Roses Are Red. Google is blue...
Too many hearts?  OK, valentines are great. But admit it: Nothing gets the heart pumping like seeing more visitors at your site! These short, dark days are the perfect time to spruce up your site and takes steps towards a more profitable year.
How Do I Look?
As I often harp about, the big search engines constantly update their algorithms. So you do not look the same to these listings as even three months ago. This stuff should matter to you! If you get even one new sale or contact a month from your site, what is that worth? Whether you are a plumber or a large online store, people have to be able to find you, so it's important to periodically re-test and improve your visibility.
Google in particular has made some significant changes in its rankings this year. Facebook has just introduced GraphSearch. And Twitter is now ranking people based on the quality of content that has nothing to do with hashtags.
Keywords? They are so 2005. The problem I often have when first talking to clients is that the disconnect between how rankings really work and how the public thinks they work is so large.
This is not so easy to 'do it yourself.' First of all, you don't have the tools I do, but even more important, most people cannot do this in an really objective way. You typically access your site in the same ways, from the same machine or two and from the same type of browser. You probably have no idea how your site really responds for a wide variety of users. An objective and thorough review is something that should be done at least annually and I'm just the guy to do it.
Keep Up To Date
Many of you have Wordpress or Drupal based sites. Both of these have undergone fairly significant updates in the past year. We should get these updates installed for you and do a review of your hosting service. Two big reasons:
Security: Yes, it matters. I'm not too worried about you being targeted by the bad guys. I am concerned that most of you are hosted by mega-sites like GoDaddy and Amazon. Your site may not be targeted by the bad guys, but their servers most assuredly are. And when your host gets hit? You get hit. So keeping your site patched is essential.
Features: These updates include new options to make your site more useful and easier to maintain. For example, in the past year Wordpress has completely redone their image library system. This makes it much easier to for you to create your own extremely nice image carousels without having to call me. Let's get you trained to use this stuff to make more visitor more happy...er. Happier. Yeah, that's the ticket.
I can't say it enough times: most sites needs more (and more relevant) images and fewer (but more potent) words. Until now, updating images was tedious for end users. Now? With just a little help, we can get you more compelling pages that are easy for you to freshen up on your own. And we all know that 'fresh' is the key to making your site rank well!
Performance Testing
Have we looked at your site response recently? If not, again you don't know what visitors experience. You assume that your site works the same way every day. Not necessarily. On one site I manage, I've seen average page load vary from 1/2 to over 6 seconds during the past year. Six seconds? After just a few clicks that's annoying enough to make visitors go elsewhere. You could be losing potential visitors and not even know it!
Now why is this? There can be many reasons of course. But it's important to realize that your ISP and your hosting company are not sitting idle waiting for your monthly fee. These companies routinely move servers (and your data) around like boxes in a warehouse; constantly trying to make the most of available space. This process is supposed to be transparent. We've all just shrugged from time to time when we see a site that is suddenly 'slow'. Sometimes it's a busy internet. But sometimes, it's a change at your host or ISP that needs attention. I can run tests and get to the bottom of it.
——————————
As I always say, I know you're busy. Hopefully my occasional nags help you recognize that your site needs the same regular maintenance all your valuable properties do. But even if you don't have a thing for me to work on at present (shocking but possible) just drop me a line anyway and let me know how things are going; web-wise or otherwise. It's always good to hear from you.
Wishing you a romantic and prosperous 2013.
|
