Websites are essential to the success of a business, whatever the sector. . It’s therefore very important that they are well-designed and contain good quality content to make sure that they serve your customers well.
Our many years of designing and building websites for clients in different industries mean that we are often asked to cast our expert eye on other websites to suggest improvements. With our vast experience, we’ve noticed the same mistakes being made and thought it would be helpful to point out our top three and tell you how to fix them.
1. Outdated Images
Images are a great way to showcase your work on your website; especially if what you do is visual. They’re also great to break up text and make your website more engaging.
Having said that, it’s important to make sure you update them. This applies more to websites that have been live for an extended period of time, as images can become outdated. Showing something fresh that your audience may not have seen before can spring new life into your website, making it feel new while not actually changing the design or layout of the website. Google and other search engines will recognise new images (with ALT text – see below!) as new content to your website and this will help to boost your website’s organic SEO. Ultimately increasing your ranking on Google or other search engines.
How to fix outdated images on a website
What we recommend is to allocate time every six months to go through the images on your website and change them up. Whether that be simply updating photos of the team, or swapping a stock photo for a different one.
2. Not Including ALT Text
Speaking of images, you would be surprised at the amount of websites that upload them without ALT text. Providing ALT text for your images is a necessity when it comes to accessibility. Screen readers can’t detect text that overlaps images, therefore alt text is required so that the image can be described to the user. Adding ALT text can also have a significant organic SEO as, put simply, search engines can’t read pictures – they can only read words. By describing uploaded images with keywords and search terms, search engines will be able to understand them and rank them in relevant search results.
How to add ALT text to images
Adding ALT text to your website images can be done through the backend of your website. Usually through the media gallery, you’ll find somewhere to write ALT text for each image. If you’re unsure, it’s always best to speak to your web professional, if you don’t have one, we’d be happy to help.
3. Lack of Common Phrases and Keywords
When it comes to writing the content for your website you need to make sure that you are including keywords and phrases that your potential customers would use. By using common terms that are related to your business, search engines will be able to rank your website in relevant search results. Increasing your search engine ranking and ensuring that your website is associated with search terms that your audience are using.
How to write SEO-friendly content
We could write a whole blog post on this! But the main thing is to keep it relevant and always be mindful of what you are writing and who it is for. It’s not going to be beneficial to include phrases that you might search for as a business owner as they could be completely different to the keywords and phrases that your clients search for. So make sure that you know your audience! After all, Google is now ranking websites that are helpful to the target user more highly. You can find out what Google finds unhelpful on websites here
We understand that making sure a website works for your business and its target audience can be difficult. If you’re looking for expert help with your website, we would love to help you. Give us a call on 01903 686858 or email us at info@constructivemarketing.co.uk.