3 Website Errors You Can Fix Yourself
By David on August 30, 2022 in Conversion Rates Development Speed and Functionality
In this blog post, we will touch upon some technical issues you might encounter with your website and how you can help remedy the situation.
Website Mistake #1: Not Using Google Analytics and Google Search Console
Although some may not think this is a true website error, it is an oversight if you do not have Google Analytics installed on your website along with setting up Google Search Console.
Google Analytics provides valuable insights into how your website is performing and what opportunities for improvement are present.
Check out our guide on how to install Google Analytics on your website and a beginner’s guide that will get you more familiar with how to use this application.
Google Search Console is very important as well. It is basically a direct line of communication with Google. This tool allows you to inform Google about new content that you have created using the inspection tool or submitting an XML sitemap.
Google Search Console also helps you to be aware of any technical issues your website may be experiencing, the current index status of your pages and the keyword insights on what is driving traffic to your website.
After you are signed in with your Google account, head on over to Google Search Console to begin setting up your property.
Website Mistake #2: A Slow Loading Website
If your website is not optimized for load speed and performance, you are already putting yourself at a disadvantage. Not only will this cause a frustrating user experience for your visitors, but it will also influence how Google crawls your website.
Studies show that the longer a webpage takes to load, the more likely that a visitor is going to leave your website. It is a direct correlation that can lead to a higher bounce rate, poor search rankings and less conversions.
A slow website can also have a detrimental effect on how much time Google will spend crawling your website to find content updates and discover brand new content that you want indexed.
Slow websites make Google bots work that much harder to explore your website and can cause you to hit your allotted crawl budget that much faster leading to less discovery by Google.
If you are interested in improving your website’s load speed, check out our methods for measuring speed and steps for better performance.
Website Mistake #3: Broken Links (Internal or External)
Throughout the longevity of a website, there is going to be maintenance needed. One of the tasks you should be doing routinely is to check for any broken links. These links can be to internal or offsite pages.
Broken links cause a frustrating user experience. As a result, you should be running broken link scans on your website and then fixing them appropriately.
It’s an older style application, but our team still likes to use XENU to scan our websites for any broken links.
After running XENU on your website, you will see the status of all active website links. If any links are shown in red text, that means that it is reported broken and should be fixed. Any links shown in green are working properly.
If you right-click on the broken link, and then click URL properties, you can see what pages are linking to it so you can resolve it. You will need to figure out if the broken page you are linking to still exists and if so, update the broken link to use the working URL.
For fixing internal links, you should be familiar with the pages on your site and conduct internal audits from time to time. But for external links that are broken, you may want to do a Google search to see if you can find a working URL to link to. This scenario can happen when blog posts are linking to news articles that can eventually be deleted.
Questions or Feedback?
We would love to hear your feedback if this blog post has helped you. Please feel free to let us know in the comments below.
If you need any questions regarding SEO campaigns or internet marketing, in general, we are here to help. Head on over to our SEO Guidelines & Best Practices page. Our guide will teach you the dos and don’ts for law firm SEO along with what we include in our SEO plans. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance.
