Five Ways to Rev Up Your Website Results in 2012

With so many changes constantly happening with the way search engines are ranking websites, social media trends changing and even how website visitors are accessing the web it’s tough to keep up your website performing at its best. Here’s five key ways to rev up your website results in 2012:

# 1 Identify Your Goals

You can’t keep your eye on the prize if you have no idea what that prize is. Choose one or two primary goals for your website and always have them in mind. Be sure your goals are measurable! Examples could include getting website visitors to buy something, having them complete a form or having them ring your place of business. If customers or clients are ringing your place of business, be sure to ask them, “how did you hear about us.” That way you can better measure the success of your various marketing efforts out there in the world.

# 2 Keep Website Content Current

As content management systems such as WordPress and Drupal grow increasingly popular, they are quickly making website changes much, much easier (and cheaper) for everyone so you have no excuse for your website to be grossly out of date and most likely out of touch. Feeds from your Twitter, Facebook or company blog can also be easily integrated to provide a regular stream of up to date information on your website.

Keeping your website content current helps build trust with your visitors. They know you’re still in business, active and up to date with your industry. It also gives your customers or clients a reason to keep coming back to your site.

# 3 Utilize Social Media

Social media is everywhere including on almost everyone’s mobile phone. What better way to reach your customer base than a media to which they are plugged into nearly 24-7? The key to being successful with social media marketing is engaging your audience, so if you are providing business-to-business it’s probably not for you. If you’re providing goods or services directly to consumers, however, social media can be a brilliant way to keep your company in the mind of your customer base and to allow them to interact with you. Feedback is important both for you as a business to stay on top of your game as well as for customers to see one another’s feedback which breeds trust in your company.

# 4 Keep Your Website Easy

K.I.S.S. keep it simple silly! Have you ever visited a website and been completely lost as soon as you arrived, not a clue at all what you were meant to click, what you were supposed to be reading, maybe not even any idea what the website was about? Keep your website easy making it easiest for your target audience to complete your goals defined in step # 1 above. For eCommerce sites this means making finding items and buying them easy and in as little steps as possible. For other sites, this may mean stating the goals largely and clearly: “Call us now, 555-5555″ or “Book an appointment today, click here”. These calls to action are your money makers!

# 5 Use SEO but don’t let it drive you crazy!

Search engine optimization is all the rage, but it’s constantly changing and evolving. So what do you need to know about it?

• Think about keywords for your business. What words would your target audience use to search for your website? Notice we said “target audience”, so be sure to keep them in mind and not just think of words YOU yourself would use. Keep an eye on internet trends as well as trends in your target audience’s world. Adding keywords for seasonal sales, for instance, “Black Friday” or “Valentine’s Day” are great ways to take advantage of search trends. Checkout the Google Trends page for ideas. You can dial the calendar back to see what was popular this time last year to get ideas for this year.
• Once identified, use those words within your page contents and for your page titles and create links throughout your website that link to those pages. Be creative but whatever you do, don’t make your content awkward by trying to stuff those keywords in where they don’t fit. Keep your content readable for visitors while using your keywords relevantly.
• Building external links to your website is a great way to boost your search engine rankings. Obvious choices are those in your control: your Facebook page, your Twitter account, LinkedIn, Yelp!, Google+ and the like. You may also look to list your business with appropriate professional associations, neighborhood groups and organizations or other businesses with whom you regularly work.

SEO is something you need to stay on top of, so be sure to get regular reports from a service such as Google Analytics to see how your keywords are performing, where your traffic is coming from and what other relevant trends are taking place.