It’s a brand new year and the time when most of us reflect on the previous year, attempt to let go of anything weighing us down, and set goals to revamp our lives or business. If you are examining your website and feeling overwhelmed with all the possibilities for change within it, we can help by narrowing your focus to five important areas.
1. Refresh Your Web Content
Your site needs to have fresh content posted frequently, to not only keep your search engine rankings high, but also to keep your prospects and customers engaged. A stale website with the last blog post being a year ago sends the message that you are not devoting time to your business, and makes a visitor question if you are the right solution for them. You may be pedal to the metal in all other areas of your business and so busy you can hardly think straight, but the internet is a fickle and judgy place; visitors (and search engines) will make assumptions about your business based on what they see on your website. So commit to new content via blog posts, videos, new pages, new offers, etc., and watch your engagement and conversions increase.
2. Examine Your SEO
If the last time you did anything for search engine optimization on your website was when you first launched it; you are overdue. SEO parameters change frequently as search engine algorithms are adjusted, and the very way that web users perform searches changes as well. The SEO on your site may be outdated and not helping your traffic. People are entering entire sentences into search engines now, not just a few keywords. They are able to get very specific about a query, and search engines are conforming to that demand. And even the words and terms that people use in their everyday vernacular morphs throughout the years. And to pile onto that, voice searches are changing the nature of SEO. Chances are your website could benefit from an SEO reboot which will drive more traffic to your site. Learn more about Precision Pages SEO services.
3. Create More and Better CTAs
Calls to Action, or CTAs, are very helpful for conversion rates on your website’s landing pages. Getting a visitor to your site means very little if they view the offer on the page, but are not compelled to submit the form, download the file, or make a purchase. They left and may never be back. Look closely at the CTAs on your site. Are they generic and say things like ‘click here’ or ‘download pdf’ or ‘submit’? These terms don’t inspire confidence or urgency in the visitor. They need to feel like if they do not click that button they will be missing out on something good. FOMO is a real thing, folks. But they also need to feel sure about what they are getting when they hit that button. Make your CTAs specific, action-oriented and compelling. Remember that the words you choose also go towards helping the SEO on your site. CTA buttons that say ‘Schedule Your Free Consultation’ or ‘Start Your 30-day Trial’ or ‘View [Product] Video Demo’ tell the user exactly what they are getting into and make more of a connection.
4. Become a Metrics Stalker
If you aren’t already watching and analyzing the metrics for your website, start today. There is valuable data to be extracted from your website visits that will help inform the decisions you make for the content on your site. You need to know if that new landing page, offer, and CTA are working by comparing the number of visits to the page, versus how many of those visitors ‘convert’ by clicking the CTA and performing the action. If most are bailing before converting, you need to examine your page and test out something different. It’s helpful to see how long visitors spend on your site and on your pages, as well as how they got to your site in the first place (Social media? Referral from other site? Ad campaign?), and what areas of the world they live in. All these metrics, and many more, are available to you whether through Google Analytics, or marketing software such as HubSpot.
5. Ensure Your CMS Security is Up-to-date
You don’t want to start out the new year with a hacked site. The bad guys are getting better and better at accessing what they shouldn’t, and your site needs to be properly protected against them. Ensure you are hosting with a trusted and reputable company whose servers are properly secured. You should have a disaster recovery plan. You ARE backing up your website, aren’t you? Additionally, your hosting company should be updating your CMS with the necessary security patches and module updates that are continually released, and ensuring the proper compliance. Many hacked sites are the result of a neglected CMS. See what’s included in Precision Pages Drupal hosting and WordPress hosting services.
So, Happy New Year to you and here’s to starting 2019 with an up-to-date website that you can not only be proud of, but will realize the benefits through more leads and customer conversions!