Building your small business website is the easy part: Getting people to visit it, and stick around to check out your message, is trickier. If your website doesn’t bring in any traffic, it can become a very big waste of time and money.
If your site’s not performing like it should, here are a few tips to give it a boost:
Fix the Technical Side
The first thing you need to look at is whether or not your site has technical issues driving visitors away. These include things like slow load times, broken links, and a layout that doesn’t work on smaller or larger screens.
Use clean page layouts and only a few key plugins to get your site to load faster. And have friends and colleagues test your site on their screens and browsers to make sure it’s not leaving out a large group of visitors.
Write Great Content
The most important thing you can do to attract visitors and encourage them to stay on your site is to keep it full of relevant, valuable content. Use your knowledge of your customer base to give them education and information about your industry, your company, and your products.
Remember that great content always considers the reader first — don’t just stuff your pages full of promotional copy. Consider accepting guest contributors if you find that your site is getting stale or you don’t have time to keep it updated.
Give Your Content Great Titles
Even the most sparkling copy won’t attract many readers without a compelling title to draw them in.
According to one report, 8 out of 10 people will read a headline, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest of your article.
What makes a great headline?
- It should be informative without giving away the point of your article;
- It should be relevant to the article — don’t write misleading titles just to get people to click on them;
- It should generate curiosity or ask a question that compels the reader to check out the article in order to find the answer;
- It should include keywords related to your article content. Don’t stuff your title with keywords, but put one strong one near the beginning.
Know the Current Rules of SEO
Are you still using SEO tricks you learned years ago?
Tricks that used to be effective (but still frowned upon) like link spamming, keyword stuffing, and filling meta tags with keywords will now get you penalized by Google and other search engines.
Take the time to get up to speed on the latest rules, especially Google’s Penguin and Panda updates. This research will help you create an SEO strategy that will help instead of hurt your website’s search ranking.
Use Your Social Media Accounts
Social media has become a big player in online marketing, and for good reason. Millions of people check into Facebook or Twitter every day, and if you’re not there you’re missing out on a golden opportunity to get your website noticed.
Create compelling content, and share it on your social media accounts (here’s where those great headlines come in handy) to garner more interest for your site.
These are just a few of the ways in which you can improve your website’s traffic numbers.
Keep providing useful, SEO-friendly content, and you should see your stats start to improve.
About the Author: Freelance writer Angie Mansfield covers a range of topics for both small business owners and consumers, including spokeo.com.
Image source: www.computerweekly.com
