With the third decade of the 21st century in full swing, the internet has taken a massive role in our lives. Internet use for buying or acquiring services has steadily risen throughout the years, but during the Pandemic, this trend truly exploded. Statistics show that during the COVID-19 lockdowns, internet usage has increased by more than 10%. Moreover, some estimates show that our digital behavior has advanced by 10 years within just 12 months. So, in practice, this means that today, if you want to have a successful business, you need to have an online presence. Of course, the cornerstone of this endeavor is your website, which represents your brand, image, and online persona. As you can imagine, simply having a website is far from enough. What you should strive for is the quality of your website.

What is website quality?

There are several ways to look at your website’s quality. One of the most common is to see how Google sees your website. With 68% of all online experiences starting with a search engine query and Google hoarding over 90.58% of the Global Search Engine Market, it’s really a no-brainer why you should consider Google’s opinion of your website as gospel. It stands to reason to follow Google’s measurements, as they are based on billions of searches, so there is no greater way to determine what an audience likes than checking Google’s statistics.

Still, your website should do more than that. The quality of your website depends on much more than receiving traffic from a search engine. For example, things like how you build your website, its speed, navigation, usability, creatives, design, and several other factors are way more important.

So, the quality of your website is determined by how people act once they land on your page. On average, a person spends 52 seconds on a single page, which is an essential measurement of how good your website is. But before we get to measuring your website quality, let’s talk about why it is so important.

Why is website quality important?

The benefits of excellent website quality are immense. Naturally, the first would be a lot more traffic, as Google, Bing, and other search engines would place you on top of their search results. This will bring you a massive boost in your leads and, more importantly, your conversions and profits.

Furthermore, the better the quality of your website, the easier it will be for your marketing efforts. A good example is Google Ads, which considers your website’s quality when estimating how often to show your ad and where in the search results to place it. Naturally, it will be on top of the organic search results, but as it happens, almost everyone bids on keywords they find profitable. Therefore, when it comes to the results, a bigger bid doesn’t always mean a number one spot.

Remember that Google is determined to keep its users happy, so they place quality above the bid you set. In other words, Google’s ad ranking equals the bid+quality score. So, if your website quality is good (or above average, as Google would call it), you will have to pay less to get to the top of the SERP. Naturally, this will reduce your CPC (cost per click) and  CPA (cost per Acquisition) while boosting your ROI (return of investment) and profits.

Moreover, having a genuinely good website will reduce the number of bounces, which will instantly improve your SEO score. This would lead to getting higher in the organic search results as well, ultimately making your google ads obsolete.

Finally, a good quality website will lead to more conversions from your marketing campaigns, as a good quality website means a great customer journey, naturally leading to more conversions.

How to measure your website quality?

Waiting to see your position in Google is definitely not the optimal way to see your website quality. While, yes, Google will put you on top of its results if your website quality is outstanding and you answer the queries of their users, you have to get there first. To do that, you first need to know how to measure the quality. This way, you can improve your results faster and more efficiently. You will again use some of Google’s tools to get these measurements, but you will also have to collect and check your internal data.

In general, there are eight pillars you need to consider when checking your website.

Overall traffic

Hopefully, there is no surprise here. Knowing how many leads get to your web pages is detrimental to see if the quality of your website improves or worsens. The easiest way to do that is by using Google Analytics. The free tool will share a lot of essential data, like demographics, where your traffic comes from, which geographical location is most interested in your product or services, and many others. The software integrates seamlessly with your website, especially if you use WordPress, where Google has a dedicated plugin. If you are starting to measure your stats now, don’t worry. You can use what you see as a benchmark and improve it over time.

Organic Traffic

Usually, if you have a good digital marketing strategy, your customers come from various channels, like social media, PPC campaigns, backlinks, offline marketing campaigns, etc. However, for your website quality, it’s essential to know how many are here just because they found you organically and not through an ad. Don’t get us wrong. The other results are just as important, but as Google ranks your website based on its quality, the more people see it, the better the quality.

Bounce rate

That said, you need to know how many people are leaving your website without taking action. This is better known as the Bounce rate. If you see some bounce rate, don’t worry. It’s normal to have at least some, as many people are just browsing. For example, blog posts get up to a 90% bounce rate, and that’s normal. However, a higher-than-average bounce rate indicates something wrong with your website, as people leave without ever touching anything.

Average page per visit

Speaking of bounce rate, you should measure the opposite as well. For instance, the average number of pages a user visits while on your website. This can be a great indicator of your website’s usability and content engagement.

Average time spent on the website

No surprises here. The longer a person spends on your website, the better the content. Naturally, if they bounce right after they spent 7-10 minutes on your page, that means they found your content interesting, but it failed to redirect them to a sales page.

Conversions

Naturally, your end goal should be getting sales from your website. Whether it is a direct sale or creating a hot lead, which will contact your sales team, you should measure how many people take the last step in the customer journey you made. Of course, the number of conversions is only one aspect. You need to know how much you paid for each conversion and the percentage of the people who convert after landing on your website.

Website Speed

Website speed has a lot to do with your success and website quality. It has an astounding effect on the user experience and can basically make or break your website. Usually, a 2-second load time is considered a good one, and each second delay after that costs you significantly. You can check your website speed through various internet platforms, giving you a reasonable estimate of your website’s loading time and showing you where you can improve.

Backlinks

Finally, one significant stat you should always follow is how many backlinks lead to your website. However, having dozens of backlinks is not enough, as it matters who has linked you. For instance, if a very low-quality website links your content, it will drag your quality score down. So it’s best to strictly manage your backlinks through Google Search Console.

What affects your website’s quality?

Even if you closely follow all these measurements, if you don’t know what causes their fluctuations, the whole ordeal is utterly pointless. For example, how can you improve the stats if you have a high bounce rate but don’t know what’s causing it? So before we give you some tips on how to improve your website’s quality, you first need to know which elements affect it.

Mobile Optimization

We are starting with this one to get it out of the way. Every website nowadays is mobile-friendly, so there is no point in wasting time explaining this in detail. Still, if yours is not mobile-friendly for some reason, this should be your first and most important task. Thankfully, if you use WordPress, almost 100% of its themes are optimized for mobile.

Usability

People have options. What they don’t have is time. So naturally, your website’s quality is tightly related to the UX. A good website would give the needed information structured and fast and won’t leave anyone guessing what they should do next.

Design

A visually pleasing design with well-placed elements that strictly follow the best designer practices will always have better quality than a chaotic display of random content.

Functionalities

Naturally, a more interactive website will be received better, as people don’t simply want to read but want to feel, look, and touch. Let them understand what you are offering with more than words, and your website quality will instantly skyrocket.

Be careful, though. Having interactive elements is a two-edged sword. If the functionalities are not done with precision and have bugs, this will only lead to quality deterioration.

Content

We’ve said it many times, just as almost every other expert in the world, and we will say it again, “Content is King”. That’s probably the single most impactful element of your website’s quality. Mediocre content can destroy a website, regardless of how good its other aspects are. But on the other hand, high-quality and fresh content can save an otherwise questionable website. Still, if you want your website’s quality to soar, you need all the elements to be done to perfection.

By quality content, we mean having fresh copy and a blog post every 1-2 weeks, a great CTA, a ton of high-quality pictures and/or videos, and of course, impeccable grammar and spelling.

So, now that you know everything about website quality, how to measure it, and what affects it, let’s get down to business.

How to improve your website quality

Improving your website quality is truly not that hard. All it needs is a little effort and knowledge. Of course, we will gladly provide you with the latter. So, what can you do to help your quality soar?

Add value to your website

The best way to increase your website quality is to rely on your experience. People who visit your website are there for some kind of information. Most often, they have clicked on a search engine result or a paid ad, which already gave them some information on what they will see. However, once in, they need to learn more. So, naturally, you need to add some extra value. Be it your knowledge, some lucrative offer, or simply a product or service, which will resolve their problem, you need to show you have the solution to the reason they clicked on your link. The more experience you have, the higher the quality of your content will be.

So don’t hesitate to go all in with your knowledge when presenting a solution so you can give emence value to the readers.

Work on the user experience and the reliability

We’ve mentioned that user experience is, without a doubt, among the most important aspects of your website. Naturally, improving your website’s UX will instantly increase its quality. So, what you should do is audit your website’s usability.

First, check if your navigation is logical and hierarchical. After that, ensure all your features work as intended and don’t have any bugs. Next, check the links and make sure all of them lead to the right spot. There is nothing more frustrating than clicking on Prices and getting to the About us page, for example.

If you still haven’t added your contact information, now would be a great time. Having direct contact, be it via email or a phone number, will immensely increase your reliability, and the customers will feel much more secure sharing their information (like credit card numbers, addresses, and others).

Finally, reduce your ads and especially all the pop-ups. It’s OK to have one “Subscribe” pop-up window, but generally, don’t let ads and pop-ups overtake your content. A banner or two is fine, but overdoing it will increase the bounce rate. On the other hand, reducing the number of annoying ads, like blinking once, for example, will instantly improve your website’s quality.

Improve your CTA

The CTA is the end of your customer’s journey. So, naturally, if you improve this section and put the CTA type that precisely fits your narrative, you will enjoy not only an increase in your overall website quality but also a much higher conversion rate.

If you already have a CTA and it matches the type that fits the customer journey you created, you can try and improve it. Try some A/B testing on the copy. Make sure you use a good color scheme. Most importantly, make your CTA stand out from the rest of your page.

Stay fresh and up to date

Having your Christmas Special promotion on display in late January is not the best way to show you are a serious business. Being up-to-date will not necessarily improve your website quality, but having outdated information will definitely tarnish it.

What you can do to improve your website quality is to start writing relevant blog posts every week or two. Ensure you find relevant and trending topics with at least some implications for your business or industry. This will increase your website’s quality, help you with your SEO efforts and build up your brand authority.

Update your design

Just like with content, your design should also be up-to-date. User preferences change over time. Regardless of whether your 2003 edition looks fantastic, you need to change it. Stay on top of the trends, and rely on data rather than hunches when choosing your next design. Naturally, an up-to-date, visually pleasing design will instantly increase your website quality and make it much more efficient.

It’s best, however, to trust a professional designer to create your website’s look. Web design is a true science. So, if you don’t have experience and knowledge, it’s best not to do experiments.

Stay on top of the SEO changes

Speaking of SEO, you should always be on top of any changes to Google’s algorithm, and those happen a lot. Google makes roughly 500-600 updates a year, so you need to always be alert. These modifications are based on changing customer behavior, so following their guidelines will also help you improve your website’s overall quality.

Use a lot of images and/or videos

If you get the leads, but somehow your conversion rate is disappointing, you might want to consider changing your content type. What we mean is that people are not too keen on reading, especially when the text is filled with complex concepts and terminology. Naturally, this doesn’t apply to blog posts, as their primary function is to explain complicated ideas in detail. On the other hand, your home page should be just like a vestibule. It should direct people rather than convince them to convert.

This being said, home pages with heavy, long texts are typically not that great. So to improve your website’s quality, you might want to rely a bit more on high-quality pictures or video. Visuals help people take a break from a long text and have some time to make sense of it as well, so you might want to consider adding a bit more of those in your blog posts. They also help to understand some complex topics easier.

Regardless of whether you will go for Pictures or Video, make sure you only post high-quality visuals.

Improve your page speed

With high-quality pictures, features, and a brand-new modern design, your website may become quite chubby. This will deteriorate its quality quite significantly. So, make sure you use compressed images, keep your coding clean and structured, and if that doesn’t help, maybe it’s time for a new hosting service provider. HostAramda can definitely help on this end, as we can provide lightning-fast hosting that’s both secure and stable. This means that your website won’t just be fast but will also have practically zero downtime. As you can imagine, having your website unresponsive even for a fraction of the day is a huge hit on your website quality, so getting one of our plans will definitely improve your website quality.

So, what should you remember?

A good website quality will make your entire business much more profitable. It will help you with your marketing immensely, as well as your conversion rates and lead generation. Naturally, many factors affect your quality. Keeping an eye on them via the most important metrics we mentioned in detail above will help you determine if there is a problem and, more importantly, where it is. Increasing your website quality is not that hard. All you need to do is improve your content, make a few changes here and there and have HostArmada as your trusted hosting service provider. It’s as simple as that.