1. Monitor conversion rates with Google Analytics
If you don’t have Google Analytics or have never heard of it, sign up immediately. It is the best free analytics program to track your website. It will give you statistics on everything you need to know to improve your website. You can get the demographics of your visitors, the browsers they use, the web pages they access or leave, the search terms they use, and much more. A very useful feature is goal setting which allows you to track the volume of visitors and how many of them convert into leads. Your website’s conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who take or complete a desired action. For example, if one of the things you want your website visitors to do is complete your contact form, you can set the thank you page generated by your contact form as the successful completion of a goal. That way you can tweak your website and monitor it with Google Analytics to see its impact on conversion rates. A high conversion rate is better than having many visitors who end up leaving your website (bounce rate).
2. Consistently Relevant Blogging
Google loves fresh, consistent content, and blogging is the best way to do that. That said, I think everyone has a blog these days and most of them are full of crap. Blogs fail when they become shameless billboards or ramble on and on about technical jargon that no one understands. Here are some ways to generate more high-quality web traffic with your blog:
- Predict the questions your potential customers may be looking for and address them
- Ask your target market for their opinions.
- Approach a well-known blogger in your industry and ask them to write a guest post
- Confront another blogger in your industry on a controversial topic.
- Advertise special offers at local industry events your business attends
- Submit your blog posts (they have to be good ones, of course) to Ezine Articles, a free online database of articles.
3. Exchange of Links with Complementary Products/Services
If you’re a photographer, exchange links with a wedding coordinator. If you are a blogger, exchange links with a WordPress theme developer. If you are a web designer, exchange links with a web hosting company. You get the gist. This may seem difficult, but sometimes all you have to do is ask.
4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is all about improving your organic ranking with Google. Here are some basic SEO tips that I always use to improve my website’s search engine ranking:
- Determine keywords and competition for your website using the Google Keyword Tool
- Choose a keyword search phrase to focus on each page and spread it throughout the content on that page
- Use title tags to describe your links
- Use ALT tags to describe your images
- Avoid or minimize Flash or Javascript
- Write the keyword phrase of your page in your header and make sure to use the H1 tag
- Do the same with your subheads using the H2 tag
- Have a clear call to action statement on every page to drive web traffic
- If your site architecture is complicated, consider breadcrumbs and a sitemap
- Create clean, W3C-compliant code
- If you are using Joomla, install the Tag Meta component and plugin
- If you are using WordPress, install the All in One SEO Pack plugin
5. PPC for competitive keyword search terms
Sometimes there is so much competition that it is impossible to rank on a keyword search term. For those, you can try an AdWords pay-per-click (PPC) campaign. These can incur expenses, so I would exhaust search engine optimization first because organic rankings are free. You can pay upwards of $10 for some highly competitive keywords depending on the time of day, other bidders, and the demographics of your target audience. We hear customers complain all the time about the cost of PPC, but you pay more to get more. Keywords cost more because they have higher conversion rates. If all you want is a lot of traffic, social media will get you there without much effort. Right now, Google is giving new customers $100 to try out AdWords and they’ll even professionally create your ads for you, which is a service that’s never been offered before (given a minimum PPC budget of $11 per day). ).
6. Write useful online resources
If you have more marketing resources, white papers and case studies are great to include on your website. You can back up your writing with research from Gartner or Forrester. You can control these resources through a form to generate even more leads.
7. Create video tutorials or online demos
If you have video tutorials or online demos of your product or service, YouTube will get the largest audience and give you the best chance of going viral with your community and related videos feature. There are many other video sharing services, but YouTube is the best so far.
8. Shamelessly link your press releases
According to Wikipedia, “Press releases can announce a variety of news, such as scheduled events, personal promotions, awards, new products and services, sales and other financial data, achievements, etc.” I’m not talking about just linking to your company’s home page in your template. You should link all relevant keywords from your press releases to relevant pages on your corporate website or blog. Plus, you’re already paying your PR agency to look them up, so you might as well make the most of it.
9. Strengthen your web copy
Web copy is just as important as the design of your website. Here are some quick tips to improve your web copy:
- Avoid technical jargon
- Consider your target market first and what is relevant to them and then sprinkle your keywords for the search engines.
- Quick and informative titles
- Clear and concise presentations – get to the point of what you are talking about from the start
- Scannable content with bullet points and subtitles
10. Hire an SEO expert
Don’t have time to implement any of these suggestions?
Hire Jeanette Kwok Web Design