When it comes to online marketing, your website is your most valuable commodity. It is the glue that holds all of your online marketing together. Your social media marketing efforts, your content, the place where your audience is converted to customers, all of it happens on your web page. Because your website is at the center of all of your online marketing efforts, it is important to ensure that what you have on your site is what you want to have representing you. Your website needs to be a tight package that looks great, functions in the most simple of ways, shows off who you are and what you are all about, is exciting and offers something for you audience to engage with, and accurately shows what you are capable of. To ensure that your website is having the right impact on your audience, it is important that you follow our five simple tips for improving your website.
There are a few web design choices that people make which are a big turn off for your audience. Things line infinite scrolling, music which being upon landing on your page, or auto-play videos (especially advertisements), can cause any user to click off of your website immediately. While the intent here might be to create something your site’s visitors will enjoy and engage with, these, along with pop-ups or pop-unders are more annoying than engaging.
When it comes to online marketing, it is important to remember that internet users don’t like to be marketed to. If you want your audience to remain your audience, you need to make sure you’re not being overbearing about selling to them. Keep in mind that cluttering up your page with advertisements is a good way to make sure your audience visits someone else’s page. In fact this happens in two ways. One they leave your site because it is not emotionally appealing, and two if they do click on an add it might take them off your site anyway! Too much advertising also muddles your content and your message. Further to this point, Google, in their unending quest to provide users with relevant and useful content, penalizes pages with too much space dedicated to advertising.
It is important that your site is not alienating any faction of your audience by only being compatible with certain web browsers. You need to ensure that your site functions properly and efficiently on all major web browsers including Safari and mobile devices. Adobe BrowserLab is an excellent way to test your site compatibility with other web browsers.
Your site needs to have a clear and focused direction. It needs to be apparent to your audience, upon landing on your page, exactly who you are, what you do, and what your purpose is. Every aspect of your page needs to be clear cut and speak to what you are offering, leave nothing to chance, don’t speak in veiled euphemisms and hope that your audience will make the connection and buy into you as a purchasing option. Your website needs to shout “hello, we are x! We sell x! Click here to buy x!” Avoid any content or navigation that requires work on the part of your audience. Included in this point, it needs to be said that your site’s navigation needs to be as simple and stream lined as possible. When it comes to converting your audience, you don’t want your “buy now” link to be buried deep inside of your website behind an in-depth sign up page, or endless pages of useless content. Make sure you have something simple that doesn’t require your audience to dig through unnecessary pages to give you their money.
Content marketing is your ace in the hole when it comes to online marketing. Google has gone out of its way to make sure their SERPs represent the most relevant search results possible. What does that mean when it comes to content marketing? Well the content on your page is how Google knows just how relevant your page is. By using things like the bounce rate, and click-through rate , the duration of a visit to your page, Google decides just how relevant and awesome your content is and ranks it accordingly. Make sure that every piece of content you post on your site is an awesome culmination of targeted keywords cleverly hidden inside eloquently created content that is purposeful and relevant to your target audience. For some tips on creating content that is awesome and engaging, see our tips for compelling content. These are just a few tips for making sure your website is the best website possible, and the most accurate representation of you or your brand on the web. Guaranteed SEO can guide you through the website creation or redesign process and help you create a powerful and impactful webpage. Please give us a call at 1-866-588-8282 or fill in our request form and we will contact you.