A lot of small-business owners are too busy to worry about updating their website. They got a new website design 5-10 years ago and it seems to work fine (at least, they hope).

In this post I want to share with you a case study of a website I recently analyzed. As I went through the analysis I found the same problems I find in 90% of small-business websites.

Watch this video to learn some tips:

Title & Heading Tags

As I have stated before, building a new website will not guarantee you will be listed in the top 10 of popular Google searches for your industry. It may take some additional SEO work to get there. But, it is essential that Google at least understands what you are. If you are a property management company you don’t want Google thinking you are a quilting shop. If they think you are selling fabric swatches then you don’t even have a chance to be ranked on the 10th page of Google, let alone the first page.

Audit your title and heading tags for each page of your website and make sure you are clearly communicating to Google strong keywords for your industry.

What pages has Google indexed?

Here’s a fun exercise…go to Google and type in site:[your business url]. This search will display all the pages Google has indexed from your website. You may be shocked to see what you find. Is there any duplicate content? Is there any content that shouldn’t be listed? By cleaning up the pages on your website, you more likely have a chance to be ranked appropriately.

Again, your website should answer questions!

It’s the biggest opportunity that people are missing on their website. They go with the generic “here’s our mission statement” or “let me tell you about us”, when in reality users don’t care. They have a question in mind and if they don’t find it within the first 10 seconds on your site, they are headed to another website (probably your competitor). I’ve written about this before, so make it happen!

SCROLLING is better than CLICKING (importance of mobile websites)

A good indication of an outdated website is if they have a slider image. These were cool back when Bush was in office but now they are worthless. Over half of the internet is viewed on a mobile device and when users are on a mobile device they would much rather scroll than click. Using a theme that is build around a 1-page format make your site look fresh and up-to-date. A good example of this is the FiddlerStudios homepage.

Consistent Content

I’ve said it ten other times and I’ll say it again. Consistent content will do more for your business than few other activities. Schedule the 30 minutes a day and get it done! That’s how long it took me to write this post. 😉