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I’m having my car MOT’d this week – I can’t say I’m looking forward to it as it usually fails on something! Each year we have to put our cars through this test to make sure they’re roadworthy, and it made me think that we should do the same for our website from time to time, as often the smallest things can make a difference to a website performing effectively.
So what should be included in a ‘website MOT’?
Here’s a few things that you should be checking at least each year to make sure your site isn’t missing any tricks, or even sending visitors away:
1. 404 page – have you got one and is it working? See my previous blog post on 404 pages.
2. Broken links – you’d be surprised how broken links can creep into a website, even with the most diligent programming. Xenu link checker is a very useful tool for checking if your site has any broken links, and enable you to fix them. Hopefully your 404 page (see above) is saving you from losing visitors from any broken links you may have.
3. Robots.txt – I’ve also previously written about this, and if you’ve areas of your site you don’t want indexed, make sure you include them in your robots.txt. It’s good practice to include one as (most) search engines will read them before indexing a website.
4. Sitemap – if your site only has a few pages, then you needn’t worry too much about having a sitemap (a page listing all the pages of your website), but as your site evolves and gets bigger, it’s worth having one to help the search engines index your pages more efficiently (particularly if some are buried a few clicks away from the home page), and can help visitors find the information they’re after if they get lost.
5. Google Maps – make sure your site is listed in Google Maps, particularly if you service a particular geographic area and your business is location specific.
6. Google Products – selling products on your site? Get them listed for free in Google Product search.
7. Meta tags – review all the meta tags on each page of your site. Are they unique to the content of the page? Are they included at all? Do they contain your target keywords? Your title tags and meta descriptions are important not just for rankings (especially the title tag), but how your website is presented to potential visitors in the search engines.
8. Images - are your images all properly labeled? If not, you could be missing opportunities for potential visits from image searches.
So, how many of these is your site failing on? Checking these regularly could really make the difference not only to rankings, but even influence whether or not visitors can actually reach your site.
About Sam
Sam McArthur is an internet marketing consultant with 12 years in the industry. She helps professional service businesses with their internet marketing strategy, helping them to see significant results from their online marketing activities, particularly within the search engines. She also consults on the latest internet tools, technology and best practice techniques.
