Get your website into shape

In our last article we looked at how to plan the strategy for your website and how to improve user experience. Now we are looking at two important components of a web marketing strategy: SEO and social media.

Search engine optimisation

It doesn't matter how fantastic your website looks or how much time you have spent writing excellent content, if no one is finding your website then it will be wasted. Ensuring your website has a healthy, natural search engine ranking will increase visitor numbers, which leads to more business for you.

Writing SEO copy

• A good level of keyword density is between 5–7%.
• A minimum of 300 words per page is best practice—anything less and search engines may see it as a stub page and decide not to crawl it.
• Keywords at the top of the content are given greater significance by search engine spiders.

Meta data

• Ensure that every page has a unique title and unique keywords & description.
• Place your main keyword at the front of the title. Separate them with hyphens or pipe symbols. You do not need to include your company name in the title.
• Descriptions are shown in search results but do not impact search rankings.  Meta descriptions should be marketing driven. How would you get someone to click your result?

Keywords

• Target keywords that have relevant levels of traffic and where the searcher’s intent corresponds directly to your services or products.
• Be realistic about the competition levels for certain keywords. Getting to the top position in Google against multi-national businesses with seven-figure marketing budgets is highly improbable.

Social media

Engaging in social media can be daunting but it can accelerate your audience reach, and strengthen your web marketing strategy.

Integration

• Make sure that any social media is easily accessible from your website.
• Are your employees engaged? Do they know about the different social media platforms your company runs? If not then spread the word—it is an opportunity to raise awareness in their networks, too.

Brand defence

• Not engaging, or unsure? Consider registering your company name and profile with Twitter and Facebook before someone else does, especially if your company has a name you know is competitive. If you choose to engage, then you are more likely to have secured the better name and URL.
• Have a plan in place for dealing with negative comments or posts. Think about who should respond and how you will respond.

The perfect update—the 3 Ts

• Timely — Post at least 2–3 times per week to keep your followers engaged. If you sporadically update then people will lose interest and unfollow/unlike you. Consider creating a schedule to keep status updates on track.
• Topical — Don’t make all about you. Keep it relevant to build your credibility and reputation as a trusted source.
• To the point — Say what you need to, concisely and clearly. Users scan web pages and need to pick out information quickly.

Flexing your muscles

Getting your website to look better and rank better will help you increase traffic and convert more leads. Like any exercise regime, it takes time and effort. However, once you have a plan in place it will help keep your website on track and make it easier to maintain the website’s overall fitness. Read part 1