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The Worst Website

Posted on by Adam Kovitz
We may not always judge a book by its cover, but we almost always judge a business by its website. There are a lot of opinions about what goes into the worst website… Poor color selection, not mobile friendly, hard to read font and terrible images or content. While I agree those are big factors, for me the worst website is the one that is NOT found.
Just because you have created and published your website, it does not mean that people will be able to easily find it. If  your website is not found, then your business is functionally irrelevant online. So, you need to help the search engines know about your website and help them understand how the website relates to user search entries. In addition, you need to help your audience – the people you want to reach – learn about the existence of your website and business.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of getting traffic to your website organically and for free in the search results on search engines (e.g. Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.). SEO encompasses both the technical and creative elements required to improve rankings, drive traffic, and increase awareness in search engines. While this is a topic that is too large for a small section in a blog post, here is a summary of the 2 areas you need to focus on for SEO:

  1. On-Page SEO is the act of you optimizing different parts of your web site that affect your search engine rankings. It’s stuff that you have control over and can change on your own website, such as page text, various HTML tags, and internal links.
  2. Off-Page SEO increases the relevancy of your website by getting links on other websites to your website. Essentially, it increases relevancy because if demonstrates how the “world” views your website.

While on-page and off-page SEO work together to improve your search engine rankings, On-page SEO is the one that you should initially spend time on. It’s the one where you have the full control to make updates and improvements.

Get Social
It’s not enough to produce great content on your website and hope that people find it. You must be proactive. One of the best ways to increase traffic to your website is to use social media channels to promote your content and drive traffic to your website. Twitter is ideal for short, snappy attention getters called “tweets”. LinkedIn is the number 1 social media platform for B2B* (business-to-business). Also, YouTube is tops for promoting video content. If you are a B2C (business-to-consumer) organization, you will get the most traction with Facebook*. Also use YouTube and Instagram if your content is largely images. Don’t forget to include your website link in your social media channels and activity.

Pay-Per-Click Marketing

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing is a way of using search engine advertising to generate clicks to your website instead of “earning” those clicks organically via SEO. Every time your ad is clicked, sending a visitor to your website, you pay the search engine a small fee. You do not pay a fee when the search engine displays your ad, but the searcher does not click your ad. Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) (https://ads.google.com/home/) is the most popular PPC platform. Although, other search engines and social media channels offer this service.

Your entire PPC campaign is built around keywords. These are the words/phrases that people use to search in the search engines. When someone searches using the keywords that are in your campaign, your website ad will display in the search results. The most successful AdWords advertisers continuously refine their PPC keyword list.

Add a Blog Page
Search engines love fresh content. There’s no better way to provide fresh and frequent content than with blog posts. You will build trust and clout within your professional community by providing valuable, expert information via your blog posts. Over time, you will become a trusted resource for helpful, informative content, which can ultimately lead to a higher customer conversion rate. If you are already blogging, then post more frequently. This is a form of on-page SEO.

Email Marketing
In today’s dynamic digital marketing world, email marketing tends to take a backseat to most online promotion activities. If you haven’t considered email marketing for your business, now may be the time to do so. Email marketing is a targeted, shareable, credible, measurable, and cost-effective marketing tool. Using email marketing, you can create deeper and more personal relationships with a wider audience, and at a very low cost. With a targeted approach and a strong message, your business is sure to benefit from email marketing.

While wanting more customers is the primary desire for business owners, then next desired item is increased website traffic. Implementing any of the above strategies can help increase traffic to your website. While some of these strategies won’t be a quick fix, you may be surprised how quickly some of them start to generate results for you.

Click here to contact me regarding this or any other blog post. Also, I welcome comments, which you can post below.

* 2016 B2B Content Marketing Trends – North America: Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs

   2016 B2C Content Marketing Trends – North America: Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs

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