TRAFFIC
GIVE YOUR SITE A SEASONAL HEALTH CHECK
The slower pace of business at this time of year is the perfect opportunity for affiliates to get their offer match-fit , writes Julia Logan
SUMMER IS A TIME of year when we can all be a bit reluctant to work actively on our sites . Affiliate programmes may slow down their activities as well , perhaps coming up with fewer new promotions . With autumn approaching , the last of this downtime should be used to run some checks and invest in the future traffic and conversions of your affiliate sites .
We ’ ve put together a list of things worth reviewing , along with some tools that may be useful for the job . Ideally , most of these checks should be run regularly every once in a while to ensure your site ’ s health and optimal performance .
Find your broken links Whether internal or external , these happen more often than you might think and often go unnoticed . Broken external links can mean lost conversions if they are to affiliate offers . Meanwhile , affiliate programmes change over time – for example , with discontinued promotions – often without notifying affiliates . If they don ’ t redirect their discontinued offers , your traffic goes nowhere ; and even if they do redirect them elsewhere , don ’ t you want to review those redirects to decide if you ’ re happy with where your traffic is going ?
Broken internal links occur most often after a site redesign or an update . But it ’ s also possible that you simply made a typo in a link to an existing page when posting a new review or adding a new page . Ever since , it ’ s been sitting there linking to a non-existent URL on your site . Broken internal links not only make for a poorer user experience , they can also affect the way search engines crawl , index and rank your site ; don ’ t let these silly errors hurt you .
A great tool to check for broken links is ScreamingFrog . Just run a crawl of your site and check for the server-response code of all your internal URLs and external links . ScreamingFrog also lets you see what pages on your site link to a URL with a 301 , 302 ( permanent or temporary redirect ) or 404 ( not found ) status .
Another useful tool , Sitebulb , not only flags broken links or redirected URLs , it also lets you visualise the crawl map of your site ( Figure 1 ). A visual crawl map helps clarify how many steps it would take a search engine crawler , or clicks it would take a user , to get to any given page on your site . The further from the home page a URL is , the more difficult will be to discover . Your mileage may vary depending on individual sites but usually this affects
the page ’ s chances to rank well . Run a Sitebulb crawl at least once , visualise the crawl map and you might be surprised by what you find – especially if your site is a few years old and you ’ ve been adding content without thinking much about an organised structure or site architecture .
Stay secure Google has been pushing site owners towards using SSL certificates for a while but as of July this year it started marking sites without them as ‘ not secure ’ in Chrome . While the presence or the absence of an SSL certificate per se is not a ranking factor , you might want to check what percentage of your visitors use Chrome and , if you ’ re not using SSL yet , consider adding it .
“ Broken links make for a poorer user experience and can affect the way the search engines rank your site . Don ’ t let these silly errors hurt you ”
Figure 1 : an example of Sitebulb ’ s innovative crawl-map visualisation
10 iGB Affiliate Issue 70 AUG / SEP 2018