As a keen entrepreneur who keeps abreast of developments you ensured that your business has a good web presence. You have your website and/or online store up and running, but is that enough? Well, having a site alone will not do the trick. Your ultimate aim is or should be to actually get more clients to and from your website and there are two vital aspects to take care of in order to make this true.
The first process to tackle is what is known as Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO), which as its name implies pertains to the conversion of site visitors into real customers through the content and design of your site. Getting the traffic alone, but been unable to convert it, is of little to no use and thus CRO should never be neglected or overlooked as a process. To help the production of clients via your website, through the implementation of CRO principles you need to ensure at least three things. The first is the clarity of your offering. You need to be absolutely certain that your website presents in a manner that is clear and pleasant and appealing to the eye, all that you have to offer to prospective clients in terms of products, services or both.
The second aspect that you need to pay attention to is the ease with which a site visitor can contact you. If you are using contact forms on your site make sure that they are simple and easy to use and are working properly, also ensuring that the forms, as well as the entire site, load fast, as loading speed is of the essence. Moreover, since different people may and do have different preferred communication methods, make sure you cater for as many people as possible by offering different options to achieve contact, such as phone numbers, emails, fax numbers and live chat.
Following the CRO principles will help ensure that the visitor traffic is more likely to convert to actual customers. However, obtaining the increased traffic in the first place is a direct result of another important process, that of Search Engine Optimisation or SEO in short. What this achieves, as implied by its name, is the improvement of various aspect of your site so that it ranks higher in the result pages of search engines, i.e. it is the best way to land you on page one of Google results for specific searches. Web traffic refers directly to the amount of visitors to your site and the greater the number of visitors you attract the greater the chances of converting such visitors into clients. Broadly, SEO can be divided into two main categories of processes, namely On-site SEO and Off-Site SEO. As revealed by its name On-site SEO pertains to actions “on” or “in” the actual website, on aspects such as its content, design and architectural structure. Let us see some tangible examples of effective applications of on-site SEO that will help you rank high and attract more customers. First off is page loading speed, as this has been proven to have a profound effect on conversions. If your site and all its pages load fast you are more likely to retain a visitor for longer and encourage interaction thus leading to a higher conversion rate. Therefore, optimizing loading speed is the first on-site SEO action you need to undertake.
The second on-site SEO action has to do with your actual content, which needs to be of high quality, original, relevant and accurate. Moreover, your content needs to be appealing and engaging and convince readers that it is trustworthy and authoritative in your field. If you keep updating your content at regular intervals you are more likely to retain the loyalty of existing traffic and more able to attract new visitors over time.
Another, more technical aspect of on-site SEO that you need to tackle is the so-called TAG Optimisation. All websites include a variety of tags, such as title tags and their longer versions of meta descriptions, which are essentially text that describes the content of each page and is meant to be read by search engine crawlers which determine your organic ranking on search engine results. Thus, tag optimization is a powerful tool for getting better results in terms of search engine rankings. However, and although designing a site should take into account what is important in the “eyes” of search engines, the most important consideration should be the actual users of the site. Which brings us to the next aspect that on-site SEO deals with, that of user experience and ensuring that each visitor actually enjoys the time spent on your site, that they are not facing problems, they don’t find it confusing or cumbersome; in a nutshell that they feel good about it and want to return. Another increasingly important issue that is tackled through on-site optimization is that of mobile responsiveness. Having a site that looks and works well not only on desktops but on all types of mobile devices as well, such as tablets and mobile phones, is crucial not only because Google and other search engines take this into account and rank such sites higher, but because in today’s world most internet users browse and perform searches from a mobile device. So, to get them coming you need to show up nice on their screens as well, through a website design that is adaptable and fully-responsive. Moving on to Off-site SEO, this term is used to described actions and methods used “off” or away from your website, which however can still greatly affect its ranking on search engine results pages. The first such method is link building but overloading your site with links is now penalized by search engines so avoid spamming and aim for quantity, useful links to and from your website rather than quantity. Your goal should be to have a quality website that other people choose to link to, exactly because it is so great!
Perhaps the hottest, current trend in any off-site SEO endeavour is the element of effective social media marketing. Social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn, have become an integral part of people’s lives and are thus a powerful channel that should not be overlooked as they help you reach a wide and varied audience. Making good use of social media will bring you more clients and it will also please search engine algorithms so this tool creates a win-win situation. In the same framework and spirit you should also take into account video promotion, through channels such as Youtube & Vimeo. Establishing and maintaining a presence here and tagging your website will extend your reach, make you more visible and help increase inbound traffic a lot.
If all the above sounds too much work or too complicated, don’t worry. You can always contact our skilled team here at Netresort and let us conjure up some CRO and SEO magic on your behalf , to effectively and efficiently turn your website into a real client-magnet!.
