Introduction
For businesses of all sizes, their website is much more than a brochure. It is a critical business asset that directly influences the trust, visibility, and revenue generation of that business.
Whilst it can be very tempting to 'set and forget' your website, especially when it's new, any amount of neglect has a consequence. Lost revenue, reduced conversions and security vulnerabilities are just some of the key outcomes.
Therefore, it is very important to regularly maintain your website. From a security perspective, from a usability perspective and an SEO perspective, it is important to keep tweaking and improving your website.
We offer website maintenance that is built around using data and insights to apply the most important fixes first. However, there are some easy steps you can take today.
We are going to outline the 5 steps you can take today to analyse, diagnose and ultimately fix your website. First, though, let's look at a free tool that can help guide you.
Introducing the 80five Site Checker
Reading a blog post like this, or the accompanying ebook, can help you make those quick wins. However, I understand that for many of you, it might help to be guided step-by-step through the process.
For that reason, we have created a free ChatGPT bot to help guide you through the process of checking your site. Welcome to the 80five Site Checker!
Our GPT will walk through the steps with you. When you generate data from each step it can help explain the results and create an action plan for you. It's much more powerful than just reading about it!
You do not need to provide any personal information to use the Site Checker and we will not know if you have used it.
If you do want to continue reading this guide we will move on to exploring the 5 quick wins you can make today.
1. Check your website's speed
Your website's speed is a critical factor in both the user experience and the SEO of your site. As you can imagine, a slow-loading site can lead to a higher bounce rate and lower search rankings. According to Google, 53% of mobile users abandon sites that take longer than three seconds to load.
How you can analyse your site's speed:
Both will run a deep analysis of your Home page and then list reasons why the site might be slower than it could be.
Key actionable steps you can take:
Compress images: Use tools like TinyPNG to reduce image file sizes without compromising quality.
Minify code: Remove unnecessary characters from HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files to reduce their size.
Use a caching plugin: Store static versions of your pages to speed up load times.
Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN): Distribute your content across multiple servers worldwide.
Recheck every month: Run the same analysis every month to check for new issues
2. Improve accessibility
Web accessibility ensures that your site can be used by people with disabilities. This includes those who use screen readers or navigate via a keyboard.
Beyond being a legal requirement in many regions (such as the UK’s Equality Act 2010), accessibility is also good business. You want to include everyone and never purposely or accidentally exclude anyone.
From a website perspective, according to W3C, accessible websites reach a larger audience, rank better in search engines, and improve user satisfaction.
Your website can be deemed inaccessible if, for instance, you are not using alt text. If you have not heard of alt text, it is a description you can add to an image. It helps someone using a screen reader as the software will read the description of the image so help them understand your website visually.
Alt text is just one of the many factors that together form the accessibility of your website.
How can you check accessibility?
By far the best free tool is the WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool. It will run a test of your website and feedback on factors such as alt text, heading hierarchy, and link text.
Key actionable steps you can take:
Add missing alt text
Reorganise headings for logical structure
Replace vague CTA text with meaningful actions
3. Run a broken link check
Broken links hurt both your credibility and your SEO. A 2023 Ahrefs study found that broken links reduce trust and can trigger higher bounce rates.
For search engines, dead links signal poor site maintenance and can lead to decreased crawlability. More importantly, they can be very annoying for the users of your website when a link leads to a dead page.
What is the best free tool for checking links?
To check either one page or a whole website, you can use Dead Link Checker to scan and list any links that are broken or might need further investigation.
Key actionable steps you can take:
Log into your website's CMS and fix or remove broken links
Use a redirection plugin to reroute broken links
Repeat this check every month
4. Review your meta content
The meta title and description of your website's pages can often be the first thing people see about your business. The title and description are the content that is shown about a site in a Google search result.
A compelling meta title improves visibility, while a clear, engaging description boosts click-through rates. According to Backlinko, optimised title tags are one of the most important on-page SEO elements.
How can you audit your titles and descriptions?
Use SEOptimer to quickly assess your current meta titles and descriptions. You can easily review them all at the same time. Plus, it will flag missing tags or irrelevant content and offer general advice.
Key actionable steps you can take:
Make titles clear and relevant (ideally 50–60 characters)
Keep descriptions around 155 characters.
Use your target keywords naturally.
Match the content of your page to the meta content.
5. Improve call-to-actions
Your call-to-actions (CTAs) are the signposts of your website. They direct and guide your users around your website and encourage them to take the key action you want them to take. Whether it is to fill out a contact form, book a meeting or buy a product, CTAs aid in this process.
A HubSpot study found that personalised CTAs convert 202% better than generic ones. Don't go for the basic 'Find out more' or 'Learn more'. It needs to be relevant and unique. CTAs such as 'Unlock your website' or 'Transform your brand' are more powerful than something bland and generic.
How can you improve your CTAs?
Be specific: “Start your 7-day trial” is better than “Click here”
Keep it visible: Place CTAs above the fold and after key content blocks.
Match intent: Align CTAs with user behaviour, for example, a blog reader might be ready to “Learn more”, while a product page visitor may want to “Buy now”
Do check out the HubSpot CTA guide for real-world examples from leading brands.
If you still want some specific help or to check your understanding, you can use our Site Checker bot as your own marketing expert!
How we can help
Once you have worked through those five quick wins you might come away thinking about how important it is to have regular maintenance. We offer website maintenance that works in conjunction with our website monitoring service. It aims to use data to guide the maintenance to the most impactful steps first.
Our website maintenance covers 10 essential services and can help to elevate your site.
Want to get started with website maintenance that is built for your website? Get in touch today.
