Top 4 Questions About Your Website

Edited and re-published September 2023.

At MB Web we specialise in digital marketing: from website design to search engine optimisation, from Pay Per Click to social media… We can help you with anything you need or want digitally to market your business.

As such we are approached by lots of different type of clients and companies with a whole raft of queries; here’s a list of the top 4 questions about your website that we get asked.

How do I use my website?

Whenever we redesign a website we always include a training session or two depending on your experience and knowledge of websites. This training session usually takes place in our offices in Lewes. We have a massive high definition screen which we can sit around in our boardroom and we can show you how to make it work.

However not all companies are as open with what they have done as we are. Increasingly over the past year we have been contacted by people who have had a website built, but don’t know how to use it… We can help with some advice and guidance on what you need to do to make your website work for you.

If you have a website which doesn’t have a Content Management System then we would always recommend that you have a serious think about integrating one of the many available free (open source) content management systems available. Our CMS of choice for most websites is WordPress. WordPress is a highly customisable CMS which allows such a high level of customisation. WordPress runs over 40% of the websites in the world (43.1% usage based on statistics available at https://w3techs.com/ on 26th September 2023) and has a CMS market share of over 63% of the worlds websites run by a content management system. You can read 3 reason why WordPress is great here.

If you have a website but don’t know how to use it then give us a buzz to arrange a training session for you and your colleagues.

How do I make my website appear on the first page of Google?

This is an age old question with no cast iron answer…

Google has changed the way it works over the past few years. You used to be able to mention a keyword lots of times on a page and then your website would rank for that phrase in Google. However Googles has become wise to such ‘black-hat’ trickery.

Google now puts a lot of importance on website content – if you have quality content on your website then your website will appear higher in the search rankings. This means that if you have a website with no written content on then your website will struggle to appear in Google. A quality article with over 600 words on a subject close to the heart of your business is now more likely than ever to help promote you in Google’s eyes. This along side well written body copy on the rest of your website and a well structured snippet of meta information for the search engines to display is a sure fire way to increase your rankings in Google.

However it’s not a guarantee (if anyone guarantees you first page position walk away!)

At MB Web we are always open and honest about what we think you can achieve and we set targets to measure against these goals. If you have a travel website and want to rank as position 1 on page 1 of Google for the phrase ‘hotel’ then we will be fighting an uphill battle, and without buying your way to the top by using Pay Per Click Adwords it will be nigh on impossible.

If you want your website to appear higher in Google then lets get together and help put a plan of action in place to help your business grow.

My website was at the top of Google but now it’s disappeared

The Google Search Algorithm is what looks at your website, compares it to other peoples websites and decides where yours should be positioned. This year alone we have seen over 6 changes to the way that Google ranks your website. As such there have been 6 times throughout this year where your website may have dropped out of the Google search rankings (for more details about these updates read this article from the brilliant Search Engine Land).

These changes to the formula Google uses to rank your website make the searches better for the searcher. This is part of the core mission of google. However they can have a massive affect on your website and your business. If you’re not aware of how things are changing then there’s a chance that you might be caught out when Google moves the goal posts to give it’s searchers a better experience.

If you’re struggling to get your website ranked higher in Google and you think you may have fallen foul of an algorithm update then give us a buzz and we can talk about how we can help you get back on track.

How do I speed up my website?

So you have a website, but it’s not very fast… How do you speed up a website? Well there are lots of different things that can be slowing your website down – like the images being too big, the code not being streamlined or minified, or the server being slow.

All of these things can add up to a sluggish website. And a slow website leads to a bad user experience, and a bad user experience leads to a lower position in Google’s search results.

Whatever the issue we always start by analysing the website through a series of online tools… One of these tools is Google Page Speed Insights.

When you put your web address in and press the ‘Analyze’ button you see what Google thinks you need to do to speed up your website. It might look confusing, but to a web developer this information is critical for us to know the state the website is in and what tweaks need to be made in order for it to perform better in Google’s eyes. With this report we can see how your images load, how the code is deployed and how your web server is set up, all critical points which can be tweaked to make your website work harder for you.

We also use other online tools to give us a quick snapshot about the webs, from what Content Management System your website uses to how it’s optimised for SEO, if the website has a secure certificate and more. Each of these pointers affect the website speed.

If your website isn’t loading quickly then lets have a chat over a coffee… We can show you what needs doing and help you fix the issues.

If you have any of these questions, or any different questions about your website, then contact us for a no obligation chat about how we can help you to maximise your website, increase your ROI and help your business grow online.
MB Web covers the whole South East of England from our beautiful listed building in Lewes which double up as an art gallery at weekends.