Almost every company, entrepreneur, solopreneur, or team has a website. 

It doesn’t matter what field you’re in or whether you sell a product or a service, your website is your online face, and it’s what gets people to buy. 

If you’re a brick-and-mortar store, this doesn’t exclude you—research shows that over 80% of people do an online search before buying in-store! 

But the reality is, you can’t just set up a website once and leave it at that. 

Website traffic fluctuates, Google algorithms change, and content trends come and go. 

If you want your website to be an effective tool rather than the digital equivalent of an advertising flyer, you need to know how to review your website properly… 

And then do it on a regular basis. 

If you’ve never reviewed your own site, then now is a good time to do it. Here’s why, what, and how to do it! 

Why Review Your Website? 

If your products or services don’t change and you don’t have a blog that puts out content regularly, why should you review your website? 

While your website is under your control (mostly), the rest of the internet isn’t. 

SEO changes. 

Google algorithms get updated. 

Things go out of date. 

Content trends. 

Data changes. 

Your website may have been ranking well 3 years ago, but that may be very different today. 

Reviewing your website on a regular basis ensures that you stay up-to-date, relevant, and searchable. 

Otherwise, you could be missing out on a lot of traffic! 

What Needs Reviewing? 

Learning how to review your website isn’t hard. All you need to know is what to look for and how to optimise it. Here’s what I recommend looking at. 

Audience 

It’s a good idea to think about your audience upfront. 

Everything from tone of voice to design should cater towards your intended target market. 

This is something you should keep in mind throughout your website review, so you can change things where necessary as you go. 

For example, if your main target market is young, hip, Steampunk fans, then having a black and white, one-page site with formal language just isn’t going to do it. 

On the other hand, if you’re targeting over-60s with a strong family slant, then you aren’t going to use slang, curse, or have a bright, overbearing design. 

It’s a good idea to ask someone who fits the demographic of your intended audience to check out your website. 

Set them a few specific tasks to do, like finding your prices or reading some blog posts. 

Get feedback about the ease of navigation, design, and language. 

SEO 

When you built your website, you may have chosen a specific keyword to focus on so your site could rank highly. 

But years down the line (or even months), the relevance of that keyword may have changed. 

I highly recommend seeing how your keywords are performing using Google Search Console’s “Performance Report”. 

This will give you some indication of your traffic and how you’re ranking for certain keywords. 

I’m not saying you NEED to pick a new keyword and revamp your whole SEO strategy. 

If your keywords are still good, then keep them. 

But it’s essential to make sure that everything is optimised. 

Check your meta descriptions, SEO titles, readability, ALT text on pictures, and formatting on website pages and blog posts. 

If your basic SEO is already good, check out Backlinko’s post on SEO in 2022 to find some more advanced strategies that could boost your rankings. 

Links 

A broken link is when you have a hyperlink in your text that goes to a page that no longer exists. 

This is likely to annoy people on your site, but not only that, your Google ranking can suffer if your users have a negative experience on your site. 

You can find free tools to check for broken links—I have a list here—and you can either replace them manually with something appropriate or use your CRM to redirect them. 

Social Shares 

Regardless of whether or not you’re active on social media (you should be, no matter your business!), your website should be easy for others to share. 

If you haven’t already, make sure that every page—especially blog posts—can be shared quickly and easily. 

The best way to do this is to add a social media share widget. 

This places sharing buttons on each page so readers can share to their chosen platform with just a click. 

If you already have them, check your stats. 

If they aren’t performing well, consider changing their design so they’re easier to spot. 

Alternatively, you can adjust their placement so they’re seen more easily. 

At the same time, make sure your own social media icons are easily found if people want to follow you. 

Content 

Well-written, valuable, well-formatted, and SEO-optimised content wins more traffic than paid ads. 

Almost every time! 

But you can’t just blurb out any old content. 

You also can’t rely on old content to continue to get new traffic. 

Content trends change. 

So does data. 

So do processes… Tools… Strategies… Methods… And more. 

It’s in your website’s interest to keep your content up to date. 

This could mean updating old posts or writing new, value-packed ones. 

Either way, a content audit is an important part of reviewing your website. 

Mobile Optimisation 

Mobile-friendliness is also a factor that can change how Google ranks your content. 

Recent stats show that close to 60% of web traffic is from mobile phones. 

If your website isn’t optimised to look good and be functional on mobile… 

Your chances are cut in half. 

You can check the mobile-friendliness of your website using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test here. 

User-Friendliness 

We’ve all experienced a website that just didn’t work the way it’s supposed to. 

It’s frustrating… 

And chances are you hopped off of it pretty quickly. 

That’s what happens if your website isn’t user-friendly. 

You can have the best product or service, the most attractive prices, and the most valuable content… 

But if it’s hard to find it on your site, people won’t stick around. 

Get someone else to browse through your website and give you feedback. 

Focus on: 

• Can you find prices easily? 
• Is it apparent what you do? 
• Is your contact information easy to access? 
• Can you find the blog easily? 
• Is there a search function? 
• Is everything in a logical place? 

Conclusion 

A website is an important tool to have, but if you aren’t optimising it to get traffic and leads, you’re sitting on a dead battery. 

It’s almost like a living thing! Just like you need to water your plants regularly or check in with your significant other often, your website needs to be flexible and dynamic. 

Checking stats and analytics might not be your thing, but I can guarantee putting a bit more effort into your website will yield great results. 

And the best news is that learning how to review your website and fix small things is not hard. 

Follow the steps here and you should see a noticeable improvement in your traffic. 

Anything else you think should be on this list? 

Let me know in the comments!