How Does Website Health Impact SEO and Business Performance?

Website health has an important role to play in ensuring an optimal user experience. A healthy website offers easy navigation and an attractive design. Through this, users will get accurate and reliable information.

Conversely, unhealthy websites are difficult to navigate, unresponsive to mobile devices, and have long loading times. As a result, it is difficult for the website to appear on the SERP. This has an impact on SEO and the business as a whole.

Then, how do you check the health of a website?

In this article, we will discuss website health, from understanding it to how to check it so that users get a satisfying experience.

What is Website Health?

Website health is a metric that measures website structure, speed, security, and SEO. This metric gives an idea of the quality of a website from an SEO point of view.

Websites that have low health have lots of broken links, slow loading speeds, and various other technical problems.

This condition can have an impact on bad SEO. As a result, websites have low organic traffic and poor SERP rankings.

Factors that Play a Role in Maintaining Website Health

The health of a website is influenced by several factors. Here are some factors that need to be considered in ensuring the health of the website:

1. Crawlability

Crawl is Google's process of crawling and indexing websites using Googlebot to crawl and index web pages that exist all over the internet.

In this process, Google collects various pieces of information about the website, from content to structure to links.

Google will index and display on the SERP websites that have gone through the crawl process. Therefore, website developers must ensure that websites can go through the crawl process.

2. Content Quality

One of the main factors in attracting visitors to a website is quality and informative content.

Therefore, every website must have content that is accurate, reliable, and relevant to its niche.

Keep in mind that content quality is one of Google's considerations in determining website ranking, especially around YMYL topics.

In this case, Google will assess the content with the E-E-A-T standard to see how good it is.

3. Website Security

Website security has an important role in maintaining user trust. Therefore, every website must have good security. Websites that have good security have SSL certificates and HTTPS security protocols. Both of these can secure data transmission between the server and the user.

4. Mobile Friendly

At this time, most people access the internet through mobile devices, compared to desktops. Therefore, the existence of a mobile-friendly website is mandatory.

The website must function optimally and be responsive on various mobile devices. That way, users can access the website easily.

5. Clear Structure and Navigation

Structure and navigation are used to help users find information quickly and efficiently. In addition, these aspects are used by Google to understand the structure of a website during the crawl process.

Websites that have a clear structure and navigation have H1 headers, meta descriptions, and title tags on each page. Websites can also include a search feature so that users can easily find the content they are looking for.

Impact of Website Health for SEO and Business

Website health has a significant impact on SEO and the business as a whole. Here are some important impacts on its health:

1. Higher Rank on the SERP

Google tends to rank websites that are "healthier" higher. This is because the website has good performance, fast page loading, and an organized website structure.

2. Improving User Experience

Users will prefer a healthy website because it is easy to navigate, responsive to mobile devices, and has a fast loading time. This condition can provide a better user experience.

In the long run, this can increase user retention rates and reduce bounce rates. These various things can contribute to business growth.

3. Increase Conversions and Sales

A healthy website provides relevant content and a satisfying user experience. Both of these can have an impact on users, ranging from increasing their trust to influencing their purchasing decisions.

4. Building a Strong Brand Image

A healthy website usually has a professional and credible appearance in the eyes of users. Both of these reflect the quality and integrity of a business. This can help build trust, customer loyalty, and a strong brand image.

How to Check Website Health Through SEO Audit

It's important to know how to check website health by conducting an SEO audit. Here is a guide to doing it:

1. Check the Mobile Friendly Test

At this time, the majority of internet users use mobile devices to access websites. Therefore, the existence of mobile-friendly sites is mandatory.

To check the mobile friendliness of a website, you can use cmlabs Mobile Friendly Test.. 

2. Ensuring Google Can Index the Website

Indexing is the stage where each website page that has gone through the crawl process will be included in the index list.

This stage is crucial because if a website cannot go through the indexing process, it cannot be found by users.

Websites that have gone through the indexing process can be seen through the robot.txt file, which already has an "allowed" setting.

3. Optimizing Website Speed

A good website speed is under 2.5 seconds. Websites that load for longer than 2.5 seconds are likely to be abandoned by their visitors.

This will have an impact on a poor user experience and an increased bounce rate. 

4. Check Broken Links

If a user visits a broken link, they will get stuck there. This can give users a bad user experience.

This will make users unable to find the desired information, so they will prefer to leave the website in a short time.

If that happens, then the bounce rate will increase and the dwell time will decrease, which will make the user experience worse.

In addition, a large number of broken links can lead to poor SEO scores. This condition is caused because Google requires a long crawl process, so the indexing process becomes slow.

5. Check Organic Traffic

Problematic websites can be seen in the decrease in their organic traffic. To find out the problems that occur, the website needs to carry out an SEO audit.

6. Optimizing on-page SEO

On-page SEO plays an important role in ensuring that a website can appear on the SERP. In order for the website to appear at the very top of the SERP, the website developer must ensure that the on-page SEO has been optimized according to Google's guidelines and policies.

The on-page elements can be optimized starting with article titles, keywords, URLs, headings, meta descriptions, internal links, search intent, and images.

7. Do Keyword Tracking

Tracking keywords is an activity to see the performance of keywords used in the SERP. This activity can be done using the Google Search Console. Keywords that have decreased performance must be replaced so that the website can compete on the SERP. 

8. Analyze Website Backlinks

Backlinks play a vital role in an off page SEO strategy. Quality backlinks can boost a website's ranking on the SERP. Therefore, every website must have quality backlinks and get rid of toxic backlinks.

9. Conduct a Technical SEO Audit

Technical SEO plays an important role in the website's structure. Through technical SEO, Google can easily find, understand, and display websites.

The scope of technical SEO itself starts with crawling, indexing, rendering, and ranking. Based on this, websites that have technical SEO can easily appear on the SERP.

10. Analyzing Competitors

A computer analysis was carried out to find out the advantages and differences between competitors' websites. Both of these can be used as learning points that can later be implemented on the website itself.

That's all for discussing website health, starting with understanding factors that play a role, their impact, and guidelines for conducting an SEO audit.

If you have trouble doing an SEO audit, you can use SEO services from cmlabs. With the help of our SEO specialists, your website can be comprehensively monitored from all sides.