After you’ve analyzed your website’s address, now it’s time to look over the entire package, from home page to contact page and every single page in-between. We’ve discussed in part what it takes to design a site that Google will love and adore and display prominently, but in this section we will delve much deeper into the website’s structure and layout so that you can make your site more aesthetically pleasing and valuable than all the rest.
Always Live, Always Available
Google isn’t going to invest in a website that goes down frequently or even once or twice a month. If the domain you’re auditing experiences any downtime at all, that could harm your search rankings.
Of course, sometimes maintenance is necessary. Even the most secure banking sites have maintenance periods, but customers should be notified far in advance. If the site will knowingly go down in the future, at least present a static page to customers indicating that maintenance is being completed. You may still cause ire in your audience, but you can minimize any frustration the shutdown causes by holding the session in the middle of the night.
Of course, no downtime is ideal. Barring a system check or upgrade, the site should be up 100% of the time, with no exceptions.
You can check for site downtime by contacting the website’s host provider. A record will show when the site has gone down, and most providers will even give you a reason, whether it be a server error or mistake on your end.
To check for downtime in the future, use a tool like Uptime Robot, which emails you every time the site goes down. Knowing when your site went down is ideal, as early detection is key so that you can work on repairing the error quickly.
There are different hosting services you can use. We use and highly recommend Amazon’s hosting servers, as they provide the most uptime and are easy to manage and scale.
Blazing-Fast Load Times
The speed at which your web pages load can have a significant impact on your site’s rankings. Have you ever visited a site that took forever to load? Chances are, you didn’t stick around for very long.
Google’s John Mueller says that your site should take two or three seconds to load, tops.
And according to Aberdeen Group, a mere one-second delay in page load speed can result in a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction, 11% fewer page views, and a 10% loss in conversions.
Below are three ways to determine your website’s load speed. You’ll also be able to determine why it might be loading at a snail’s pace.