The importance of giving your website a spring clean

As the days get lighter and the weather gets warmer, we all look to freshen things up for spring, such as our homes and our wardrobes, but what about our websites? It can feel like a huge task reviewing your website and running some basic housekeeping, but building in a little bit of time every week to do it will improve your website performance, keep your SEO strong and potentially save larger and more costly issues further down the line.

1) Clean up your content

If your website or blog has been running for a long time, chances are a lot of your older content will need refreshing. Go back through your archives and review the content from the quality of images to your links. If you have a blog post recommending a restaurant that no longer exists or pixelated images from old mobile phones, get them updated, or be tough and remove anything truly out of date that can’t be refreshed.

2) Fix any broken links

There is nothing more annoying than visiting a website and clicking on numerous broken links. As your website and business developed, you will have changed or even removed pages, and links to external websites may no longer exist. As well as frustrating the user, broken links can impact your SEO ranking, so this is an incredibly important bit of housekeeping.

3) Say hello

This is such a simple way to keep on top of your website maintenance and ensure you aren’t missing potential customer queries. Test your contact forms on your website to check they still work because theme updates, additional plugins and website migrations can stop contact forms from working without you knowing. If you have a listed business email address linked to your website, send it an email from your website and check they are being received and not going into junk folders. Lastly, if you have social media icon links on your website, check they still direct correctly, and if you didn’t have social media when you first launched but now do, get them added in.

Following our top housekeeping tips will keep your website looking fresh, performing well and your customers inspired. For more tips, contact the Excalibur Digital team today.