Promoting your website

Does your website need a workout? Make it work harder for you  

Technology has moved at an unprecedented pace in recent years, and is showing no signs of slowing down. As digital communication becomes more advanced, and social media seems to be taking over the globe, the ‘build it and they will come’ mentality of website design no longer works.

Sites now have to be built and maintained in a smarter way to maximise their value as a core part of your organisation’s communications strategy, and a central hub to host your content.

You could have the best website in the world, but if people don’t know about your business and you aren’t ranking highly on Google, you need to take action quickly to avoid being overtaken by your competitors. This means ensuring your website is fully optimised using SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) from the outset.

Don’t buy a white elephant website

Many people are aware of SEO in terms of the content and keywords on their site, but are not clear on the importance of building a website with the right SEO already built in from the outset.

So many small businesses go to cheap freelance web designers who are inexperienced, unskilled, and rely on template software to build a simple site. This can end up being a costly mistake, as these sites often don’t make use of advanced software tools that can validate the SEO as you build, meaning they are already missing out on vital SEO strategies that could help push them to the top on Google searches.

Businesses end up with a website that might look good on the surface, but is not really fit for purpose in terms of functionality and performance. In the worst cases, they end up having to start again, proving that the old adage, ‘buy cheap and buy twice’ certainly rings true when it comes to website design.

Keep your site contented

As mentioned earlier, you also have to have the right content strategy in place to keep visitors interested and coming back for more. This means creating regular blogs, articles and news for the site that answer the questions your customers want answered, and are typing in to Google.  If you don’t know what these are, try using an online tool such as Answer the Public to help you find out. Providing the answers to these shows you understand your audience, and also positions you as industry experts.

Once you have created the right content, using your social media platforms to drive traffic back to the relevant web pages should pay dividends in terms of generating good leads from those who are already thinking of buying your products. It should also push you further up the Google charts, particularly if you have used the right long tail search terms and key words in your copy.

Socialise on social

To make your content strategy work effectively you need to grow the right audience on your relevant social media platforms, and engage with relevant bloggers and influencers with a large following who can help you reach a larger audience. This takes some groundwork, as you will need to start to follow and join in conversations with the right people in order to build a relationship with them, which can then lead them to start liking, sharing and commenting on your content.

Social advertising

If you really want to make your social media strategy work hard for you, you could also invest in advertising on one or two key platforms to help you cut through to the right target audience more quickly. This is not a substitute for great content and organic social activity though, so it is best to use the two strategies in tandem for a coherent and coordinated approach.

Invest in PPC

These days small businesses are all competing to be number one on Google, but as algorithms are continually updating, organic search and SEO could benefit from a boost. Pay per click advertising can be a great way to push further traffic and leads straight to your website, either from other relevant websites or from social media platforms. If you’ve ever wondered how your competitors are managing to maintain a position above you on the Google rankings, it may be that they’re spending more money on pay per click advertising.

There’s a lot to think about on top of running your own business, so if you need help with optimising your website, or even if you need a complete refresh, why not come and have a chat? We’d love to help if we can.