Dust off your mouse and grab your website administrative login, its time to clean up your website.

If you’re running late on your spring cleaning, its ok, you have a week before summer. Your website and online presence all need to be cleaned up regularly so why not now? There are many reasons you need to clean up your website.

Keep Your Website Professional

Take the time to click through your website as a user. You’d be surprised how many updates you find that should be made, or realize that you have additional information available but it hasn’t been added to the website yet. If your homepage is still displaying information about a past event as “upcoming” you are wasting prime space and sending the wrong message to your visitors.

Website Load Time

Cool websites look great on a large monitor and can be programmed to be responsive to mobile screens, but there is an extra part to this: Load Time. Website speed issues will cause a visitor to leave your site before they even see what your cool website has to offer.

Some steps to take to decrease your load time:

• Get a great website host, page speed starts with how fast files are served by your web host. There is not one perfect solution for hosting your site but do not mindlessly sign up for a hosting plan without researching the performance and reviews of your potential hosting.
• Decrease the number of plugins being used on the website. There’s a good chance your website is not using half the plugins you have installed, and there are huge security issues if your plugins are not kept up to date too.
• Clean up outdated posts and articles on your website. Those articles can add to website load time.
• Optimize your website images, use a photo editing program to save images to be website optimized in size before uploading to your website. Delete images from your media library that are no longer displayed on your website.

Consumer Confidence

With fake reviews circling the internet and companies like Yelp & Amazon suing those selling or creating fake reviews, its important to create an online experience users can trust. Start by sending review request emails to verified purchasers as a way to collect authentic content.

Don’t edit reviews, not even grammar errors, they actually help build authenticity in the eyes of your customers.

Increase Search Engine Optimization

Keeping your website load time down is an important piece to search engine optimization, but have you given thought to what services or message your organization is wanting to communicate right now? Now is a good time to check what SEO keywords are on your website and match them to your goals. Where are they being used? Are image names and alt tags set to coincide with your goals?  Are the keywords in titles and content?

But I Hate Cleaning

Hate is a strong word, its more likely you just don’t have time to clean up your website, or its all overwhelming to you. Its time to call in a professional. Give Appletree MediaWorks a call, we’ll talk with you about your online goals and can provide our professional services at an affordable price.