Today we’re going to start fixing your site’s problems.
First up:
Your user experience.
We need to fix bad first impressions as soon as possible.
Why?
Because happy users equal higher rankings.
The quicker and easier your site is to use, the happier your users (and Google) are going to be.
Step #1: Pass The Google Mobile-Friendly Test
If you have this issue it is the most important to fix.
Why?
Because Google is now a mobile-first platform. They will index your mobile page before your desktop page.
That means:
- Your desktop site will be judged on its mobile user experience
- More traffic will come to your site from mobiles
So your site better be mobile ready.
In 1x year of Google going mobile first, I’ve seen mobile traffic increases of up to 436%:
Even without these spikes, mobile traffic increase is around 80%.
You can only imagine where this will be in 5x years time.
Your site must pass the mobile-friendly test to even stand a chance of ranking.
This is not optional.
How do you fix the issues?
Truth is, there’s no easy answer!
If you are on WordPress or a similar platform you can just install a WordPress theme that is mobile responsive.
If you choose a new theme, you can either:
- Follow my advice here
- Buy my custom-made responsive theme
- Use something like Astra (which we used to build most our sites)
But if you are not using WordPress or another popular CMS you will need to consult with a developer or designer…
…but if that’s the case, the conversation should be about how to migrate your site to WordPress to future proof it.
Step #2: Fix Your Major User Experience Issues
Remember the last two user experience columns of your spot check test?
You’re now going to fix all of those issues.
My site has mobile issues like:
- Image placement
- Headers don’t fit
- Videos get cut off on the right-hand side
All of these are fixed with some simple tweaks to:
- Content
- CSS
- Plugins
For example, I was able to fix the video formatting problem by using the YouTube responsive embed feature from this plugin.
If you are unsure of how to fix any of these problems there’s a number of solutions for you:
- Ask in the Facebook group
- Look for online tutorials
- Hire someone on Fiverr
Whatever approach you take, be specific about each issue, including any errors and relevant screenshots along with links to each page with the issue.
A Note About Popups
If you use full screen popups to collect email addresses or display a call to action then you are hurting your search rankings.
Instead you should replace these with floating bars like this that I created in OptinMonster–
That way you can still grab someones attention without blocking their reading experience.
Final Thoughts…
Take your time solving these problems.
Both of these steps are mandatory because they will set the foundation for epic SEO results.
If you miss them out, well…
You’ll just be wasting an awful lot of your time and money on the next steps because your site MUST BE mobile responsive to compete.
But once you’re done fixing these issues, let’s move onto your open graph tags and social markup…