Many businesses work so hard on there software and producing a product to be useful, efficient and easy to use. Then when it goes to market they produce a website to help potential users find it. How sad it is when the website doesn’t serve its purpose. When it doesn’t find useful visitors from the search engines.
A website needs to attract people that are ready to commit. It also needs to communicate what its products do in the quickest way possible. Its focus should be obvious and clear to any new visitor. Today’s website is a fine example of a software company that has followed some basic principles and got the above right in most areas. Once again the challenge will be to find areas where it could still improve. Welcome to today’s website critique audit.
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.
Bournemouth based company called Leave Wizard at leavewizard.com get scrutinised today. So take a look at how I got on with their Website Critique For Software Company Leave Wizard below.
Amongst the obvious strengths from a visit to their website includes:
Lets now take the real challenge. Can I find 5 areas the site needs to improve on.
In the example video above GTMetrix revealed several areas effecting loading times.
The warning from #pagespeed was to serve scales images. So what’s this mean?
If images are resized in HTML or CSS then you are downloading data that isn’t needed. If it isn’t needed it slows down loading times for no justifiable reason. The report shows that serving scaled images could save them a 92% reduction.
The website performs well overall in the search engine results. This is due to its very high Social shares. Back links are also incredibly good on this website, so these are big factors as to why it has a strong authority in the search engines.
Taking the keyword “leave wizard” You are #1 on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) brings in an average 880 visitors a month in UK – so that’s good and you can’t improve that as such though we will look at some important tricks your missing out on which will dilute your number 1 status.
Yet their are areas where there are lots of small niggles that I’ve discovered. Although few are of high importance, discovering them and batching them together under the heading of SEO and Usability Improvements or Search Engine Optimisation makes sense. All these small things compound into a way of effecting the sites greater potential. So I’ve put some comments together in this section:
Taking the keyword “leave planner” You are 7th on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) brings in an average 140 visitors a month in USA
Taking the keyword “leave planner” You are 4th on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) brings in an average 3600 visitors a month in UK
FYI – Leave Planner – Is this a competitor? They are receiving over 1100 from that keyword each month world wide.
The logo at top of your registration page would really be usable if there was a link back to the home page, So i would recommend a link back to the main site – see red arrow
From the left footer menu on the API section of the site , it says leavewizardstatus.com. This domain registration expired on 10/14/2019.
#1 leave wizard 880 UK
On the main home page and Features page they both have the same Title and Duplicate meta descriptions. Is this being picky or important?
As with all SEO questions you have to ask in this order:
It important to avoid duplicate meta descriptions and titles.
1st Question – For visitors – Where is the value when you are accessing duplicate descriptions, if the information is different then the meta tags need to be different.
2nd Question – For search engines – finding duplicate meta descriptions can make the ranking process more difficult as engine crawlers will have a hard time figuring out the differences between pages and what should rank and what shouldn’t.
The blog appears a bit disjointed, it feels bolted on. Webflow and WordPress by the looks of it. I think this is due to using a different CMS. Does it have to be outside of the main website? Could the blog be fully integrated?
I see you have a yell.com listing. But the most important listing in 2020 is Google my business. I’ve written a really useful article that will help you get it up and running on Google my business tips and tricks.
You are missing out on extra traffic exposure. Try submitting featured snippets and then getting extra traffic from the section “People also ask”. If I search “online employee annual leave planner” you are right up there in the results, but nothing is shown in the “People also ask”. Try using featured snippets and Google may well add your FAQs into that section.
If you’re losing traffic over time, its due to the fact that studies show you are probably getting 31% less traffic by NOT owning the Featured Snippet position. Its really important to realise that even if you rank #1 you are haemorrhaging traffic to these new Google features. Ready to increase traffic by 31+%? Then you need this Yoast tool ….
From what i can make out your blog is using WordPress. If you install the awesome Yoast plugin you can then add Data Blocks which include the correct markup schema for FAQs. After you’ve added the FAQ block, you can start to add questions and answers to it. These are where Google will get the fodder for “People also ask”.
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.