Your website is your business’s digital home—a place where customers come to learn about your brand, explore your offerings, and take action. But even the most beautifully designed websites can fail if they fall victim to common mistakes that frustrate visitors and drive them away.

By understanding these pitfalls and learning how to avoid them, you can turn your website into a powerful tool for growth and success.

Mistake 1: Slow Load Times

Why it matters:
In today’s fast-paced world, users expect websites to load in under three seconds. A slow-loading website frustrates visitors and impacts your search engine rankings.

How to fix it:

• Optimize images to reduce file sizes.
• Use caching and content delivery networks (CDNs) to improve speed.
• Regularly test your site with tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to identify areas for improvement.

Mistake 2: Poor Mobile Optimization

Why it matters:
More than half of web traffic comes from mobile devices. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, you risk alienating a significant portion of your audience.

How to fix it:

• Use responsive design so your site looks great on all screen sizes.
• Test your site on multiple devices to ensure a seamless experience.
• Prioritize mobile-specific features, like easy-to-click buttons and concise navigation.

Mistake 3: Confusing Navigation

Why it matters:
If visitors can’t find what they’re looking for quickly, they’ll leave. Clear, intuitive navigation is essential to keep users engaged.

How to fix it:

• Use simple, descriptive menu labels.
• Keep your navigation bar uncluttered with 5–7 main options.
• Add a search bar to help users find specific content quickly.

Mistake 4: Ignoring SEO Basics

Why it matters:
Without search engine optimization (SEO), your website may never reach its target audience. Low visibility means fewer visitors and missed opportunities.

How to fix it:

• Conduct keyword research to identify terms your audience is searching for.
• Optimize page titles, meta descriptions, and headers.
• Regularly publish high-quality, relevant content that addresses your audience’s needs.

Mistake 5: Outdated or Inconsistent Content

Why it matters:
If your website contains outdated information or inconsistent messaging, it damages your credibility and confuses visitors.

How to fix it:

• Regularly audit your site to ensure content is accurate and up to date.
• Maintain a consistent brand voice across all pages.
• Add a blog or news section to keep your site fresh and engaging.

Mistake 6: Overwhelming Design

Why it matters:
A cluttered website with too many elements can overwhelm users and make it hard to focus on your key messages.

How to fix it:

• Embrace white space to create breathing room.
• Focus on a clean, simple design that highlights your most important content.
• Limit the use of fonts, colors, and animations to avoid visual overload.

How to Avoid These Mistakes for Good

A successful website requires ongoing care and attention. Here are some strategies to ensure your site stays on track:

• Perform regular audits: Check your site’s performance, usability, and content regularly.
• Invest in professional help: If website maintenance feels overwhelming, consider hiring experts who can optimize your site and keep it running smoothly.
• Listen to user feedback: Pay attention to what your visitors are saying—whether through surveys, reviews, or analytics—and make improvements accordingly.

Make your Website Stand Out

Your website is one of your most valuable business assets. By addressing common mistakes and focusing on user experience, you can create a site that attracts, engages, and converts your audience. To learn more about common website pitfalls and how to make your website stand out, listen to our latest eCommerce Made Easy Podcast where Carrie dives deeper into the top reasons most websites fail and, more importantly, how you can make sure yours doesn’t just survive—but thrives.

Migrating your website can be an exciting time for business growth—whether you’re redesigning your site, changing hosting platforms, or moving to a new content management system. But while a website migration brings many opportunities, it also poses risks to your SEO ranking. One misstep, and your hard-earned visibility on search engines could take a significant hit. In this blog, we’ll walk through essential strategies to protect your SEO ranking during a website migration, ensuring a smooth transition with minimal disruption to your search engine visibility.

1. Conduct an SEO Audit Before Migration

Before starting the migration process, conduct a thorough SEO audit of your current site to understand what’s working well and identify areas for improvement. Key elements to audit include top-performing pages that drive traffic and conversions, keyword rankings—especially for high-priority terms—high-quality backlinks that contribute to your SEO authority, and any crawl errors that may be affecting your site, which can be identified using tools like Google Search Console. By gathering this baseline data, you can carry over these SEO strengths to the new site and address any issues that could negatively impact your rankings post-migration.

2. Implement 301 Redirects

A common mistake during website migrations is failing to properly set up redirects for old URLs, which is crucial as search engines need to understand where content has moved when the site’s structure changes. Implementing 301 redirects from old URLs to their new counterparts helps maintain link equity and ensures a smooth user experience. To do this effectively, map out all old URLs and match them to the new versions, test each redirect to avoid 404 errors, and monitor the redirects once the migration is live to ensure they’re functioning correctly. Proper redirects preserve your rankings and prevent user frustration, ensuring a seamless browsing experience.

3. Update Your Sitemap and Robots.txt File

After the migration, it’s important to update your sitemap to reflect the new URL structure, as an up-to-date sitemap is crucial for search engine crawlers to efficiently index your site’s content. Be sure to submit the new sitemap through Google Search Console once the migration is complete, and double-check your robots.txt file to ensure it isn’t blocking important pages from being crawled. These steps will help search engines navigate your new site properly, avoiding delays in indexing your content and maintaining your SEO visibility.

4. Retain On-Page SEO Elements

A website migration is no reason to neglect your on-page SEO efforts; in fact, it’s essential to carry over important SEO elements. Ensure that meta titles and descriptions remain optimized for target keywords, keep header tags (H1, H2, etc.) structured and keyword-focused, use descriptive alt text for images to enhance both accessibility and SEO, and maintain internal linking between pages to support navigation and pass SEO value. Preserving these elements will help protect your rankings and ensure that your new site remains SEO-friendly.

5. Monitor SEO Performance Post-Migration

After your new site goes live, it’s crucial to closely monitor your SEO performance to catch any potential issues early. Key performance indicators to watch include tracking organic traffic levels in Google Analytics 4 to spot sudden drops, regularly checking Google Search Console for crawl errors or indexing issues, monitoring keyword rankings for stability, and assessing user behavior metrics like bounce rate and dwell time to ensure visitors are engaging with your content. If any negative trends arise, act quickly to diagnose the issue, whether it’s broken redirects, missing meta tags, or other SEO problems.

Want to learn more?

A website migration is a complex process that can significantly impact your SEO ranking if not handled carefully. By planning ahead, mapping out your URLs, retaining critical SEO elements, and closely monitoring post-migration performance, you can protect your SEO ranking and ensure that your business continues to thrive online.

To learn more, listen to our latest eCommerce Made Easy podcast where Carrie shares her strategies to successfully migrate your website without compromising your SEO performance.

Creating long-form content is one of the most effective ways to build trust, boost SEO, and engage your audience. This type of content not only showcases your expertise but also provides immense value to your readers. In this blog, we’ll explain why long-form content is a game-changer and share tips to help you create long-form content that grabs attention and gets results.

Understanding Long-Form Content

Long-form content typically ranges from 1,500 to 3,000 words or more, delving deep into a particular topic. For businesses, long-form content can appear in the form of blogs, guides, webinars, and so forth. Unlike short-form content, which offers quick bites of information, long-form content allows you to provide comprehensive insights, detailed explanations, and actionable advice.

The Benefits of Long-Form Content

• Establishing Expertise -When you invest time in creating in-depth content, it signals to your audience that you have a deep understanding of your industry. This expertise is essential for building credibility, as readers are more likely to trust businesses that demonstrate knowledge and competence.
• Boosting SEO -Search engines favor long-form content because it often covers topics more comprehensively, increasing the likelihood of satisfying user intent. This can lead to higher search engine rankings, driving more organic traffic to your website.
• Increasing Engagement – Long-form content offers more opportunities to engage your readers through storytelling, case studies, and examples. This engagement can lead to longer time spent on your site, lower bounce rates, and more shares on social media.
• Encouraging Conversions -By providing valuable and detailed information, you can guide your audience through the buyer’s journey, addressing their concerns and building trust. This trust is crucial for converting prospects into loyal customers.

Tips for Creating Effective Long-Form Content

Choose Relevant Topics

When creating long-form content, it’s essential to focus on topics that directly address your audience’s needs and pain points. By honing in on the issues that matter most to them, you can offer solutions that resonate and provide real value. To ensure your content truly hits the mark, conduct thorough research, gathering information from credible sources and industry experts. This approach not only makes your content accurate and reliable but also enhances its relevance, making your audience more likely to engage with and trust your insights.

Structure Your Content

To make long-form content more accessible and engaging, break it down into digestible sections with clear headings and subheadings. This structure helps readers quickly find the information they’re interested in and makes it easier to follow along. By organizing your content in this way, you enhance readability and ensure that key points are highlighted, allowing readers to absorb the information more effectively. A well-structured format not only improves the overall user experience but also keeps your audience engaged from start to finish.

Use Visuals

Incorporating images, infographics, and videos into your long-form content can significantly enhance its effectiveness. Visuals complement your text by breaking up dense information, making complex concepts easier to understand. They also add an engaging element to your content, capturing readers’ attention and encouraging them to stay on your page longer. By using visuals strategically, you not only reinforce your message but also create a more dynamic and interactive experience for your audience.

Include Actionable Insights

Providing practical advice and actionable tips in your long-form content makes it more valuable and memorable for your readers. When you offer clear, step-by-step guidance that readers can implement right away, you enhance the usefulness of your content and build trust with your audience. Actionable insights demonstrate your expertise and commitment to helping your readers solve their problems, making them more likely to return to your content in the future.

Edit and Proofread

Making sure your content is error-free and flows well is key to showing professionalism and building credibility. Well-written content shows you pay attention to detail and care about quality, which leaves a good impression. Clear, mistake-free writing makes your content easier to read and highlights your expertise. By carefully editing and refining your work, you show that you value your readers and are committed to delivering reliable, high-quality information.

Want to learn more?

Long-form content is more than just a trend; it’s a proven strategy for building trust and credibility in your business. By providing valuable insights, demonstrating expertise, and engaging your audience, you can establish a strong foundation of trust that will drive long-term success. Listen to our latest eCommerce Made Easy podcast where we talk with award-winning podcast host and best-selling author Krystal Proffitt about how creating regular content can help build trust and authority in your industry!

Driving traffic is essential for the success and growth of online businesses. However, what parts of our business strategy do we need to work on to bring more potential clients to our sites? In this blog, we’ll discuss 5 key ways to get more people to visit your website and make your business more profitable.

Driving traffic to your online shop is crucial for increasing sales and revenue. Here are the 5 most important areas you should optimize to drive traffic to your website:

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is essential for driving organic traffic to your website. By optimizing elements such as website content, performance, and other technical aspects of your site, you can enhance your online shop’s visibility in search engine results. This increased visibility ensures that potential customers can easily locate your website when searching for products or services relevant to your business. By prioritizing SEO strategies, you improve the likelihood of attracting interested visitors and ultimately boosting sales.

2. Content Marketing

Content marketing drives website traffic by creating content that attracts potential customers. Content such as blogs, videos, infographics, and so forth can be used on your own site to educate, entertain, and connect with your users, keeping them in your network. The key to successful content marketing is value: your content needs to be both quality and useful. To improve your content marketing, you need to understand your audience, create diverse content formats, and publish consistently. By investing in content marketing, your business can increase website traffic, brand visibility, and engagement.

3. Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is a powerful driver of website traffic. Social media marketing drives website traffic by engaging with your audience on platforms outside of your site, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. These social platforms allow you to reach audiences that your site couldn’t on its own and drive that audience to your content and products. Improving your social media marketing strategy involves creating a consistent social presence and also requires you to engage with your followers through comments, messages, and polls.

4. Email Marketing

Email marketing is a potent driver of website traffic, offering your business a direct channel to reach and engage with their audience. By sending targeted and personalized emails, you can promote products, share valuable content, and encourage recipients to visit your website. To boost your email marketing efforts, focus on building and segmenting your email list, crafting compelling subject lines and content, and testing different strategies and content to determine what resonates best with your audience. Using email management software, you can also analyze email performance metrics to refine campaigns and effectively drive more traffic.

5. Website Optimization

Website speed optimization is crucial for driving traffic to your site as it directly impacts user experience and SEO. A faster website provides a better browsing experience, which can lead to higher visitor engagement, lower bounce rates, and increased time spent on your site. Improving your website performance involves multiple aspects of your site. You can boost your site’s speed by compressing images, minifying code, enabling browser caching, and investing in reliable hosting services. One important thing to note is that performance can vary across devices, so optimizing your site for mobile is essential as more users access the internet via smartphones and tablets.

Want to learn more?

 Driving traffic to your site is just one of many steps to turn visitors into customers. Listen our eCommerce Made Easy podcast where Carrie dives into more tips and tricks to boost your online shop!

In our last blog, we talked about Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and how they help you measure how well your business is doing. From tracking money matters to keeping customers happy and loyal, KPIs are like scorecards for your success. However, there’s another important thing you need to keep an eye on for your online shop to do well: key website indicators.

What are key website indicators?

On top of measuring KPIs, it is important to track and review key website indicators. Key website indicators are metrics used to measure the performance and effectiveness of your website. From how customers engage with your site to the physical speed and responsiveness of your site’s design, these indicators can vary depending on your website’s goals and objectives.

What key website indicators should I track for my business?

Conversion Rate

When a visitor lands on your website, there are specific actions you hope they’ll take. You may want them to sign up for your newsletter, fill out a contact form, or complete a purchase. Conversion rates help us measure the percentage of users who complete those desired actions. By tracking conversion rates, you can better assess the effectiveness of your website in achieving specific goals or objectives. You can also use conversion rates to help you identify areas for improvement!

Traffic Sources

Tracking how many users visit your site is important, but another key aspect to consider is where your customers come from. Are they coming from search engines like Google, social media links on your online channels, or from somewhere else? Understanding where website traffic is coming from provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of your various marketing channels, campaigns, and SEO efforts. By tracking sources of traffic such as search engines, social media platforms, referral websites, and direct visits, you can better allocate resources to your campaigns and optimize your marketing strategies!

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors who navigate away from your website after viewing only one page. As an online business, first impressions are key, so measuring and decreasing your site’s bounce rate is crucial. Afterall, a high bounce rate may indicate issues with website usability, relevance, or content quality, which can negatively impact user experience and conversions. Watching bounce rates can help you pinpoint weak pages, guiding content & navigation tweaks for lower bounce rates.

Average Session Duration

The longer a user engages with our site, the more likely it is that they may consider becoming a customer! With average session duration, you can measure the average amount of time visitors spend on your website during a single session. Longer session times can signal strong engagement and interest, while shorter ones may mean visitors are struggling to find what they need or are facing usability problems. You can use average session duration to assess your website’s content and user experience, allowing you to enhance engagement and retention through adjustments.

Want to learn more?

Measuring key website indicators is one thing, but interpreting and leveraging them is another. Listen to our latest eCommerce Made Easy Podcast where Carrie discusses essential website indicators to track and offers practical tips for using them effectively.

Do you feel like your website has been running slow? A slow website can be detrimental to your online shop’s success. Today, let’s go over what a slow website can look like and the negative consequences it could bring to your business.

What does a slow site look like?

A slow website can be easily spotted by its poor performance. Some common signs that users may notice when visiting a slow site are:

• Long load times – Pages may take a noticeable amount of time to load in, leaving users with an empty screen for a period of time.
• Delayed or stuttering renders – Some elements of your page may take more time to load than others, resulting in page stutters.
• Incomplete or partially loaded content – Users may see incomplete or partially loaded content on your page, such as half an image or text appearing gradually as it loads in.
• Slow response time to user interactions– When a user presses a button, opens a menu, or interacts with a form, the site may appear to be unresponsive as it processes the user input.
• Browser freezes or crashes – In severe cases, visiting a slow website may cause the user’s web browser to freeze or crash entirely, forcing them to restart the browser or navigate away from the site.

How can a slow site impact my business?

Frustrated customers

A slow site can lead to a negative overall experience. Pages taking too long to load, unresponsive buttons, and sudden shifts in the page when loading in new content can leave users feeling frustrated. Users are more likely to abandon your site if they have to wait too long for content to load, leading to higher bounce rates.

Lower Search Engine Rankings

Search engines like Google consider site speed as a ranking factor. If your site is slow, it can affect a search engine’s ability to crawl and index your site, affecting your overall performance ranking. Slow-loading pages may be penalized in search results, leading to reduced visibility and less organic traffic. This means that people searching for your products and services will be less likely to be served your site.

Reduced User Engagement

If your site’s slow performance makes it difficult to browse, you may end up with less customers interacting with your site. Slow sites tend to have lower user engagement metrics, such as time spent on page and number of pages viewed per session. This can negatively affect your site’s monetization, such as ads, and continue to bring down your site’s SEO ranking.

Negative Brand Reputation

A slow website reflects poorly on your brand. Users may perceive your site’s slow performance as unprofessional, outdated, or unreliable, which can damage your brand’s reputation and credibility. A tarnished brand can dissuade both old and new users from visiting your site.

Decreased Conversions

Slow websites often experience lower conversion rates. Whether the goal is to make a purchase, sign up for a service, or fill out a form, users are less likely to complete these actions if they encounter obstacles during the process. The harder it is for a user to buy your products, the less likely they will complete their purchase!

Want to learn more?

Want to learn how to measure and fix your site’s speed? Listen to our latest eCommerce Made Easy podcast where Carrie dives into the importance of site speed, how to check it, and what you can do to improve it!

To enhance your online presence and drive targeted traffic to your online shop, your site needs to effectively utilize keywords. Two important types of keywords to incorporate into your business are short-tail keywords and long-tail keywords.

What are keywords?

Keywords are the words that users use when searching for your products and services. Some users will type very few words while others will be much more specific and lengthier with their search criteria. These two different search criteria can be broken down into short-tail and long-tail keywords.

Short-Tail Keywords

Short-tail keywords are short, generic terms of usually one or two words. If a user were searching for fitness advice, for example, a short-tail keyword they could use could simply be “fitness.” If they wanted to be a bit more specific, they could search for “fitness blogs.” Short-tail keywords are words that have very high search volume since they are inherent to many products. However, short-tail keywords are also highly utilized by your industry, making them highly competitive to use.

The benefits of short-tail keywords

Despite the competition surrounding short-tail keywords, they are an important asset to your SEO strategy. Short-tail keywords are great when building awareness and visibility around your company. General keywords are used by broad audiences, so using short-tail keywords allows your company to be exposed to a large audience. Short-tail keywords are a great way to expose your brand to new potential customers.

Long-Tail Keywords

Long-Tail keywords are longer, more specific phrases that are usually three words or more long. To use our fitness shopper as an example, a long-tail keyword they may search for could be “exercise routines for beginners” or “workout routines for beginners at home.” Overall, long-tail keywords are much more niche than short-tail keywords. The search volume for long-tail keywords is low, but due to their specificity, they have less competition surrounding them. This results in long-tail keywords attracting higher conversion rates.  

The benefits of long-tail keywords

While short-tail keywords expose your brand to new users, long-tail keywords are a great way to enhance your online visibility and connect with users at different stages of the buyer’s journey. Since long-tail keywords have less competition, you can use them as opportunities to become the go-to store for certain products. You can also use long-tail keywords to meet buyers where they are. Users that use long-tail keywords are often shoppers who are further along in their shopping process. They have an idea of what they want, so becoming more specific in your keywords can help guide those users to the products they are looking for.

Want to learn more?

Want to further explore keyword strategies that can boost your SEO? Listen to our latest eCommerce Made Easy Podcast where we discuss how to conduct keyword research as well as what keyword opportunities you should consider using on your site!

Despite the amount of traffic we may attract to our sites, or even the amount of non-monetary conversations we acquire, we may be left wondering: Why aren’t people buying my products? It’s disheartening to see low sales and site traffic with no obvious reason as to why. In order to identify possible roadblocks for customers on our site, we need to take a step back and explore our website from the perspective of our customers.

It may sound cliché, but putting yourself into the shoes of your potential customers is key to creating a site that converts. From the language you are using to the structure of your site, keeping your target customer in mind aids in making a site that is compelling and easy to use. When concerned about low conversations and sales, take into consideration the following questions:  

Is it easy to find your products & services?

The first step towards conversions is getting users onto your site. If you were to search for terms related to your products and services on Google, what comes up? Making sure that your SEO strategy is successfully bringing users to your site is important to keep track of. Searching for your site on search engines, analyzing traffic data, and focusing on keywords that your customers use to search for the products and services you offer can help bring more traffic to your site.

Beyond users finding your business on Google, you should also consider how easy it is to find your products and services on your site. How intuitive is the structure of your website? Optimizing your navigation bar and call-to-actions for ease of use and understanding is key to successfully guide users to your sales pages. Have a friend explore your site or check out user data concerning the journey users take through your site via the GA4’s Explore options to identify possible missteps in your site’s guidance.

Another potential roadblock to getting users to see what you have to offer is the mechanical performance of your site. How does your site feel? Slow and unresponsive user experiences, page crashes, buggy interfaces, and lack of cross device optimization can make it difficult to traverse your site, pushing potential customers away. Keep a look out for broken pages and links, as well as optimize your site for mobile use and speed.

Is the “why” of your products clear and compelling?

Once a user is on your site, you only have a handful of time to pique their interest, so its important to be straight to the point. Why should they consider your products? Within your landing page, it should be clear what your selling, who your products are for, and why people should by them. Making sure that our above the fold content and sales pitches are compelling and attractive to our target audience is important to getting users to even consider buying from our businesses.

On top of illustrating why users should consider our products, the language we use to describe our offers can impact whether a user wants to become our customer. Beyond just explaining why our products are good and can help potential customers, we must also ask ourselves: Why should they buy your services now? Creating a sense of urgency pushes customers to consider your offerings more seriously. This urgency doesn’t have to aggressive, such as a time limited offer, but instead can be an attractive vision of what buying our services will be like. Through our content and through customer testimonials, we can illustrate just how well our products resolve our customers’ pain points, making our services tangible and their value clear.

Can users trust your products & services?

Even if your site is visually stunning and easy to use, another aspect of turning visitors into customers I gaining their trust. Why should new customers trust your company? For users who are new to your business, hesitancy may stop them from considering buying from you. To avoid losing hesitant customers, it’s important to make sure that your content clearly shows your credentials and success. You can share your company story or statistics that show how good your company is doing. You can also share customer testimonials and ratings so that potential customers can see that real people have found happiness in your services.

Another aspect of trust to consider is clearly sharing the “small text” of buying your products. Are there any hidden fees or policies that customers may not know? Being transparent with your users about taxes, delivery charges, privacy policies, and so forth creates a sense of professionalism and sets expectations ahead of time. Users want to know what buying your products entails ahead of time rather than being blindsided by surprise details during the buying process. Having features such as estimated taxes alongside easy access to your privacy and shipping policies can help users trust your business.

Is it easy to understand what your products & services are?

Whether you sell physical products or intangible services, selling online can make it hard for users to understand what you are offering. Are your product pages painting a complete picture? Taking a look at your individual product descriptions or service tier lists, consider what information may be missing or even confusing to users. Part of building a successful product description is using language that our customers will understand so that we can make the product tangible despite being online. With services, consider how easy it is to understand how your service works. Taking the user step by step through your service, such as through infographics, can help users get a better picture of what they are buying.

Is it easy to buy your products & services?

Once your potential customer has decided to go ahead and buy your products and services, all that’s left is to go through the checkout process. Is your checkout process easy to go through? When it’s time to buy your products, the experience should be easy and intuitive. Complex forms, excessive required information, mandatory account creation, and so forth can cause a potential customer to back out at the last minute. Keep your checkout process short and offer features such as guest check out and auto fill to make the buying process a pleasant, easy experience.

Want to learn more?

Optimizing our sites for conversions is a continuous process. Customer expectations change and technology evolves, making it important to keep tracking our successes and improving our sites. Check out our blog for more advice on making your website better.  If you want more hands-on guidance for improving your website, join the waitlist for Carrie Saunders’ upcoming course, “The Converting Website.” In this course, she will dive into a variety of important factors that aim to optimize your website.

As we optimize our sites for better user experience and higher search result queries, we may consider doing some spring cleaning to our site’s content. This includes looking through pages on our site that are not doing so well. Little traffic, out-of-date information, questionable relevancy: letting older pages linger can impact the quality of our site. However, how do we deal with older pages without negatively impacting our SEO scores?

What is outdated content?

When cleaning up our sites, we may run into outdated content. Outdated content is pages that are no longer relevant or helpful to your customers and company goals. This includes:

• Pages with incorrect or old information.
• Pages for discontinued products or services.
• Pages that are no longer relevant to your business or customers.
• Pages that are broken.

Why should I clean up outdated content?

In order to make sure that our site properly represents our business, we need to make sure all our pages are up-to-date and contain quality information. Outdated pages bring down the quality of our site through being unusual, misleading, and minimal traffic. Worse, these pages can result in more “bounce” traffic where customers leave our site after arriving on outdated content. Cleaning up these old pages, such as deleting them, can help us avoid customers leaving our sites while increasing out SEO rank by having more quality content as a whole.

What are the risks of cleaning up outdated content?

One risk to consider when cleaning up outdated content is whether or not the content has value to users or your SEO score as a whole. Is the information on that page important? If so, deleting important page can cause issues for your customers down the line. Another aspect to consider is the link equity of your pages. If your old page is linked to many other pages, it may be valuable in terms of the level if authority it has in the eyes of search engines. Deleting such page could negatively affect your SEO score.

What are my options for dealing with outdated content?

Since outdated content can affect our websites in varying ways, there are multiple options to handle these pages. In terms of the most common actions we can take, we can update the content, redirect it to relevant content, or delete the page entirely.

Update the Page

If the outdated page contains important information and still gets traffic, you may consider updating the content. Afterall, customers are still visiting the page. Whether that be due to the page having link value through its linkage to other pages or due to the value of the information it contains, if a page has potential, it should be updated rather than discarded. Another aspect to consider for pages that still have incoming traffic is if there is another existing page that fulfills the same role. If there isn’t, it becomes more important to update the page so that users are getting accurate information.

Redirect the Page

If the outdated page contains information that exists on another, up-to-date page, you may consider redirecting the outdated page to the new page. You can redirect a page via a 301 redirect or a 302 redirect status code. A 301 redirect tells Google that this redirect is permanent while a 302 redirect is a temporary measure. Keep in mind that while redirects are useful, having too many redirects can slow down your site and impact your SEO rank, so use them sparingly.

Delete the Page

When you have a page that is completely obsolete, that provides no value in terms of traffic, authority, and relevancy, you may consider deleting the page all together. You can delete a page via a 404 status code or a 410 status code. More commonly used, a 404 status code deletes the page, but doesn’t necessarily remove it from Google indexing. A 410 status code tells Google the page is gone forever. While it may sound strange that 404 codes are more popular, they are easier to implement and also allow us an opportunity to connect with customers who are still looking for that page by making our 404 page valuable.

Note: Make Use of your 404 Pages

One way we can use our 404 status pages are to make them valuable. We can edit our 404 page to not only be branded, but also contain easy access to our home page, related links, our search bars, and so forth. By making use of our 404 status pages, we can encourage customers to explore our site despite the page they visited being gone. Having a personalized 404 page can help keep customer bounce rate down, keeping customers on your site longer.

Want to Learn More?

There are many aspects we need to consider when improving our user experience and optimizing our SEO ranks. Explore our SEO blogs to learn more tips and tricks to improve your visibility! If you want more hands-on guidance for improving your website, join the waitlist for Carrie Saunders’ upcoming course, “The Converting Website.” In this course, she will dive into a variety of important factors that aim to optimize your website.