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Spring cleaning usually involves cleaning out the shed, tackling all those boxes in the attic, decluttering the house or tidying up the garden. What usually doesn’t cross my mind is cleaning one of the most important parts of your business <\/span>\u2014<\/span> your website<\/span><\/p>\n Your website is an introduction to who you are and what services you offer. If your site is slow, has outdated content, or broken links, will it keep visitors (aka leads) interested? Or will they find another place to answer their questions and meet their needs?<\/span><\/p>\n Don’t let the April showers get you down. Here are five ways to update your website this spring.<\/span><\/p>\n Expired Expired Expired<\/p>\n Just as food can expire, so can its contents. Check out your articles and papers. If they are five years or older, they should be removed from your website unless the topic is still truly relevant to the current market and your practice. <\/span><\/p>\n As you review your articles and blogs, check for outdated numbers, dates, and statistics. Updating these numbers will have a much bigger impact than leaving the numbers from two or more years ago. It will show that you are aware of what is happening in the industry.<\/span><\/p>\n Also, use this opportunity to identify content that can be updated and reused. This content is known as perennial, meaning it is relevant at any time. Small tweaks, updates and additions to these pieces of content can add value and attract potential customers.<\/span><\/p>\n If it’s broken: fix it.<\/p>\n A broken link is a link on a website that no longer works because the website has moved, no longer exists, or an incorrect URL has been entered. Broken website links can be frustrating for users. Not only will it show them that your website is out of date, but it will also prompt them to leave your site. <\/span><\/p>\n Fixing these broken links is crucial to maintaining a healthy and functional website. It helps improve user experience, search engine optimization (SEO), website reputation and performance.<\/span><\/p>\n To start <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>. Siteimprove has a useful tool for checking broken links.<\/span><\/p>\n Page Speed<\/p>\n Nobody has the patience to wait for a video, image or page to load on a website these days. When a website loads slowly, the user is likely to get frustrated and probably more times than not, leave the site altogether. That’s why it’s extremely important that your page speed is performing at a high level. <\/span><\/p>\n Page speed not only affects a user’s experience, but it can also affect your search engine ranking. Here are some ways to improve your page speed:<\/span><\/p>\n Optimize Images \u2013 Compress and optimize your website images to reduce load times. <\/span> PageSpeed \u200b\u200b\u200b\u200bInsights<\/span><\/a> i <\/span>Basic web vitals report<\/span><\/a> are tools you can use to check your website’s page speed.<\/span><\/p>\n Keyword updates<\/p>\n If you haven’t updated your keyword strategy to optimize your website in the last year, now is the time. Every second of every day, people ask thousands of questions on the Internet. The keywords in these questions are connected to the content that is provided to the search engines.<\/span><\/p>\n In order to publish your website on the search engine results pages, Google crawls your website periodically. When it has finished crawling your website, it matches your website content to the queries people use in Google searches. Google indicates that your site’s content matches this keyword. With that in mind, you need to be intentional about your website content so that your site appears for keywords that match your business. A pillar of a good SEO strategy is keyword research. To help you with your keyword research, you can use this SEO tool, <\/span>Ahrefs<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n The main purpose of choosing the right keywords and including them in your content, calls to action (CTA), alt text (ALT), etc. is to help your site rank high enough in the search engines. search to generate organic traffic to it. <\/span><\/p>\n
\n\tUse a Content Delivery Network (CDN): A CDN can help improve page speed by caching and serving from servers closer to the user.<\/span>
\n\tEnable browser caching: Browser caching allows the browser to store files on a user’s device so they don’t need to be downloaded again on subsequent visits.<\/span>
\n\tReduce the number of plugins: Check all the plugins you have installed and remove unnecessary ones.<\/span>
\n\tUse a faster web host: Consider upgrading to a faster web hosting provider if your current provider is slowing down your website.<\/span><\/p>\n