
This January make it your resolution to turn your online business presence into something that will actually help build your business.
We, at WDHW, want to make it clear – you can’t simply pay someone to build you a successful website, there are strategies you need to employ for a productive and profitable website.
- First things first, ask yourself, who is your website targeting? You need to think about the profile of the customer your business is aimed at and focus on driving your content home to those individuals
- Next take a look at your current website, is there more focus on style over substance? If your website lacks substance, that’s high quality content, you will fail to convert visitors to customers and search engines will disregard you when indexing
- Now, think about how much of your content is valuable to potential customers? Does it educate, inform and assist them to take action? Giving visitors free information that helps them achieve goals and make decisions will help them recognise you as a company with useful services or products that will make their life easier
- Are you and the employees at your company online savvy? Or do you employ a team of online marketers to deal with “all that”? In this day in age, your team can all help play a role in building the online profile of your business, with a decent web developer worth their salt acting as a partner and keeping you informed on what you can do to build a better online profile together
- Is your website equipped with a blog? Blogging is one of the most effective and powerful online tools available to you. However, it shouldn’t be about promoting your company, rather imparting valuable knowledge that will have the reader coming back for more – sharing knowledge, building trust and ultimately converting your loyal readers into customers because they know, you know what you are talking about
- Do you understand the power of SEO? That’s Search Engine Optimisation, if you’re unaware of the term but determined to get recognised online, it’s time to learn SEO essentials. Being found in Google and other search engines is key to your success, with the majority of searchers not wanting to look further than the first 3 pages of results. Getting up the rankings is an involved process of knowledgeable content, social network engagement and avoiding all the quick fix tricks that can lead to chaos
- Are you social networking? In this day in age, it’s unavoidable if you want to get yourself known; it’s the new word of mouth, if you have a presence that can be found across social networks you are a known entity, you can create familiarity and trust through such presence, leading that audience to embrace you and allowing you to connect with your prospects
- Paid for SEO upfront, then failed to renew? It takes continued effort to maintain SEO rankings, to keep your online profile fresh and engaging searchers online. Build online marketing into your yearly budget, making time within your team to increase and continue momentum
- What do your analytics tell you? Do you know how many visitors your site has? Visitor to customer conversions? Google algorithm changes? Understand your competitors? Online analysis is key to your online business profile success, if you’re not up to speed with the patter of the online world you need to start your education now…
In summary, if you’re looking for a new website this year, think about the content, think about the design but ultimately think about what you need to implement once the build is complete – you need to keep content fresh, constant and engage your audience across a spectrum of online arenas from your website blog, to Facebook and/or LinkedIn.