Most companies (including 90% plus of B2B companies, utilize website marketing as part of their lead-to-revenue (L2R) process. Whether you use your website for creating awareness, educating prospects, generating leads or selling directly (e.g. via eCommerce) – you need to maximize its efficiency and effectiveness. At our company, we get to see and make recommendations about lots of websites. While a few need little or no attention, the vast majority can benefit from implementing one or more of the following strategies:
1, Update your website to be responsive (mobile friendly)
According to Hitwise – and backed up by Google’s own statistics – nearly 60 percent of searches are now conducted via mobile devices. The number is lower for B2B but still constitutes a major portion of search traffic. If your website is not optimized to be viewed and interacted with on mobile devices, you may be missing a bit chunk of your potential market.
2, Add some fresh content
Website visitors love fresh content and so does the Google search algorithm. This is one of many reasons why you should consider adding a blog to your website infrastructure.
3, Refresh your old content
Periodically go back and rewrite parts of static web pages. Likewise, update old blog posts with new links and a bit of new text. You can also do this with video and audio clips. This is a great way to get these pages ranked higher and also make them appear as fresh posts on your blog page/site.
4, Create another conversion option
Is there something of value you can give away in return for capturing contact data from your prospects? If so, create a new offer and landing page and make sure you provide links to the landing page from several different parts of your website. This step alone can go a long way towards increasing your website marketing effectiveness.
5, Go deeper on some content
There are two ways to accomplish this. First, you can create content pages for specific (and often narrowly focused) keyword terms. Second, is to write long-form pages that go very deep into a particular keyword area. HubSpot calls these pages “pillar posts” and they can be as long as 8-10,000 words, or as long as 10-20 individual blog posts.
6, Optimize a few pages for organic search
You probably spent a fair amount of time and money to create your website – now you need to make sure you get found by implementing search engine optimization (SEO). Use tools like the Google Keyword Planner, ubersuggest.io, semrush.com, and moz.com to figure out what Google thinks your site represents today and what your keywords should be going forward.
7. Speed your page load time
Slow page load times (e.g. over 2 seconds) cause user abandonment. Pingdom.com is an excellent free tool to test your load times and gives you grades in specific performance areas. If you have a problem (and you probably do) there are lots of things you can do like scaling and compressing your images. Here is an article from Kissmetrics that provides a good tutorial on the subject.
8, Improve your calls to action (CTA)
Lack of strong CTAs is one of my biggest website gripes. Make sure you put your CTAs where they are easily seen and state specifically what you want the visitor to do: download, submit, order, etc.
9, Include good search capability
Web visitors are impatient and don’t want to struggle to locate content. Of course, you want to make your stuff easy to find by proper menus and structure. Some visitors like to navigate but a significant minority like to search. You may benefit from including this feature on your website if you have a lot of content and/or a complex navigation structure. But one caveat: make sure you thoroughly test your search feature for accuracy. Bad search functionality is worse than none.
10, Make your website more social media-friendly
One of the best ways to do this is to refresh old blog posts, videos, etc., as mentioned in website fix two. You can also institute one-click instant sharing and perhaps the ability for users to sign-up with LinkedIn or Facebook login.
Some of these fixes can be implemented within a few hours while others may take several weeks. But the point is, the time to get started is now, so pick one item and get on the right path towards greater website marketing success.
Chris is a SCORE colleague and a marketing and sales maven. We are super fans of each other’s work. The following post was published by Chris on his blog in Dec of 2017 and is chock full of valuable advice.
