Website Renovation: Optimizing Your Site
A website renovation is a project that can help boost your ability to be found on the web. With over 1 billion searches on Google alone per day, 90% of those searches result in the person clicking on the first landing page. From that first page, approximately 80% of individuals clicked on information located in the top 3rd of the page. So, you can see why it is important to break through the clutter of your competition and be located at the top of a search engine results page (SERP).
But your search engine optimization shouldn’t just stop at Google. Consumers are increasingly utilizing alternate vehicles for their research while in the early stages of the purchasing model. Traffic and sales can be driven through a number of different vehicles, including social media websites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. In addition, user-generated content like product reviews and recommendations from 3rd-party websites help to significant influence consumer’s decisions. Probably the most significant stat is that “…81 percent of respondents said they'd received advice from friends and followers relating to a product purchase through a social site; 74 percent of those who received such advice found it to be influential in their decision.” (Click Z, January 2010)
What’s important: Proper strategy and maintenance
When you’re considering a website update for optimization, it is important to understand that doing the bare-bone minimum is probably hurting your business more than helping it. For instance, let’s say you are interested in driving traffic to your website with a social media platform like Facebook and you decide to setup an account. You’ve got your page setup and information plugged in. To top it off you post some nice photos as well. You check it periodically and every now and then make some changes. A couple months go by and you worry about other things important to your business. Pretty soon the page is all but forgotten.
This can negatively affect your company for a number of different reasons:
1. It tarnishes your brand by making your company look static—giving a negative net impression of your business
2. The lack of interaction and engagement is the anti-thesis of social media platforms
3. You’ve spent time and money putting everything together
4. Market share can decrease as customers move to the competition
The proper way to enhance your website via a social media platform like Facebook is to first make an assessment of your business and see whether or not it is the right platform for you to be on in the first place! Next you should develop a strategy that defines (simply put) what you’re trying to do and how you’ll make sure you’re doing it right. But the important factor is proper strategy and maintenance—and this takes a well-versed knowledge of the online environment, consumers, the media tools available to you and the time it takes to generate and maintain your marketing information.
In addition, being accessible to those within your area is important under certain conditions. For instance, if you offer a general service where clients purchase behavior is based on localized expertise or expedited services, then it makes sense to ensure that your company is found in a local search. To increase those chances you should develop your search engine optimization strategy to reflect those localized needs through enhancers like keywords, content, imagery, videos, and inbound links. In addition a formal competitor analysis can be completed specific to your geographic region and industry and your renovation should be based on these findings.
Ultimately, the goal of search engine optimization (whether it is Google or social media or mobile) is that you can be found. When you are found, you have a small window of opportunity to inform, educate and retain because there are millions of different places your customers can go. With so much consumer traffic online you need to have a website that is properly optimized and can enhance market share, drive sales and help grow your business.
NetSearch Direct specializes in helping businesses understand and optimize their presence online. If you have a website that isn’t driving sales for your company then it isn’t performing up to its full potential and could even be negatively affecting your business. We can help! We’d love to come and talk to you! To setup an informational session, please contact Kate Snowa at 1-800-418-8505 or kates@netsearchdirect.com.