Digital Housekeeping: Keeping Your Website Competitive
Keeping a clean house is one of the first lessons you learn from your parents. Unwanted creatures can invade and take residence, style can become outdated and structural problems can ensue, if you fail to maintain and update your home from time to time. Wait too long, and even your friends won’t want to visit.
A website is not so different. Much of the focus in digital marketing revolves around content creation: consistently generating articles and other materials of relevance to send a consumer to the client’s site. However, it is imperative to also maintain your website structure and update its look and functions as needed to make sure user experience is smooth and enjoyable.
A website is often the first way that a potential customer encounters a company. If it looks disorganized, outdated, or neglected, they will likely move on to a competitor instead. If the user experience suffers in any notable way (e.g. slow page load times or other issues that cause delays), your functions and layout almost certainly need a re-vamp.
Once you have decided that a redesign is in order, here are some things to keep in mind:
Stay Current
Make sure the information you have on your website is up-to-date, applicable, and correct. Customer loyalty manifests itself in confidence, so if you do not have appearance of accuracy and professionalism, the customer will not feel confident you can give them the best service for their money.
Check your content
If you are changing or updating content, be careful of drastic changes in site size. A website that goes from full and informative to skeletal suggests to regular users that there are behind-the-scenes issues.
When making changes to site content, your keyword usage can suffer if you are not careful in your planning. Make sure your edits don’t remove high ranking keywords, as it can impact ranking you have worked hard to earn. That is the equivalent of throwing a grand re-opening party and only sending out a tiny number of invitations.
Test Your Pages
On top of content changes, it is also essential to maintain the back end structure of your website. Have you made sure there are no dead links? Do all your function buttons work properly and within a reasonable amount of time? Google Analytics Experiments is an excellent free tool to check these functions.
Another program to employ is SEO PowerSuite’s Website Auditor, which identifies technical issues that prevent the site from attaining your desired search ranking. Once your changes are completed, SEO PowerSuite also makes sure that your pages are fully available for indexing in search engines.
Your page load time should not increase as a result of any changes. If so, then additional reformatting is required.
Design Scheme
Aesthetic appearance is another facet of your website that can always be updated and experimented with. Keep up with the latest analysis on what sorts of design both attract casual surfers and cause them to continue investigating the site. Create two or three different design approaches and run tests. Ask participants to answer questions as to what did or did not appeal to them, what sorts of colours were inviting, etc. (Curious about what colours are the most effective for attracting an audience? Check out our blog on Colour Psychology.)
Always remember: not all pages are created equal. While each on your website pages deserve attention, your home page is key. If it fails in its mission, then the remaining pages will almost be inconsequential.
Preserve your URLs
Finally, the most important rule of website redesign – never, ever, never, ever change your website URL. URLS are part of your site and company identity. Past customers likely have you bookmarked and use that method to return. Changing your URL will result in dead links, consumer confusion and can lead to a hit to your ranking.
When your redesign is complete, you will likely see an improvement in your standing. SEO PowerSuite includes a Rank Tractor that makes it easy to keep tabs on the status of your numbers. Keep an eye on this tool to see what worked well, and what could still be improved.
Updating or improving a website is just good business sense. If you can accomplish both simultaneously, you are making excellent use of time and resources.
Image: rawpixel / 123RF Stock Photo
Six Reasons Why Content Marketing is Essential for Digital Growth
Content marketing is a strategic marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience—with the objective of driving profitable customer action by changing or enhancing consumer behavior.
Joe Pulizzi
It is almost 2017, and if you are not incorporating digital marketing strategies into your traditional customer acquisition and marketing plans, you are falling behind. But why is including digital content so important and how do you get started? Find out why this method keeps you ahead of your competitors online.
It is becoming difficult to find anyone who does not have some form of social media. To ignore this easily accessible market is to loose a great opportunity for direct contact and feedback from loyal customers and potential clients.
Plain and simple, content marketing just works. It increases sales, provides costs savings and develops quality customers who have brand loyalty. When you create relevant content that focuses on what an audience is interested you are rewarded with customer retention and loyalty.
Here are 6 reasons why content marketing is essential for digital growth:
Let Content Tell your Story
Content provides a convenient and creative means to tell the story of your brand. Whether you post a blog, video, photo, interview, or podcast, this content gives the customer a window into the details of your company, and the causes you care about! When a customer knows your story, they become warm to your business and are more likely to invest in your product or service. When people get to see the personal touches of your story they are more likely to be empathetic and compassionate to your brand.
Add Value at Every Step of the Sales Funnel
The purpose of content marketing is to add value beyond just your product or service. Creative digital content can target the needs and concerns, challenges and pain points that a customer would feel throughout every part of their purchasing process.
Consider this example. A company that makes baby bedding could make a post with ideas about what to put in their new child’s nursery. Though this post does pitch the product of the bedding company, it still addresses a great concern that a new mother might be having. When you post content that is about subjects that surround your brand, you can appeal to a broader group of people. Even though they may not have been looking to buy your product initially, when they are introduced, entertained or informed by your content they are more likely to consider your brand. Content like this can answer questions that people don’t even know how to articulate!
Content Creates Relationships with Consumers
One of the greatest features of digital content is that is provides an easy avenue for customer engagement. When you are posting valuable and relevant content that customers consistently engage with, you create a community of loyal followers. This relationship is beneficial for both parties. Customers return for material that appeals to their needs and desires and you are there to provide them with the critical information that informs their purchasing decisions. This warm audience feels loyal to your brand and will come back time and again for your relevant content!
Own Your Material
In traditional advertising and marketing, the campaigns you wanted to show to your audience had to be presented through a third- party media such as TV or radio. With digital marketing, you are able to own and control the space that presents your message. Without interrupting or having to buy an audience, you can bring customers straight to your website. You are the one who creates the content, and you are the one who benefits from the direct contact your audience with your website. Content marketing is about attracting an audience to an experience that you own, build and optimize. In content marketing the brand owns the media!
Leverage Social Media
It may seem obvious, but every digital marketing campaign must include social media. Social media provides a built in pre-existing audience, and provides a way for brands to keep directly in contact with their audience. You can use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google+ to amplify your creative content and reach massive amounts of potential customers. The more engagement you have with your most, the more successful your pages will be, so providing your followers with quality relevant content will only improve your brand. Social media is an excellent distributor for content and is vital to the success of your content marketing efforts.
Increase Your SEO Ranking
Great content that appeals to your audience contributes to a better ranking within Google. As Google continues to update their algorithms, it has become more and more clear that quality content means high rankings. When users interact and engage with your material, you build more social clout which increases your position. Social clout, quality back links and quantity of shares are all considered by Google when determining a website ranking. By incorporating relevant content that appeals to your audience, you will increase your overall rank on Google.
People are bombarded with thousands of marketing messages a day. If you provide quality content, customers feel refreshed by the break to their saturated email inboxes, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feeds.
People know when they are being sold to and have a greater appreciation and affinity to good creative, entertaining or informative content. In the long run, content marketing creates more loyal and quality customers who appreciate your content as much as you appreciate their purchases.
Think of it this way. What if your customers look forward to receiving your marketing? What if they are eager to share the advice with friends and spend time absorbing the content?
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