The health of your website should be a top priority for any business. Typically we measure website health based on how well your website is functioning; we look at plug-ins, errors, updates, and updated and optimized content, to name a few. Like any technology, it will need constant updating, monitoring, and checkups to ensure it functions to the best of its ability.
Evolve Systems Technical Webmaster service does just that – it helps businesses combat website inefficiencies and security issues by addressing and alleviating your website issues.
What Are The Most Important Ranking Factors in Your Website Health?
When looking at your website’s health, have you considered the role SEO plays in impacting your overall site health and functionality? How do you determine the most important SEO ranking factors, and what ones will make the biggest impact on your website?
Although all ranking factors are essential in maintaining a healthy site, this blog will cover some of the key factors our agency looks at with our clients to kick-start your website and ensure it’s running smoothly.
Page Speed
Page speed is a direct ranking factor that continues to be an important metric for Google. This can include how fast your web pages load, page speed on mobile devices, and more. It can affect the time it takes users to navigate and load your website. When page speed is efficient and fast, the overall user experience is better – leading to happier users!
Page speed is multifaceted because it affects desktop and mobile devices, and users expect the same speed on both platforms. If your platforms are having trouble with speed, you risk reducing site traffic and having higher bounce rates. Did you know that your website hosting service and type could be affecting your page speed? Good thing we know a thing or two about hosting at Evolve Systems!
Links
Your website is built on links, an important factor in SEO website health. Google categorizes links into three categories: inbound, outbound, and internal.
Inbound and Outbound Links are used to establish authority in your content. You can use inbound links (commonly called “backlinks”) within your content to reference other credible sources to have these credible sources link back to your site. Google sees this as an important website ranking factor and building authority in your content. It is important to note that there is such a thing as “bad linking,” meaning if a website is not credible or does not have a high authority itself, you would not want to use that as an inbound link.
Internal Links are used when referencing your content and directing users around your website, social media platforms, or other forms of content you’ve produced. Not only does this help you and your website, but it also helps tie pages together for both Google and your users by navigating them around your site (think of it like a spider web!)
Optimized Content
An outstanding website does more than just market; it educates, inspires, and informs visitors. These things create value, and value is what retains visitors. Pair that with regular SEO work, and visitors turn into customers. By developing valuable content, your company can advance its digital presence and grow in the marketplace by positioning itself as an industry leader.
There are many other ranking factors to consider when trying to improve your site health, but these are the ones our team of digital experts focuses on for optimal health for our clients’ sites. These are just a few of the different SEO marketing tactics available that contribute to your long-term, value-driven marketing strategy.
Security and Accessibility
Ensuring your website has the correct kind of URL is vital in many ways. Specifically, make sure you have a well-coded URL that Google can crawl. Google wants to visit your website – that’s how you rank! But as much as we’d like Google to visit our URLs, we need to keep bots out. The key to keeping bots out of your site is having a well-coded website builder, a robots.txt file that guides Google through your website pages, and uploading a sitemap that lists your website pages.
We often hear of ransomware attacks or breaches in data through outdated and under-maintained software. While it may be tempting to put off updating your WordPress website’s backend core, it’s important to remember that this is a cornerstone of staying safe online and protecting your business and employees. Our team of experts tackles security issues and maintenance for our clients so they can stay up-to-date and have the peace of mind that their online presence is secure!
Our team of experts is well-versed in identifying inefficiencies and optimization through website accessibility, user experience, mobile friendliness, and much more. To see our full report on technical webmaster services and what our monthly WordPress maintenance plan covers, download the full report.
Do you need help identifying where to begin maintaining your website's health?
We know WordPress websites inside and out and will properly update your website while performing monthly quality checks to ensure everything is working as intended and at peak performance.
Our expert developers alleviate the burden of maintenance off of your team’s shoulders. Best of all, any changes we make, we do overnight, so your visitors won’t notice a thing.
SEO Is the Long-Term Strategy for Deep-Rooted Results
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the creative science of getting certain pages or websites to rank higher in search engines, such as Google or Bing. When someone is looking for a service or product, they start by searching for it and viewing the top-ranked pages, very rarely do they go to the second results page. SEO combines your audience needs with algorithms to make your website rank higher and get those clicks.
When you don’t rank high enough for your ideal keywords, you lose those potential conversions. And if your competitors rank higher, that means they are getting more website traffic and conversions, even if you offer higher quality services or products. You have to prove to Google that your business deserves to be presented to your audience, which means abiding by SEO best practices.
Suppose your business needs help to improve SEO ranking, create content that provides value, or you’re looking for innovative and strategic recommendations to support your marketing efforts. In that case, our website optimization and SEO services are for you!
