your services
It's common for practitioners to alter their services, particularly in the first few years.
It might be as simple as a price change, or it could be a whole new offering. But if it's not updated on your website, you're limited by the people that you tell directly. Not to worry - with a quick spring clean, you can make them fresh and up to date.
I know I was guilty of this until recently! In fact, until a couple of months ago, I didn't even have my VIP service anywhere other than a blog post.
But once I updated my health writing services, I felt much more confident with sending prospective clients to have a look.
Refresh or repurpose older content
When you spring clean your website on my watch, you cannot neglect your blog content!
Great content can be repurposed in dozens of ways. Not-so-great content can still be refreshed with a quick rewrite. You might want to:
Change the structure
Add in a call-to-action
Update it for SEO purposes
Once you've updated it, make sure you schedule it to share on your social media channels again. You'll be able to reach new people!
Shonelle says:
Remember, just like any other changes to content and keywords, you'll want to force Google to recrawl the site.
If you spring clean your website, the best part is that it becomes a nicer place for both you and your visitors. It's like having a fresh clean house for your business!
Did your spring clean turn up some issues? We're here to help.
If you need to sort out some tech issues, a 1:1 session with Shonelle can help work out the kinks.
If the content is your problem, you and I can chat about plenty of fresh ways to reuse and repurpose content in a 1:1 session.