It is the old adage when it comes to physical stores: you need to be located in high traffic areas so that you are noticed in order to sell your products or services. However, the same is true when it comes to online. Just having a website isn’t enough. Like a physical store it needs to be easy to find and navigate in order to deliver results.
Domain
How you are perceived is hugely influenced by your domain. A domain that is relevant to your company name and purpose will make it easier for people to find you when they are Googling a resolution to their problem. The more relevant your web content is, the higher search engine robots will rank you.
Potential customers being able to remember your domain is important. This means – short, to the point, and aligned with the product or service that you provide. Something that is easy to remember is more likely to be visited at a later, more convenient time and have your message heard.
Picking a good domain name
So what is a good domain name for your company? That depends on the purpose of your website. Lets take the case of an imaginary company selling art by a passionate person called John Doe who named the company after himself. If the purpose of your website is to create trust and create a brand around himself as an artist, then ‘johndoe.com.au’ may be suitable. However if he tries to sell affordable art through a webshop, ‘affordableart.com.au’ would be much more effective.
Either way, by investing in a good domain name you build credibility to your brand. Using an email ending in your domain, as opposed to a generic email host provider, portrays a level of professionalism and positions you as more credible.
Content is King – Layout is prince.
Writing proper content that is relevant, informative and engaging will improve website interaction and how useful people find you to be. A website is no longer a sales brochure. It should be informative and effectively converting. The best approach is to look at the problem somebody might have and how you solve it. Your product/service is a component of that, but not the main thing to push.
Make the call to action obvious. With web copy that successfully makes the visitor want more from your company, it is important to let them know what the next step is in the process. How do they go about buying your product or obtaining a quote for your service? Contact forms are a popular and advantageous call to action for web. Contact forms give you control over what information you receive, reduces spam, and can help you stay organised.
Having content that is compelling and active without fail leads to increased website visits and a good call to action without fail increases the number of leads your website generates.
SEO
Optimising your web content to be found by search engines so you appear in results is important. This is where the high traffic analogy really comes in.
Think of the first page of Google search results like the main shopping strip in a CBD. The second page are the back alleys. The third page and beyond the isolated warehouses nobody is visiting.
If you aren’t on the first page, it decreases the likelihood that you’ll be found spontaneously by someone in the market for your product by more than 90%!
There is a lot to SEO, and it is not a one-off process. Part of it is a solid foundation with optimal use of web standards to optimise indexation by search engines. However you also need engaging content (a content strategy), good use of Meta Data, A/B testing, linkbuilding and more. Good SEO is like advertising. Not a one-off thing, but ongoing. Due to the constant changes in Google’s algorithm, stopping your investment in SEO means you may quickly be overtaken by your competitor.
Where to Start?
There are so many components to meeting web standards and getting online ‘right’ that it can become overwhelming. As a busy small business owner you don’t have the time to learn the new skills and then implement them, learning along the way from your mistakes.
That’s why every business needs the assistance of a professional that knows these things inside and out. It reduces your stress, ensures it is done right the first time, and will make you money. And isn’t that why we’re in business in the first place?
