What does your website do for your business?
Every business owner should be able to answer that question without hesitation. Does it help sell your services and/or products? Does it promote your brand to a wider audience to entice new customers? Or is it for social proof?
Websites cost money, and not just to build. They’re an ongoing cost. So how can you get the most out of your website and make that investment worth it?
Today I am going to share with you some basic and more advanced ways to make your website work smarter, not harder for your business in the new year.
Content Analysis & Revamps
Stop churning and burning website content simply because marketers keep preaching to you that ‘content is king’.
Website owners, especially over the last couple of years, have been told that getting more people to your website is as simple as adding a new blog post or page to the website regularly ‘because Google loves new content’. This is not entirely true. Especially when there are over 5.28 billion web pages already.
Google loves AMAZING content that serves a purpose for people.
Before you create a new piece of content, think about what value it’s adding to your target audience. Evergreen content is the golden nugget of website content. This is the web content which will continually bring in new visitors to the website if you’re doing your SEO right.
Evergreen content is content that is always relevant and of interest to people.
So if you shouldn’t create a new blog post every week or every month, what should you do? Instead, why not spend time looking at how your current content is performing and how you can potentially revamp/update it. Look into improving it so more people can find it and go on to convert.
Conversion Rate Optimisation (aka more sales/enquiries)
Yes, SEO is about getting people who search on Google to your website. However, if I was a business owner, I would want my SEO specialist to also be focused on what those people do on the website once they get there.
Would you rather have a crazy amount of traffic with only a few people converting (purchasing a product, enquiring about your services, etc) or have a smaller amount of website traffic but double the amount of conversions? I know which one I’d prefer and which one would put more money in my pocket.
What we’re talking about here is conversion rate optimisation (CRO). CRO is the technique of improving the rate at which people complete desired actions on your website, aka conversions.
Small changes on a webpage, can sometimes impact whether someone goes through your checkout or not. This could be as small as the colour of a button or perhaps a different headline on the page.
Obviously, the variables on a webpage are immense. However, with tools like Google Optimize, you can split test various versions of a page to find that sweet spot. It’s an ongoing job, but one that can greatly impact your bottom line.
Build Your Brand
Focusing on building your brand name is going to result in more people searching for you online.
When people are searching for a specific brand, e.g. ‘Grand Cru Digital’, then it’s highly likely that they want what you’ve got. Thus, they’re going to be easier to convert because they have already heard of your brand.
Therefore, focusing on growing the amount of branded searches for your business should be a priority in the new year.
Pro tip: Make sure your business name is at the end of all your meta titles to help emphasise your brand name.
Part of building your brand comes down to public relations and getting your name out there. Therefore if you get the opportunity to be quoted in a publication or in the media, jump on it! Keep an eye on websites like SourceBottle which help to connect journalists and bloggers with businesses like yours.
Don’t forget that if you have more people searching for you on Google, then you will want to make sure your free Google listing is looking fabulous too.
WOM Online Is Your Best Friend
Building off the above point, the more people you have talking about you online – the more you’ll get noticed. Word of mouth (WOM) is still one of the strongest advocates for your business, off and online.
All businesses should have strategies in place to kindly ask people to leave their business a review online. This could be Google My Business reviews, Facebook recommendations or adding product reviews directly on your website.
Reviews can be hard to get, which is why a lot of business owners put it in the ‘too hard basket’. But trust me, potential customers do like to read reviews and testimonials, so if yours shine, you may just have a lot more customers on your hands.
Love Your Email Subscribers
When people have a good experience with your business, they are typically willing to give you their email address. Having worked on hundreds of websites, I can tell you that people who read email newsletters, typically convert highly.
Your email database is like a collection of your closest friends. These customers are happy for you to send them mail directly to their inbox. It’s a personal relationship that you should nurture.
Which is why you should look into strategies to:
- Increase your email subscriber database
- Engage your email subscribers
Having a regular email newsletter, whether that’s monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly can be a great way to continue the conversation with people who want something to do with your brand. But not only that, it’s a good way to draw people back to your website.
Steal The Spotlight On The Search Results
There are over 40,000 Google searches every second and I could place a bet that at least some of those are searching for businesses like yours. Therefore it’s incredibly important your business looks top notch on the search result pages.
From having your Google My Business listing looking great to ensuring your metadata is optimised, is a great start. However, if you want to take it to that next level then you need to know about featured snippets and structured data.
Featured snippets, aka ‘position zero’, are those beautiful looking search results at the top of the page that are highlighted. They may include an image and they really attract people to click on them. They are something you want to aim for to really steal the spotlight on the search result pages.
In order to improve your chances of claiming a featured snippet, you should implement what we call structured data. This involves pieces of code around certain elements on your page to tell Google what it is. Google understands this language and uses it to help rank your website. You can add structured data for things like products, blog posts, local business information and more.
And that’s not all folks! I have tons of ideas and strategies to help you make the most of your website in the new year. If you need help with making your website work smarter not harder for you, then pop me a message and let’s have a chat.