There are actually some on-site SEO problems that could hamper the performance of our website. Here are things we should do to improve them:
- Less effective keywords: Keywords are essential and they determine not only the topic of our content, but also the main theme of our website. Users are looking for keywords in major search engine platforms, such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and others. In fact, there are thousands of search engines out there. However, prioritizing our effort on three major platforms; Google, Yahoo and Bing, should be enough. There are many ways to improve the effectiveness of keywords in our website. As an example, we could keep the keyword density to under 5 percent in each block of content. We should be aware that keywords placements are also essential. We should place our primary keywords on the titles, headlines and first sentences; so people would know what they will obtain. These keywords should offer more value and it is important that search engine bots consider them as “valuable”. This will help us to further improve positioning in search results.
- Low page views: This is a simple, but telling metric. In general, page views determine how many pages people open when they visit our website. Obviously, the longer, the better. This would indicate people find that there is something interesting in our website. If people only check one website before they bounce, then, there’s something wrong with our website. We should encourage people to drill deeper into our website and open more pages. There are a few ways we could do this. A more straightforward way is by using a navigation bar that can take us to different zones or pages of the website. In this case, we could make sure that the bar will appear on all pages consistently. We could also encourage people to stay longer by embedding specific text links. These links can be generated dynamically under the main content in the webpage. They could be represented as image thumbnails, article titles and brief description.
- Low inbound links: Low inbound links could happen if there are a few websites that link to our website. The more inbound links the better. First of all, we should be able to show to other related websites that we can become trustworthy sources. We could collect enough inbound links only by becoming the authority website in specific topics. Becoming an authority website would require some effort and time. In general, we should consistently provide, solid and information content that could show others about our expertise and authority, This will encourage other site administrators to link to our website, if we are considered as a trustworthy reference.
One big question that we need to answer is where people go after they leave our website. They may simply click the back button to return to previous website or to search engines. However, in many cases, they just simply close the web browser tab that contains our website. Either way, we should determine what people do immediately after they leave our website. If they don’t find something worthwhile in our website, it is quite likely they that they are still looking for specific information. If they go to previous pages, then they could find our website “inadequate” in providing specific information. However, they may simply perform the comparison shopping and they may return only if they decide we have better prices compared to others. In some cases, they just want to kill time until it is the time to do something else. If people return to Yahoo, Google or Bing, then it is likely that they don’t find something useful in our website.
In this case, it is a good idea to review our information. We may need to review our product descriptions. They could be too brief and don’t provide something more compared to other online sellers. We should also review our messages and it is important to make sure that we explain about specific topics clearly. In order to improve values, we could add more pictures, so visitors could see something compared to other website. In order to show that we are an active member of an organization in the industry, we may consider adding new logos. There are actually tools that help us to track where people go after they leave our website. Although they may not be able to explain why visitors don’t do something desirable, we should still be able to make a conclusion. We should be aware that visitors are simply jumping from one site to another. It can be somewhat tricky t determine why people leave people our website and it is often important to start a special mission to know what’s missing in our website. This single task could directly help is lower bounce rate, increase page views and lower clickthrough rate.
The bottom line is that our website should be designed to meet specific objectives. People should find it easy to perform specific actions, such as completing a form, subscribing to newsletter or picking up the phone to call our customer service department. If our website isn’t performing based on our expectation, the solutions could be found by checking where people go and what they do after they leave the website. We should use multiple online tools to find out things that could perform poorly on our website. In fact, with a few small changes, it possible to turn an underperforming website into something that’s healthy and robust. Genuine websites are not only intended boost sales but developed with a complete sincerity to benefit users with many great things. This should encourage people to stay longer and they don’t have to go anywhere else.
