What more can you do to boost traffic to your website and increase conversions? We tried to answer this question plus more in our latest #SEMrushchat where we did a real-time site analysis for the website, gulfphotoplus.com. During the chat, the participants spotted certain aspects of the site that needed to be changed immediately. In case you missed out on the session, here is what our chat participants had to say; you may get some helpful tips for your own website, too!

Q1. After the first glance, what is the one thing you would definitely change about Gulfphotoplus?

Gulf Photo Plus has some great photos on their site. However, there are a few elements that still need some work:

1. A Clear Value Proposition

The best websites are those that highlight the value proposition to the visitors the instant they land. The faster the users understand what benefit they can get from the site, the easier the conversions will be. However, with this website, we see that this is missing entirely.

Adding a good H1 title, a better image that defines their value proposition, and changing the site layout will help.

2. Better UX

Another indicator of a good website (that converts), would be a simple UX where the user is able to navigate very easily; this means one clear value proposition that draws the user’s attention on a page that is clean and has good design elements. Unfortunately, Gulf Photo Plus needs to look into that as well.

Their mobile version is also way too condensed with lots of elements, and their website is just way too busy. It has too many colors and too many images that are vying for the users’ attention.

3. No CTA (Call-to-Action) 

Gulf Photo Plus doesn’t have a clear CTA, which is essential. Having a clear CTA, a good H1, or even an image that defines what exactly the purpose of the site is could help users to convert better. Like @feanAD stated, “The homepage is kind of overwhelming with all those boxes/grids. It is a lot. A simple clear theme would be great.”

4. Better Navigation For the Blog

The blog has older posts that are pretty interesting, but quite hard to access. It requires way too many clicks to reach, and new content buries the evergreen content that was published earlier. The site needs better internal linking structures to make it easier for the visitors to navigate.

5. Page Speed

A page that loads slowly is a definite conversion killer. According to SEOptimer, Gulf Photo Plus ranks among the last three of all sites for website speed; this can cost them a lot of traffic and conversions and should be changed as soon as possible.

To increase the site speed, @HustleLegends suggests that they change the menu and the layout to increase the speed of the site.

chat-recap-q1.png

In case you are looking to improve your site speed as well, check out site speed optimization techniques that can help.

Q2. Out of these issues we detected with the SEMrush audit tool, which one should @gulfphotoplus.com fix ASAP? Why?

There are at least 40 technical SEO mistakes that your site could be guilty of. Since it can be tedious to manually check the site for each of the 40 plausible mistakes, SEMrush’s Site Audit tool is a great way to identify SEO elements that need to be fixed. The SEO analysis of Gulf Photo Plus' website using this tool yielded three major issues:

  1. Mixed content, which is when both HTTP and HTTPS content are loaded and displayed on the same page.

  2. Duplicate Content, which is when content is repetitive across multiple pages; this actually confuses the search engines and can be detrimental for SEO. If it is crucial for you to repeat your content, then you should add a rel=canonical tag to the original page to help the search engine differentiate original content from other pages.

  3. Temporary redirects, which is when the user is sent to a different URL than originally intended. Having the correct redirect can make a huge difference to the site speed and is an important aspect of SEO.

Out of these three, the majority of our chat participants felt that mixed content was the most important issue to fix since users will not visit an unsecured site.

Google Chrome adds a warning about all unsecured sites, so, this can most likely stop users from visiting your site, which is clearly not the best way to win their trust.

Next would be to fix duplicate content since there are only 3 pages being affected by this. In some cases, this may be more of a priority, but since more pages have mixed content, it is not as pressing.

Lastly, fix the temporary redirects. Since the site has over 300 pages with 301 and 302 redirects, it definitely needs to be fixed. However, the number of pages with duplicate content issues and meta tag descriptions is higher.

chat-recap-q2.png

Q3. What purpose should their blog have? Does the existing blog match it?

Their blog’s purpose should be to demonstrate their expertise in their niche area, attract traffic with relevant content, and to educate and inspire their audience. Although they do a good job of meeting these objectives, there is definitely room for improvement.

Here is how they can improve:

1. Have A Better Layout

Despite having great content, the layout of their blog is a big turnoff. It can be improved by tweaking the format of the text, testing out various fonts, and also experimenting with different page layouts to see what works best.

Paying attention to design elements is also important. All of the great content is lost due to overlong line lengths (poor legibility) and poor quality images.

The blog can also be a quick way to improve the layout of the whole website. All unnecessary content on the homepage (that is not focused towards the value proposition), can be moved to the blog.

2. Improve the Structure

Adding categories to the blog could help the site visitors to sort through various blog posts, improving the structure of the page.

Similarly, the H1 tags are missing for a lot of pages.

They can also add descriptions or short snippets for each post so that visitors can get an idea of each article quickly; this could be a huge boost to their UX.

3. No Focused Conversion

While the content on the blog is certainly targeted, it is not compelling enough to encourage the user to convert. So, focusing more on educative content like tips and guides, instead of articles on photographers can help.

This not only makes the content more engaging but also adds more value to the user who visits the site.

Once they attract a visitor to the blog articles, it is also necessary to find a way to capture the said visitor as a lead. That means a clear conversion path has to be outlined.

Understanding the user journey will also be useful in making the content more relevant to identify what topics to focus on. This strategy will help them to create articles and titles that are more enticing and publish them more frequently to improve conversion.

chat-recap-q3.png

Q4. What features/UX/Content mistakes could be setting them back?

Website features, site UX, and the content online are all crucial elements that impact traffic and conversion. Here are a few things our chat participants felt could be holding Gulf Photo Plus from achieving its full potential:

1. Features – Each page on the site is exceedingly large and slows down the site speed drastically. Reducing page size and boosting site speed are both a top priority. This can be done by compressing image sizes, rectifying 404 error pages, and trimming down pages larger than 3mb.

To make the website more conversion centric, the CTAs could be defined better. Similarly, the typography in the design hierarchy, like using one font and gradually changing the size for each header can be modified as well.

2. UX – The user experience of the website definitely leaves a lot to be desired. The website is complicated, with too many competing elements to provide optimal UX for every visitor. So, stripping it down completely to focus on one value proposition, simplifying it, and providing clear CTAs can help to improve it.

Having the most critical CTAs and content above the fold will save users from having to scroll down every time to find the content they are interested in. This is an important aspect of UX that the website has overlooked and has to correct.

If you are having the same issues, use these 4 UX principles of SEO to help you nail the right UX for your site.

3. Content – Good content and good UX go hand in hand. For example, changing the hero image, adding some text to it, and compressing it will improve UX drastically (and also the page load time).

The above recommendation will also ensure that there are proper CTAs above the fold, giving the users something to click on.

Likewise, the content that is on site has to be mobile friendly and compelling enough to convert, which are two aspects that influence the UX of the site.

Ultimately, it boils down to what the clear goal of the website is. Choosing one aspect and focusing on it on the homepage can be the quickest way to solve all the three-pointers mentioned above.

If in doubt, using A/B testing to make data-driven changes in UX and content can be the quickest way to optimize conversions.

chat-recap-q4.png

Q5. Which creative link building or link earning technique should Gulf Photo Plus be using?

SEMrush’s Backlink Tool found that Gulfphotoplus.com already has 4,675 backlinks from 357 domains. While this is not a bad number, the quality of the links should definitely be checked.

Here are a couple of ways they can expand their backlink profile:

1. Community Engagement – They have a good number of photographers’ profiles on their site. Encouraging this community to engage, participate, and link back to their site will automatically build high value and relevant backlinks.

Encouraging these photographers to guest blog on their site and share their expertise on other websites via guest blog posts can be great ways to win backlinks.

2. Diversify Their Channels - Gulf Photo Plus is on many social media channels, but one that they are missing is Pinterest. Since Pinterest depends highly on images to share stories, this could be a highly relevant channel they could use to gain quality links. Similarly, harvesting all the unlinked mentions from social media can also increase the backlink profile.

A quick way to find unlinked/unmentioned material that they own is to do a reverse image search. This option will help a company identify their content that is being used but isn’t being linked to. Once that is done, they can reach out to the content creator and request a backlink for content that they rightfully own.

Since they also conduct quite a variety of exhibitions and workshops, creating promotional backlinks to each of them could actually work in their favor – even if the said events are not regularly conducted.

An important aspect to keep in mind while link building is to see whether it is worthwhile to spend resources on that activity when they have already outstripped the competition.

Also, focusing on internal linking and improving navigation is more important than fixing external backlinks, since it is the former that will improve the UX and conversion rate of the site.

Remember, creating excellent content that people will want to link to isn't easy, but it is often easier than building links.

chat-recap-q5.png

What do you have to add to the site audit of Gulf Photo Plus? Do you agree with our chat participants? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Author Photo
Maria KalyadinaMaria is the Social Media Marketing Manager at SEMrush and the host of the weekly #SEMrushchat. You can always connect with her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter! Join the #SEMrushChat every Wednesday at 11 am ET/ 4 pm BST!
More about Technical SEO
How to Get Google to Index Your Site (Faster)If your website isn’t indexed, it can’t be found via search engines like Google. This guide provides greater detail about indexing and why it’s important. It also explains how you can check to see if your page is indexed, how to fix common technical SEO problems that cause indexing issues, and how to quickly get Google to recrawl index your site if it’s not already indexed.

Technical SEO

7 min read