Website critique on vidIQ the YouTube tool

This article is the 4th in a series of websites reviews. Last week vidIQ chose my YouTube channel for an audit. During the review (which I have edited a clip into the video below) They requested a review of their website. I wasn’t going to miss the chance of such a challenge.

So before we delve into their website. Do take a moment to bookmark, subscribe or even try out some of these tools I’m using to see if the issues I point out in the vidIQ website audit will also be a good pointer for improvement for your online business.

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If you want to be considered for my free website review then make sure you fill out the form and I will gladly consider making you the next one in my series.

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Website critique #4 for VidIQ the guys with a cool YouTube tool.

Giving a Website critique to a large authoritative company is one thing. Giving it to the guys who 6 days earlier gave my YouTube channel a critique makes this even more of a challenge. Welcome to my website review of VidIQ.com. The aim was to find at least 5 things that could help improve the website. I just about managed the 5. The video review is below:

TIMESTAMPS: to help you find the right section in the critique video review

0:30 Introduction to this website review
1:56 Why I took the vidIQ challenge
2:22 overview of the challenge
3:08 First impressions of the website
5:05 Mobile-friendly test
6:24 awesome GTmetrix tool for page speed and performance
7:57 Tip 1 – improve optimising images
9:40 Tip 2 – Missing alt tags
11:55 Tip 3 – Claim your knowledge panel from Google
12:55 Tip 4 – Missing H1 tags
14:27 Tip 5 – Resolve broken links and 404 pages
15:24 Concluding comments
16:04 Use this awesome tool

Website Review Positives

This beautiful website was a challenging one as it looks pretty good from the start. As with all my challenges on YouTube, the aim was for me to discover at least 5 things that the business owner should concentrate on improving their website and naturally their business. VidIQ.com is a well-made website. Immediately it was clear these guys know how to put a good website together.

Amongst the obvious strengths from a visit to their website includes:

Has a good clear call to action above the fold on both mobile and desktop visits.
The Signup button and other important call-to-action buttons are clear and stand out.
Even more so by using a bright and different colour, in this case, purple.
Down home page purple again to request demo (normal button blue) so that’s a good way of standing out.
The website looks great when it’s checked on a widescreen desktop and mobile.
The purpose of the website is made clear from the initial screen, a nice clear statement of intent.
The scrolling proof of those that have benefited from the tools and services is unmissable.

Website Critique on vidIQ Review : 5 Improvements

So now to the real challenge: 5 areas the site needs to improve on. 5 isn’t as easy as it sounds, as I want to remain reasonable and I want my advice to be beneficial for anyone watching and applying it to their business. So this is by far my toughest challenge yet!

1. Loading times

VidIQ has a loading time of around 5 seconds. Which isn’t bad for a website, but a lot of little improvements are possible to make it run like a rocket. Maybe caching with plugins like W3C. Other areas include images could be better optimised. Redirects, browser caching etc. are all ways to help improve the speed, which ultimately helps improve the web visitor’s experience.

As you can see form Page Speed. Your website is mobile friendly but its also quite slow!

Website for vidIQ : The page is easy to use on a mobile device but slow

2. Alt Atributes

Alt attribute or the “Alt tags” are missing on several home page images. The alt tags serve an important part of helping those using usability settings. It also provides additional SEO benefits on keywords. Applying an alt attribute on an image also helps Google understand what an image is about to serve it in image results. … When you use alt tags with a target keyword, it gives your page a boost because the alt text is a helpful relevance signal for search engines.

3. Claim Your Knowledge Panel

If I do a search in Google using the company name its great to see your organically top. Better still a Knowledge Panels appears which is a type of rich results in Google’s search results pages. But you haven’t claimed your Knowledge Panel for your business! Google will decide whether or not it’ll show a knowledge panel in the search results for your business. It’s not something you can fully control and it is much harder to obtain a knowledge panel than a local business listing. You definitely need to claim this.

4. Missing H1 heading tags

Some pages are missing their H1 Heading tags. For example, go to the signup page and it starts with an H3. The blog page only has H2 headings. My recommendation would be to consider adding something like the H1 tag on the solutions page.

5. Fix the 404s

I’m struggling to find number 5, but I did find some 404 errors when the site was spidered. These are either orphaned links or just been lost in an update of a URL but a redirect would soon help keep a visitor on the right page.

So you need some redirects due to these 404 errors

The awesome tool I used on this website was GTMetrix It helps you see how your site performs, reveals why it’s slow and helps you discover optimization opportunities. https://gtmetrix.com/

The GTMetrix tool helped reveal several issues on their website that may not be apparent from an initial visual critique as often browser caching makes an experience for a new visitor different to a follow-up visitor. Some of these issues should be given a high priority.

vidIQ issues should be given a high priority

Of course, criticising websites is not what I do best. I would much rather improve websites A fresh new redesigned mobile-friendly website is always a joy to deliver for a new client. Take a look at my successes at my web design portfolio or apply for a free consultation.