6 Quick Wins to Help Boost Your Site's Performance
I’ll be the first to admit it can be difficult to find time to make updates to your site when you’re busy running a business. That’s why “quick wins” (not wins that takes months or years to pay off) is like music to my ears.
This post is your cheat sheet to some simple tweaks that take minimal effort but can deliver big results to boost your website's performance. These are tasks we regularly implement and have seen great results from. Let’s jump right in.
1. Update your website’s content
Search engines like Google favor websites that show signs of activity and relevance. Regularly adding new content shows them your site is active and up-to-date. Fresh content will also keep visitors engaged, which can lead to better user experience, which SEO algorithms take into account.
Here are some specific ways to update content:
Update Existing Content: Breathe new life into older blog posts by incorporating recent industry news, statistics, or case studies.
Revamp Work Pages: Update product descriptions with fresh details, high-quality photos, and user reviews.
Create Evergreen Content: Develop informative guides, FAQs, or "how-to" articles that remain relevant long-term and attract consistent traffic.
Target Local Events: If you're a local business, write blog posts about upcoming events or local trends to capture local SEO.
Remember, focus on quality over quantity. High-value, informative content will resonate with visitors and search engines. Lastly, we’ve seen the best results when we update our website at least monthly. For us, that looks like a new blog post or updating our portfolio.
2. Declutter old pages or code
Just like your closet needs a good decluttering every so often, so does your website. Old or inaccurate pages that are still visible in search can negatively impact your site’s performance. Also, unused code or plugins can slow down your site.
Here are a few things to look for in your “spring cleaning”:
Deleted or disable all unused pages
Remove unused code or plugins. If you’re unsure, ask your web designer for guidance.
Check to make sure all links on your site are updated after decluttering
3. Set up a Google My Business listing
Google My Business is a free and powerful tool for local businesses. Creating a listing helps your business information appear accurately and consistently across the web. It also provides a spot where you can add relevant keywords, high-quality photos, and positive customer reviews, which can significantly improve your local search ranking.
Here’s how to set up your listing:
Visit google.com/business
Log in with your Google account
Enter your business name and business address
Choose whether you’re a storefront or a service provider
Choose your Primary business category
Add your phone number and website
Verify your local listing
An easy way to improve your listing is by asking past clients to leave you a review on Google. As part of our process, we send an email to all our clients at the end of the project asking them to leave a review with a link. Currently, we have over 120 reviews!
4. Add a free lead generator
By now it’s clear that providing helpful, high-quality information on your website will help boost performance. To take it a step further, come up with a tool or resource that is relevant and valuable to visitors (and even better, potential clients). Add it to the footer of your site with newsletter block. This has been a very effective way and relatively easy way for us to bring in leads and attract potential customers.
For ideas and inspiration, here’s a deep dive to creating an awesome lead generator.
5. Add a testimonials widget
We know that testimonials provide social proof for visitors on your site which can help build credibility, but there’s more that a testimonials widget can do to help boost your site’s performance.
We use a widget on our site from Elfsight, which has our Google Reviews linked in a popup in the bottom right. Not only does it display our awesome reviews, it also adds something called schema markup.
Schema markup is essentially the language search engines use and using it can help boost your site’s SEO. Elfsight’s All-in-One Reviews widget contains the needed markup for Google, which makes our reviews and rating automatically appear in search results.
Visit Elfsight’s site to add yours. We’re here to help if you get stuck!
6. Incorporate internal links
Adding links within your content, either through buttons, hyperlinked text, or images, is a surprisingly effective way to boost your site’s performance. It helps search engines understand your website structure and improves user navigation. This keeps visitors engaged and distributes "link juice" throughout your site, which can improve overall SEO.
Here are a few spots internal links can easily be added:
From content on your homepage, like a Services section or About section
In blog posts where you reference your services, case studies, or other relevant blog posts
In your portfolio or case studies, pull in additional work and link to the corresponding pages
In a call to action section, asking visitors to take a next step