Your beautiful, bespoke website is live, and you’re ready for traffic to start booming. You’re eager for customers to land on your site and explore. You want them to fill out your form or buy your product. The only issue is, people can’t find you online. It sounds like your website is in need of some digital love, and, because we love you, here are eight ways to show your website a little love and affection.
Are you treating your site right?
Imagine investing money and energy into a marketing campaign that targets traffic to your site, only to find a technical glitch prevented you from receiving the leads! Avoid this costly mistake by regularly checking your site’s functionality. Schedule it in your calendar to do at least once a month.
Check to see if all of the links lead to a source. Are your contact form submissions being received? You won’t get a second first impression with your customers. If you’re putting in the effort for the leads, ensure your website works––especially the contact form. Depending on the form tool you’ve got (Jetpack, WP Forms, or another) you’ll find recent contact form submissions stored within the dashboard of your website. Check this often to confirm you are receiving all of your submissions.
If you update your plugins, check that everything on your website is functioning as usual. Sometimes, updates can break things. A handy tip from us: the second version of updates tends to have fewer glitches.
You are inbox-worthy.
Landing in someone’s inbox is no small feat in today’s modern world. First, you have to get their email. Next, you have to think of something witty to say. Then you play the waiting game, anxiety levels peaking while you play it uber cool. So what if it turns out they never received your email to begin with? It’s time to check that your emails are not getting flagged as spam by your customers.
A few tools are available to diagnose this, such as MXToolbox, and you should check this regularly. We use these tools to check that emails are passing spam filters and that your domain hasn’t been added to any type of blacklist. We look to ensure your email’s SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are all passing, and if they’re not, we’ll fix this.
Strive for better content.
Quality, usable, informative content is highly valued in our media-rich society. Creating it shows audiences that you are an expert. It’s a no-brainer. Make the time and show your content a little adoration. Whether it’s generating fresh, relevant content for a new site, or reinvigorating useful content on an older website, your customers and search engines will love it!
Updating and republishing old blog posts with new content and images can increase organic traffic by as much as 111%.
Backlinko.
Not sure what to write about? Get to know your audience! Use Google Search Console to find out what keywords users are searching to land on your website and your competitors’ sites. Still, need inspiration? People want answers to their questions, they want them now, and they want them to be right. Being the online source that provides these answers will build authority and trust for your website and brand. This helps you to rank higher in searches and increase repeat visitors. Consider the questions your target users might be asking and develop a content strategy that directly addresses them.
Be brave, be present, be social.
People are using social media channels like search engines. You need to be where your customers are online so they can discover you. Communicate on their level, be seen on their chosen platforms, and give them what they want. The customer is in control of today’s media-rich marketplace. They shop how they want, when they want, for what they want. They’ll find it with someone else if you can’t give them what they need.
So if you’re not already getting social, it’s time. Show up on the main social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. If you’re in the B2B space, join Linkedin, or use Pinterest to share your products and how they can be used.
Hello. WHOIS there?
Would you trust someone selling homegrown fruit on the side of the road if they were wearing a mask? Would you buy and eat the produce even though they refused to show you their face? It seems a little suspicious, so probably not, eh? The same goes for your website. Having a ‘cyberspace identity’ attached to your site tells search engines and users on the web that there’s a person behind the domain. This makes your website and emails more trustworthy and credible.
WHOIS data identifies the owner of a domain name. When you register a domain, you’re required to provide contact information. Just as it’s wise to update the contact details on your Business License regularly, you should also check that your domain name is current and secure. Set your domain name’s WHOIS data to “public” for transparency and accountability. Include your current business address and contact details. You’ll also want to ensure the domain is locked to protect it against unauthorized transfers. WHOIS data is also required for DNS, which we are going to talk about next.
Don’t risk it. Use protection.
Friendly warning, coffee is required for the next paragraph. We get a little technical.
There are a host of brand-new tools that can help secure your domain and website, although understanding how they work can be overwhelming. Secure socket layer or SSL Certificates tell web browsers your site is trustworthy. You should definitely have one of these.
Domain name system security extensions protocol (DNSSEC) works to protect websites and email addresses on the internet. It secures the information provided by your website’s domain name system to the internet protocol (IP) networks. That way, your website and data are protected when web browsers load your site on a device.
Have you heard of HTTPS? It provides security and guarantees transparency over the web, and Google loves it! I know this sounds complicated, but seriously, there are a lot of creepers out there looking to take advantage of vulnerable websites. Be proactive, stay safe, and if you’re not sure, ask a digital expert.
SEOMG, look at those leads!
Want to get found by the right audience online? Allow me to introduce search engine optimization. SEO is not a quick fix or one single thing. It’s many strategic tactics working together to grow your website traffic and, as a result, grow your customer following. A solid search engine optimization strategy can increase sales and lead generation by attracting higher-quality users.
Web users trust search engines, and search engines trust optimized websites. SEO done well is the smartest way to get people to visit a website. It builds organic traffic and is very good for the social promotion of your site. Not quite sure where to start? Check out the SEO services we provide, and let’s get your website found.
Be insightful and show you care.
Meet Google Analytics. GA can show you data insights on anything to do with your business online. Like the whole story on customer journeys and audience demographics, or the lowdown on product sales and campaign performance. The opportunities are endless, but laying the groundwork for a beautiful relationship between GA and your website is crucial.
Step one, install the plugin on your site and let it do the data gathering for you. Step two, jump in and familiarize yourself with the dashboard. Through the audience data, you can learn about your website user demographics. Acquisition data provides insight into how users are getting to your website. Meanwhile, the behaviour data tells you what users are doing once they land on your site. Google Analytics empowers you to work smarter with data.