How To Spring Clean Your Website & Rank Higher on Google

You’ve meant to spruce up your website for ages, but somehow you just haven’t managed to get around to doing it.

Here at Galactic Fed, we know updating your website can seem like a daunting chore and one that can get put to the backburner behind other essential tasks of business owners. Ignoring your website, even for a short amount of time, can be detrimental to your business’s visibility online. 

To reach more customers and get closer to that coveted top spot on the Google search results page (SERP,) give your website a spring clean!

We’re sharing our tried and tested ways to give your website a much-needed tune-up, which will drive traffic to your website and help your business grow. 

Perform a content audit 

It’s essential to understand precisely how much content you have, where it lives, what it’s about, and how it’s performing. 

What exactly do we mean by content? 

We’re talking about every block of text, imagery, and video that exists on your website. All of your content should speak to your brand and help amplify the message you want to get across to your target audience. 

When looking at each piece of content, try answering these questions:

1. How many people are looking at it and engaging with it?
2. How many customers have you converted with it?
3. Does it reflect your brand and key message?

Don’t be afraid to archive content that’s underperforming. But before you do, make sure to identify why it’s underperforming and plan your next steps based on factual data: should it really be archived or will a quick refresh give it a new life? 

Test your user experience (UX) 

Do you know what your target audience expects from your website? 

How easy is it for your target audience to complete tasks?

Is the navigation on your website as clear and straightforward as it can be?

Is your website accessible and inclusive? 

By reviewing your website’s user experience (UX) and how it fits into the buyer journey, you can make improvements that make it easier for people to do what they came to your website to do. 

You want to guide users on a path towards conversion, from awareness to consideration, and finally, to the decision-making stage:

Source: HubSpot 

It’s a good idea to test how your website’s UX helps or hinders the buyer journey. 

An improved UX can have a massive impact on where your business ends up on Google’s SERP too. From intentional alt text for images to easier navigation, check out our on-page SEO checklist to learn practical ways to improve your website’s UX.

Keep it fresh

Spring clean your website by getting a strategy in place to add new content to your website continuously. Google gives you a freshness score that can improve your search engine rankings and boost traffic from Google if you publish fresh content regularly:

Source: Moz

Try developing an editorial calendar that works for you; most businesses publish an article once a week as a minimum.

Review your website’s metadata

The sometimes ignored meta description deserves your attention when you spring clean your website.

Why?

Because Google is a fan of great metadata and will reward you with a more favorable position in someone’s search results - indirectly. Google looks at click-through rate (CTR,) so if you invest in creating engaging titles and descriptions that people can’t help but click on, you’re likely to move up the SERP organically. 

Spring clean all of your metadata by reviewing titles, headings, alternative text, and descriptions. Our guide to writing the perfect meta description is a great place to start.

Polish your call to actions (CTAs) 

A call to action (CTA) spring clean can do wonders for your organic search ranking, but more importantly, it can help you convert more customers.

Crafting a great CTA takes skill.

Every call to action on your website should:

• tell people to do something, 
• tell them why they should do it, and 
• reflect your brand. 

The best performing CTA’s are concise and take the form of big and bold buttons, using accessible fonts and colors. Bonus UX points if you’ve got a static CTA across all of your pages, located in the same location on every web page. 

Google knows when you convert a customer on your website, whether they purchase a product or service, fill out a form, or subscribe to your mailing list. 

Test your website’s page load speed 

Nobody likes a slow-loading website, especially Google. 

A spinning wheel of doom on one of your landing pages could be hurting where your business shows up in organic search results or, even worse, driving customers away from your website.

Google’s PageSpeed Insights provides a way to test your website and even offers up improvements you can make to fix slow-loading pages. All you have to do is type in your ULR and hit “analyze.” 

Google gives you a page speed score and recommendations for both desktop and mobile. With more and more people surfing the web from their phones, it’s vital your website loads fast.  

Check for broken links and backlinks 

Spring cleaning your website isn’t complete without checking for broken links and backlinks.

Broken links can wreak havoc on your website’s search engine ranking, not to mention the negative impact they can have on your website’s UX.

Broken links are the result of:

• A website removing or deleting the page or content you initially linked to, or
• You accidentally linked to an incorrect URL.

To begin, enter your domain or URL into Ahref’s free broken link checker:

Spring clean your website to boost organic traffic 

We know things can take priority over keeping your website updated. You risk missing out on driving traffic to your website if you leave your website spring cleaning to once a year in the namesake season. 

Performing a content audit will help you analyze your content accurately, and taking a closer look at your website’s UX will make both your customers and Google happy. 

Create a plan to post fresh content regularly and make sure great metadata is the backbone of all of your content.

Polishing up your CTAs and checking your page load speed are must-haves for any website spring cleaning checklist, as is checking for broken links and backlinks. 

If you’re thinking of undertaking website spring cleaning and want a team of experts to help you along the way, send us a message! From SEO to content strategy, Galactic Fed can help you get closer to that top spot on Google, organically.