When presented with a brand-new website that looks great and functions perfectly, it’s easy to assume that you’ve done all you can for the online side of your business. Your customers can find you, they can buy your products from the comfort of their own homes – what more is there to be done?
Your website is your business’s shop window and setting up your company’s site is really just phase one! Now that it’s live, you need to come up with a plan of action that centres on how to get the most out of your website.
Falling into a rut with your website is not only damaging for the website, but it could also potentially impact your business on a larger scale. In order to guide you past this pitfall, we’ve put together a few tips to help you get the most out of your website.
1. Focus on evergreen topics
While news and trending topics can give you a traffic boost in the short term, they’re not worth the time and effort. Create content around topics that will always be of interest to your audience. If you refresh your content regularly, this will accumulate traffic and links over time.
Examples of Evergreen articles:
- Fitness
- Jobs & Careers
- Pet care
- Finance/money saving
- Parenting
- Food
- Love and romance
Of course, it’s important that you address evergreen topics that are relevant to your business.
2. Incorporate Video
Video-based content keeps visitors engaged and they are more likely to spend longer on your website.
Your website is all about storytelling and videos are a great way to demonstrate your products and services.
3. Improve your page speed
Page speed is the first thing visitors notice when they enter your website. This includes image file sizes, page structure and the functionality of third-party plugins.
Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool will give you a score on your site’s performance and provide suggestions for improving your Core Web Vitals and more. Use it!
4. Regularly refresh your content
Even the richest content needs updating to keep it fresh and improve its ranking factor. If the content is showing on the first page on Google, it’s amazing what refreshing your content can do.
Here are some tips on refreshing your content:
- Fix broken links and images
- Update dates stats or old information
- Replace outdated visuals
- Add new links
- Update your meta title and description
5. Promote your content on social media
Great content will only be found if it’s shown on social media.
Social media has quickly become one of the most powerful tools in any website owner’s collection. Effective use of social media sites can help your business deliver stellar customer service, promote new content, and increase conversions.
Although there are a number of social media networking sites out there, Instagram is one of the most useful. Instagram was created in 2010 as a way to share mobile photography online and has made its mark as an image- and video-sharing platform.
The site is now owned by Facebook and has quickly built up a huge user base. Over 854.5 million people are active members of Instagram today.
Here are 3 tips for promoting your website on social media:
- Use social media links on your website
- Post on social media at the right time. Looking at your social media analytics to find the best time of the day/week to get the most engagement from your audience.
- Add hashtags to your website content straight to your social media. Keep the hashtags highly specific to the topic on the post. When visitors find your content, they’re more likely to read, share and like your posts.
6. Host webinars
Webinars are a great way to educate people and get people talking about your website. This will increase traffic to your website and get more customer data from registrations.
Sending out a ‘last chance’ email to join the webinar is a great way to promote urgency and over time you will build a community of followers.
7. Start an email newsletter
Don’t overcomplicate it. It could be a simple update on what you’re doing or any promotions you offer. Customers love a discount voucher or an exciting read on how to get featured on your website. Don’t bombard customers with too many emails or a lot of links in an email.
Getting the most out of your website conclusion
Creating a website is one of the most profitable steps a business can take, but it isn’t the first and last step you need to take. When you leased your office or storefront, did you just sit back and let the customers come to you? Of course not. Just like a physical business, online business is an active, ongoing process.
Why put it off? Don’t fall behind and get your website going today! Contact us and we’re always here to help.
