The seven deadly sins that could cause your website to sink in search ranking
You can sometimes feel like a god when you are running your own business as you have to be the master of many skills and be up-to-date with what is happening all of the time, so when your website sees a drop in ranking and a decrease in visitors, it can be worrying.
We want to reassure you that it’s not the end of the world when the traffic driven to your website starts to drop, but it can result in a decrease in sales and a loss of revenue, so it’s best to try to sort out any problems sooner rather than later.
To help you, we’re sharing the seven deadly sins that Leading Motion has recognised can cause your website to drop in search engine results pages (SERPs):
Are you tracking the wrong results?
If you are searching to find your website’s ranking using the same old keywords and phrases that you have used for years, you may be disappointed. Search engines have improved and can now understand natural language more, so use complete sentences and other phrases to search how your website is ranking. It may be time to update your strategy and research again your keywords and key phrases that people may now be using to try to find you.
Website has broken links
First impressions count and if a potential shopper has taken the trouble to search for a business that sells what you have to offer, they are likely to feel very disappointed and disappear elsewhere, if they are told there is an error, and your page can’t be found when they click on your link.
Don’t be lazy, get the link fixed quickly. It could salvage your reputation. There are lots of tools to help you find broken links. Also look at the Crawl Errors on your website and check out suggestions “why broken links can hurt your website and what to do about them" We’re also always here to help you!
Website slow to load
Did you know that the rate at which your page loads is a factor that Google uses to rank your website? In our fast-paced world you need to have a website that loads quickly in order to keep your visitor’s attention. It’s well known that 40% of users are likely to leave your website and go elsewhere if it takes longer than three seconds to load.
Check out the speed your pages load by visiting the free tool Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool
Website not secure
At a time when everyone is worried about being hacked, having good cybersecurity on your website is vital. It’s the reason why some browsers now tell you if a site you’re visiting is secure or not and whether it uses HTTP or HTTPS. Google also takes notice of whether a site is secure when ranking it.
Don’t lose visitors by failing to secure your site with HTTPS. The easiest way is to purchase an SSL certificate, activate it and install it. See “what makes a website secure?
Failing to use search engine optimisation (SEO)
When you run a business, you may not have the time to keep your SEO up-to-date nor the budget to employ someone to do it for you.
We’re happy to give your website a free SEO audit, otherwise you could check out things you can do to stay on top by reading our blogs like “5 actions to SEO your online shop” or “SEO tools”
No new reviews on your website
Google tracks new reviews of your business to rank you, so if you’ve forgotten to ask your customers to give you a testimonial for a while, you may see your website sinking in the ranks.
Make it part of your business growth strategy to always ask customers to give you a review after you’ve done a great job for them or provided a prime product.
Fresh content
We can’t stress enough the importance of regularly posting fresh content on your pages, or new blogs, to draw traffic to your website. You need to show your expertise so give great advice, answer problems that your target audience may face, or entertain them, in order to be picked up as an interesting website by Google crawlers and ranked highly.
Think of new ways to demonstrate your talents in new formats too.
We hope our recommendations help you to have your website ranked on the first page of Google. Remember to maintain a high profile by making it part of your growth strategy to keep yourself updated on the latest trends, best practices, and changes within Google.
If you need any other help or advice, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our experts at Leading Motion.
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