How many of you small business owners really know what your website is trying to tell you?
Believe it or not, your website is so much more than just the portal from which you operate your digital emporium. It is packed full of vital clues about your customers, your industry, your competition and even your position within the marketplace itself. The trick to true success is knowing where to look, and what to do with this information once you find it.
Many businesses are beginning to realise the true potential of their website and are employing the services of a website analyzer to help them take full advantages of the available opportunities. In addition, performing a full site analysis should help you uncover any potential damaging aspects of your website, such as toxic links or web pages that no longer resonate with your customers or brand.
There are a couple of ways to uncover your website’s secrets; some of these can be found by taking a look at the data provided by a web analytics program, others can be found by analysing the back links your site has attracted. Both will provide you with a unique insight into both the opportunities and threats facing your business.
Bad Links
Toxic links could be having a very negative effect on your website’s performance within the search engines. If your site has suddenly dropped in rankings you could have been hit with an algorithmic penalty due to potentially toxic links.
Performing a back link audit will show you whether your site is over optimized in any area. Maybe you have been over-using a particular set of anchor text during a content marketing campaign, or maybe you have been building links in one particular area for far too long.
Other backlinks to be aware of are any poor quality links, links that were purchased, or links coming from sites with no relevance to yours.
Site Analysis
There is a wealth of data sitting within your web analytics program, and a proportion of quality time should be spent every day/week/month/year analyzing this information and acting upon it.
Here are some of the main areas to review:
Keywords
Keywords are the words and phrases used by your visitors to find your site. Take some time to uncover anything you may have overlooked when putting together your marketing plan.
Top Content Pages
These are your most popular pages, and the ones that visitors spend the most time on. Compare these pages to others within your site to establish what is working well and what’s not.
Bounce Rate
The bounce rate shows you how many people quickly left your site after only visiting the page they landed on. It’s a good indicator as to how interesting and informative your site is, and will show whether you need to review the content to make it more customer-centric and engaging.
Traffic Sources
This will show you how many people visited your site as a result of an internet search, found your site directly or were referred from a different website.
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