7 Tips To Dust Away Your Website’s Cobwebs

It’s my favourite time of year – it’s the spooky season! It’s time to get out the box of Halloween decorations, drape the house in orange foliage, pretty pumpkins, autumn scented candles and really get into the spirit of things. But while you’re hanging up the fake cobwebs in your living room, ask yourself this – how’s your website looking? Is it fresh and vibrant? Or is it gathering some dust and cobwebs of its own? 

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Don’t worry – most of us neglect our websites at one point or another. But if you want your website to generate results, it’s important you give it some love and care every once in a while. These tips are fresh from our wicked webmaster, and will give you some quick wins to brush the cobwebs off your website and get it running smoother and faster in no time.

Add Fresh Blog Content

If there’s one thing I know it’s that Google absolutely loves fresh blood, oh oer.. ♀️✨.. I mean, content! So the best thing you can do is feed it! But I come across a lot of business owners, especially when doing rebrands, who feel like they should be limiting the amount of content on their site by deleting older blog posts. While that might sound sensible in theory, in reality, it’s one of the worst things you can do.

Google sends out its spooky spiders to trawl your website on an almost daily basis, and they are constantly checking for content. By removing your old blog posts, you’re effectively killing your SEO efforts dead. So rather than make a mummy out of your website this Halloween, just keep adding fresh blood to your blogs instead – it all helps!

Cull Your Media Library

Speed is of the essence when it comes to websites. If you want to rank highly on Google, you need to ditch the Zombie shuffle and opt for a sprinting werewolf instead. One of the simplest ways you can do this is by doing a cull on your media library.

Any old images you aren’t using should be deleted entirely (this frees you up some space too), and if you have any particularly big images in there, it’s worth casting a shrinking spell on them so that they are quicker and easier to load. Oversized images are one of the big causes of website sluggishness, so let’s take them out of the equation and watch your website take off.

Have you ever been on a website and clicked on a broken link, only for it not to work, or to take you somewhere you didn’t expect? It’s frustrating, right? Enough that maybe you even leave the website altogether? If you know how annoying it is, then this is the last thing you want for your own website! Take 5 minutes out of your day to go through your website and check all of the links are working and going where they should. This will improve user experience and reduce your bounce rate too.

I have a handy tool, that I recommend you use to check for any broken links:

Free Online Broken Link Checker

Do a Plugin Audit

Most websites will use plugins of some sort to support their functionality. The most common are around design and SEO, but you could have plugins for things like e-commerce, downloads and anti-spam too. Plug-ins will update automatically, they will also sometimes turn themselves off, or remain active in the background even if they aren’t needed anymore.

These all add weight to your website and get it running ghoulishly slow. Old plugins could also stop newer plug-ins from working correctly and cause all sorts of problems for you. So make sure you give them a check and delete any old plugins you don’t need. 

Check Your Security

When the undead are at your door, the best thing to do is put up a good strong defence to stop them from getting in. Now just imagine that the undead are actually viruses and hackers, and your door is your website. Your security protocols are incredibly important, so you need to keep them up to date.

A lot of the time this means just running some updates. Developers release updates, patches and bug fixes for plugins and themes all the time, whenever they find a new weakness. If you don’t apply those updates, you’re essentially leaving a big hole in your website security and holding the door open to hackers. If you’re not sure what your security protocols are like, ask a professional to check for you.

Test Responsiveness

In web terms, responsiveness means your website works and displays properly on all devices. Phones, tablets and computers. This used to be an optional thing, but now it’s more of an essential.

Having a non-responsive website means your users will have a bad experience, you will turn away potential customers, and your Google ranking will drop significantly. If your website isn’t responding, time to give it some CPR and bring it back to life!

Keep Branding Consistent

Finally, make sure your branding is consistent across the website. This seems a little out of step with the other points, but hear me out. Your website is like your shop window, and your branding is like your display products. You want to make sure it looks its best at all times.

This means you should keep the same fonts, images and colour palette across the whole website, so customers don’t get confused by sudden changes in style. By keeping your branding consistent you’re reinforcing your message and instilling confidence in your customers. If you aren’t sure what your branding is, it might be time for a brand health check-up.

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