Site performance is important for 2020. Search engines want to establish that a site should be respected, is presented well, works on mobile (as well as desktop), and loads quickly too. Any slip-ups in these areas and it could be detrimental to what can be achieved online in 2020.
Here are four tips to help your site perform well next year.
Let Visitors Know the Contributors More
Google needs to understand who’s behind a website. Whether it is a bricks and mortar business or purely a digital one, the people matter.
By providing a little biographical information behind the people who pen the blog posts, it lends authority to the proceedings. What has been written about and in what detail covers some aspects of confirming authoritativeness and expertise.
Another aspect is being a brand that other people can trust. Anything that can be done on the website to confirm that the brand should be trusted is worthwhile. That could be featuring a speech given at an industry event by a director or a verified testimonial from another respected business.
Hire an Agency for What Cannot Be Handled In-House
It’s better to acknowledge what your in-house team either don’t know or haven’t demonstrated much competence with in the past. For the new year, it’s sensible to look at what is best outsourced to an SEO agency and set about hiring one.
If you’re in the Minneapolis area, then a good Minneapolis SEO agency worth considering is the Snap Agency. They provide a wide range of search engine optimization services to help local businesses do better locally, nationally or worldwide.
Don’t Ignore Page Descriptions
While it’s common to ignore META description tags because they no longer change the ranking of a page, they can make another difference – they boost the click-through rate on the search page.
The description shouldn’t be longer than 155 characters for the desktop. That applies to Google, but Bing and Yahoo can be longer at 165 characters if you’re only targeting their search pages. However, for mobile, it’s another matter. The description will often be truncated down to just 120 characters.
Create a unique description for each page that’s a maximum of 155 characters. But also look at how it will appear when chopped down to just 120 characters. Does it make sense to mobile users now?
Site Speed
The site speed is more important than ever. It must be under three seconds or Google may penalize the site ranking. Between 1-2 seconds is fairly typical and usually achievable. Below one second loading time is exceptional.
If you’re using a content management system like WordPress, then try a caching plugin such as WP Rocket or WP Fastest Cache. This reduces what’s loaded with each new page viewed. It’s also sensible to include a compression plugin to crunch down what’s being downloaded by the visitor when viewing a page. A plugin like WP Super Minify does an excellent job of speeding up a site.
Also, don’t ignore upgrading your web hosting plan to something faster, as this can make a huge difference once the site is fully optimized.
Site performance is affected by different factors. While web server speed and caching matter, there are other aspects that play an important role in the success of a site. So, don’t be overly focused on one area and miss the forest for the trees.
