Five Ways to Increase Positive Website Results in 2015

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 2015:

# 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 call your phone number. If customers or clients are calling you, be sure to ask them, “how did you hear about us.” That way you can better measure the success of your various marketing efforts.

# 2 Keep Website Content Current

As content management systems such as Hubspot, 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making website changes much, much easier (and cheaper) for everyone, so you have no excuse for your website to be out of date and, more importantly, out of touch.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 Optimize for Mobile

Having a responsive design is not longer an option. Make sure your website performs well in terms of functionality, looks good and gets the desired results out of your visiting traffic. Make sure any large format images are resized or replaced with mobile friendly files that load quicker.

# 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.