Freshen Up Your Website
Your home isn’t the only thing that needs some sprucing up now and then. If you have a website, it requires your attention regularly, too. To be clear, you should be keeping your site fresh constantly (this is for a number of reasons, and search engine optimization is a big one because Google likes when it can tell a website isn’t abandoned), but springtime is a great way to remind yourself to do a deep clean. Feel free to treat this as your to-do list.
Deep Clean Page Titles & Meta Descriptions
Every page, project, and blog on your site should have a title and description attached to it. Your page title is exactly what it sounds like. It tells you the exact page you’re on when visiting a website and shows up on search engine results pages as a brief summary of what can be found on that page, project, or blog.
Spruce Up Alternative Text
This one is important when it comes to accessibility. Alternative text, or “alt text” is a short description attached to an image on a website that helps explain what the image is. This is especially helpful to folks visiting your website while using a screen reading device (something used by people who are blind or visually impaired to help them navigate and interact with websites).
What Images Need Alt Text?
Most images on your website should include alternative text. However, there is a general rule that if the image is purely decorative, the alt text can be left out of it. Additionally, if you have an image with a caption next to it, that image doesn’t really need alternative text because the caption already handles that explanation.
How Descriptive Does Alt Text Need to Be?
Alternative text should be short and to the point. Let’s say you have an image of a pink flower on your site. Your alt text could be “a closeup of a pink flower in a garden.” This is a clear, concise description of the content of that image. It’s that simple, even though it may be a bit time-consuming. The best piece of advice I can give is to add your alt text each time you upload a new image so you never have to go through a large batch in one sitting.
Make Sure Links Work
This one is pretty self-explanatory. Go through each page and post of your website and make sure that every one of your links is working properly. Address them as needed. Also, if any links are leading to pages outside of your website, make sure those links are marked “nofollow.” This essentially means that you won’t lose any “SEO juice” when a user clicks the link to leave your site.
Check Your Media Gallery
Your media gallery can become a bit of a junk drawer for your website. No one wants that.
Toss Out Unused Files
If you have a bunch of images, PDFs, or other files in your media gallery that aren’t showing up on your live site (either you’ve deleted them, replaced them, or uploaded them and never used them), get rid of them. These files can add up and really slow down your website. Double-check they’re not being used anywhere on the site before you do it, though!
Optimize Images
When you upload images to your site, make sure they’re not bigger than they need to be. There’s no real hard and fast rule to how large an image is, but my personal experience is that anything over 1200 pixels is unnecessary. The best option is to resize images before uploading, but WordPress allows you to make those resizes happen post-upload if you forget. Again, this is one of those seemingly small steps that can quickly help boost your site speed.
Schedule a Website Audit
Taking a look at your website’s content every now and then is crucial to maintaining it. We offer in-depth and custom website audits for business owners who may not have the time or expertise to do it themselves. If that sounds like you, hit us up for more info.