2023/2024 Website Essentials – 10 Key Things to Check About Your Website
You’re busy, so I will skip the couple paragraphs of build up and exposition and just get into it:
All of these items below are essential foundational requirements for a small business or project website in 2023/2024.
Can you get by without checking off some of these items? Sure. And you can also live in a house with a bad foundation. But would you want to?
With that said, here we go…
1. Are your site software and your plugins and themes updated? Are backups and auto-updates set up?
Keeping your site software updated is important for security and stability. If you use a paid website service, this may be built in. And for the self-hosted WordPressers out there, major web hosts often include this with their hosting package nowadays. (Though it may need to be enabled in order to start running!)
If it’s not built in, there are many plugins that will help with that, including WP Time Capsule, for which I have a lifetime Unlimited Sites subscription. I’ve been using that to backup and auto-update my sites and all my clients’s sites for years now.
BONUS: Is Your PHP Version Up To Date?
PHP is the software environment that WordPress and many other web softwares run on. If your web host is on top of things they will upgrade this for you automatically or urge you to upgrade it. If not, there will be a warning in the WP dashboard letting you know that your PHP version is outdated. You can’t upgrade it from within WordPress though- that will need to be at your web host, in their control panel, or through their support. (Or via someone like me dealing with it for you. ;-))
2. Do You Have a Valid SSL Certificate Installed?
An SSL certificate is what gets you a little lock up in the address bar of the browser, and allows you to add an s to the http in your web address. It also secures the connection for the visitor, and is basically required for a website these days. Most browsers will warn visitors away from websites that don’t have a valid SSL certificate installed.
Many big web hosts nowadays will provide a basic SSL certificate for your website for free – with greedy GoDaddy being a notable exception. (Though you can still get a free certificate for a GoDaddy hosted site; it just ends up being a little labor intensive.) If you have to pay, a lower end certificate might cost you $40 to $80 a year, depending on what kind of deal you can find.
3. Is the site ranking as it should for the terms it should on search engines?
One basic way to find out is just to search for those terms on Google or Bing (more importantly Google) and see where your website lands in the results. You can also connect with Google Search Console and they will give you a report of what terms you’re showing up for and how many clicks you’re getting from those terms.
4. Is Your Site Mobile-Friendly?
More than half of web traffic is now from mobile devices, and having a mobile-friendly site is a major ranking factor for Google. Not to mention, if your website doesn’t work for a visitor on their phone, you will probably lose them.
You can test your site’s mobile-friendliness here: https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly
5. How Is Your Site Speed?
Site speed — i.e., how fast your pages load and respond — is also a major ranking factor for Google, and a priority for visitors as well.
You can test yours here: https://pagespeed.web.dev/
and/or here: https://www.webpagetest.org/
6. Is Your Site Accessible?
This is about making your site easy to use and understand for people who aren’t able to or choose not to read your site through conventional means. This could mean screen readers or other forms of non-visual rendering of your site, as well as making navigation of the site keyboard- (and now TV remote)-friendly. Having a too-small font size and not having enough contrast between text and background are two easy ways to unintentionally fail the accessibility test. Not having proper “alt text” for your images is another.
For certain industries – especially those bound by accessibility rules in other realms, like housing, etc – having a properly accessible website is the law. And either way, it’s good digital citizenship, and smart business, to make sure the greatest number of people can use and read your website.
You can accessibility test your site for free here: https://www.accessibilitychecker.org/
7. Are Your Google Business Profile and Bing Places for Business profile claimed and filled out?
This is important for a lot of reasons — namely, it will affect your appearance in search results, give your business one of those cool right-side “knowledge panels” (or expand your existing one), probably affect your ranking, allow people to call you with one click from the search results, and enable you to take advantage of a lot of free add-ons and features for your profile, all of which give Google and potential visitors/prospects more depth and context for your business before they even make the call or click on your website.
Search for your business name on Google and Bing; make sure your business profile shows up; if it doesn’t, go to Google Business Profile and Bing Places for Business and search for and claim your listing there.
Once it’s claimed, login and fill everything out that you can. (Description, hours, photos, products and services, etc.) The more you add, the more Google can feature in that side knowledge panel, and the more impressive your business looks.
For a bonus, you can post to that profile much like a social media profile, and the most recent post should show up in the side panel when people search for you, so you can always have the latest messaging there if you choose to take advantage of it.
8. Is Your Name/Address/Phone Number/Website correct around the web (and on your site’s pages)?
In the web game, this is called a NAP (Name/Address/Phone Number) check, and it’s a pain in the butt sometimes, but it’s also an essential prerequisite to having a solid web presence. Not only so that people who find your information on other places on the web find the correct contact information and can get to your website, but also because mentions of your business out there that don’t have the correct NAP stuff run the risk of not being counted towards your business’s and your website’s authority.
This is important for all websites and businesses, but especially for businesses that share a name with another business out there. (Xavier’s Putumayo Exploratorium has a little less to worry about than Jerry’s Deli, or Eastern Heating Company.) But even if you have a unique name, if you have a close competitor in a topical or local search (e.g. “putomayo club”), and all other things are equal, the place with more verifiable citations out on the internet is going to beat the one with less.
Search for your business name and check that the result pages have the correct info; then, search for your prior/outdated addresses, phone #s, or web URLs and see if they are out there attached to the biz; if so, get control of those profiles or listings and get them fixed.
Also, that same NAP info should be at least on your contact page, and ideally on every page of your site (usually in the footer). That way every page on your site is in sync with every other listing of your business on the web. Google will love you (and reward you) for it.
9. On Google Search Console – is your site added, sitemap submitted, pages indexed, errors resolved, etc.?
Google Search Console was mentioned in #3 above as a way to see how your website is performing in search results, but it’s equally or more important as a way to see how Google sees your website itself, and what problems there may be to fix or opportunities there may be to take advantage of.
One opportunity is to directly submit a site map or specific URLs on your website to make sure that the search engines get a full look of all the website content you want them to index. Google will also tell you pages it didn’t index (and why), and any technical errors it’s having with your site, which may be preventing it from reading pages or sending people to the place they’re looking for on your site.
10. Do You Have a Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, GDPR/Cookies Notice, and any others required?
The amount of legalese and notices that business websites are required to provide depends on the type and location of the business, and what exactly the website does, but just about everybody needs to have something in place, either because of a legal requirement or just because it has become a standard expectation.
Terms of Use and Privacy Policy are two of the originals, and the GDPR cookie disclosure is the most recent big one, responsible for that obtrusive cookie policy banner that you’ve surely seen on so many websites. Technically only required for websites that do business with people in Europe, but a good better-safe-than-sorry idea for anyone with a website these days.
Easy to do on WordPress with a plugin. There are also websites that will help you generate these policies for free.
If that list made you feel a little behind the curve, or in over your head, or some other overwhelming metaphor, I’d be glad to help reposition you. Perhaps to being on top of your game, and on the ball–or even better, in the money! :-)
However you phrase it, I can help with any of these items if you need it. Just reach out and we can get you fixed right up.