August 27, 2019

What Comes After A Website?

You’ve got a website that you truly like and feel will be effective. Maybe your website is getting traffic to prove it is effective and maybe it isn’t. What you should understand is that when it comes to Digital Marketing your website design is not the end of your journey. As a matter of fact, a website design is really just the beginning of your journey. Let’s explore together what comes after your website goes live in the Digital Marketing world.

Understanding Your Content

The website was just built and we’re sure you’ve heard enough about it by this point. Depending upon who developed the website (yourself or a 3rd party) you definitely want to make sure that you understand your website in at least a basic way. Your business website should be a complete representation of your business online. Convey as much information to your visitors as possible through content, extra pages, imagery, and video. The three things visitors want to know when visiting your website are:

  1. Who are you?
  2. What do you do?
  3. What do you want me to do about it?

Properly fleshed out home pages will be able to answer all three of these questions while directing visitors to other pages for further information. Did you know that the About Page is generally the second most clicked link on a website? Use that to your advantage and let people know who you are! In order to build trust with a visitor they may want to know who you are and a little history about your business.

Understanding The Backend

So, your content is squared away, but do you understand the backend and how to update things on your website? Do you understand how to navigate the backend of your website? Are you aware of any login information needed to access the different parts of your website? These questions are important even if you have someone managing your website.

No one ever knows what the future holds, so be sure to have these questions answered. Depending upon the builder of your website they may have tutorials to guide you in the backend functions of your website, but if not youtube is always a great place to gain some knowledge. There are three main things we recommend you have access to that involve your website:

  1. Your domain host.
  2. Your design.
  3. Your website backend.

Each of these areas is vitally important to at least have login access for. Bunn Brands manages each of these things, but we deem it critically important that you have access to these areas.

Driving Traffic To Your Website

Driving traffic to your website is vitally important. If you open a storefront in an area that no one noticed, then that would not be a very effective storefront. Simply having a website live and on the internet is not enough for customers to just flock to your business. Of course, a simple design will provide visitors with more information about your business, products, and/or services but if no one knows it exists then you wont see the benefits.

Two quick and easy methods for driving traffic to your website are:

  1. Pay Per Click Advertising (SEM – Search Engine Marketing)
  2. Social Media

Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing involves finding specific keywords that both represent your business and are searched for by users of the internet. Begin your keyword research by compiling a list of keywords and checking them with the Google Keyword Planner. This tool will allow you to check how many people are searching for whatever keyword you are checking. Remember, each page of your website should focus on one specific keyword but that does not mean you can’t utilize other keywords throughout your content.

Now that you have a list of qualified keywords you will need to setup an account with your search engine advertising platform. For Google the platform is Google Ads, which you can actually get certified with to use! Utilizing researched keywords you will set up ad groups, assign ads to those groups, and set the price you are willing to pay for each click you receive.

Setting target demographics for your ads is vital to ensuring those ads show up to the right people. You want to drive qualified traffic that is actually interested in your business to your website. You’re paying for each click so monitoring your account is very important to making sure you’re reaching the right people.

Social Media

Social Media is all the craze right now and that’s because people are all over it! Chances are that most of your potential clients are combing through Social Media on the daily. If you’re not reaching out to those potential clients then you are definitely leaving money on the table. Reach out and let people know who you are and what you do. Tell everyone out there the story that is you and your business. Effective Social Media management can lead to an increase in followers and visitors to your website.

Research and prepare for advertising on Social Media. There are so many different ways to advertise on Social Media now that we will definitely need to cover this in another blog! We recommend starting with boosting popular posts to spread your brand and gain followers that are interested in hearing more. Also, running ads that drive people from your Social Media straight to your website or landing pages is a great way to increase that website traffic.

Advertising on Social Media is a great way to tell your story and direct visitors to your website for more detailed information about your business.

Ranking Your Website In Search Engines

Now we’ve come to the big question of how to rank naturally in search engines. No real secrets exist to ranking in search engines, but there are best practices. Search Engines actively crawl your website looking for content and keywords. The more you use a word the more likely search engines will recognize it as a keyword. In order to truly show web users the most accurate websites for their searches a search engine must know what your website is about and they use crawling robots to determine this.

The real secret to SEO is to develop quality content that people want to read in a proper format. That means understanding things like:

  • How many words should you use in a paragraph?
  • What keywords should you use?
  • What subjects/talking points pertain to your business?

Continue to produce content you will gain ranking for various keywords, especially the ones you are focusing on! Provide as much information about your industry or business specifically. Your goal is to establish yourself as an authority in your field.

Other ways to increase your SEO are Social Sharing and Backlinking. Although, we feel this might be a subject best suited for another post. Stay tuned as we deconstruct the mysteries of digital marketing!

 

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