11 ways to optimize your small business website

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11 Ways to Optimize Your Small Business Website

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11 Ways toOptimize YourSmall BusinessWebsite

Whether you’re a brick-and-mortar small business, Web-only or a combination of both, a website is essential. It tells potential customers who you are, what you do, how to contact you and how to make a purchase. It’s also a powerful marketing tool; 85 percent of customers use the Internet to find local businesses.

Here are 11 best practices and quick updates you can make to improve your website and impact your bottom line.

“A website is a great

resource for assisting in

selling your brand, but

only if the right people

are finding it and the site

is built to get a response

and action.”

– Marcus O’Malley, SUCCEED

member and director of sales

at Immerge Technologies

01. Keep the Design Simple and CleanDon’t overload your home page with too much text and too many graphics. Users typically read only 28 percent of the words during an average visit. Decide on your most important message (including keywords and phrases you need for SEO) and remove everything else.

02. Have an Effective Call to ActionWhat do you want visitors to do when they come to your site? Whether you want to generate leads, sell products or drive visitors through a funnel, make it clear. Bold fonts and bullet points can help make your call to action stand out.

03. Check Your Load TimeThe average user gives a website 10 to 20 seconds to make a good first impression, and 40 percent will leave if the loading process takes more than three seconds. If your site has a lot of graphics, reduce the file size of your images. Also make sure your hosting provider has sufficient bandwidth to support your design and large amounts of traffic

04. Let Google Know You ExistSubmit your URL to Google Webmaster Tools, and Google will do a more complete job of indexing your site. This is especially helpful for pages without backlinks, or links to your site from other websites.

05. Perform Simple Search Engine OptimizationThere are several things you can do to improve your website’s discoverability on search engines:

• Incorporate keywords in page and blog titles.

• Use alt tags for all images and include keywords when it makes sense.

• Update text regularly — search engines give higher rankings to fresh, original content.

• Remove unsearchable Flash or PDF elements from your site unless they benefit the user experience. Search engines can’t read these elements.

06. Add a BlogAlthough blogging can be time intensive, when done effectively it can help drive a significant amount of traffic to your site. Companies that blog get 55 percent more website visits and acquire 70 percent more leads. Each blog post adds another page to your website, which increases the ways potential customers can find you.

07. Use AnalyticsDo you know which queries are driving traffic to your site? How long do visitors stay? From which pages do they exit? Google Analytics is free to install and provides a variety of metrics that will help you tweak your website to attract — and keep — the right traffic.

08. Be Mobile-FriendlyYour website should be optimized for smartphones and tablets. Sixty percent of all Web traffic comes from mobile devices, and 48 percent of users say that if a site doesn’t work well on mobile, it’s an indication that the business doesn’t care.

09. Know the Information Customers Are Looking ForBe proactive by answering common questions from customers. You can do this by creating a FAQs (frequently asked questions) page and include answers to questions you get asked often, such as your return policy, how your orders ship and what type of payments you receive. Link to your FAQ page directly from your site’s home page to make it easy for visitors to find.

10. Check Your LinksIf you link to another site, make sure it’s coded to open in a new window or you’ll inadvertently drive traffic away. However, don’t do this for internal links, which just take visitors to another page on your website.

11. Help Visitors Share Your SiteIntegrate social media into your website design by adding sharing buttons that let visitors share your content via social channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Google+. This will help create brand advocates who will spread the word for you.

Gauge the size of your website,

and dedicate time accordingly.

Maintenance for a small site

may take as little as a few

hours a month. However, if

your site is growing, this can be

a full-time job, and it might be

time for you to consider finding

somebody to help.

Advice InspirationActionThink of your website like

a living organism — you

have to continually supply it

with fresh material to keep

it functioning at its greatest

potential. Maintenance is

crucial to the health of your

website and your business.

“Without continual growth

and progress, such words as

improvement, achievement and

success have no meaning.”

— Benjamin Franklin

Staples Small Business Hub.

Get more tips to take your

website to the next level on the

> https://biz.yelp.com/blog/survey-85-of-consumers-use-the-internet-to-find-local-businesses

> https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small-business/openforum/articles/best-practices-in-website-design-1/

> https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/1348732?hl=en&ref_topic=1348566

> http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2014/03/21/5-reasons-visitors-leave-your-website.aspx#sthash.l5g82THl.dpuf

> http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/23778/42-Tweetable-Facts-to-Squash-Marketing-Fantasies.aspx

> http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/compelling-stats-website-design-optimization-list

> http://blog.crowdspring.com/2014/03/small-business-marketing-web-design/

> http://www.brytewire.com/local-customers-want-local-business-website/

> http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Blog/Major-Mobile-Milestones-in-May-Apps-Now-Drive-Half-of-All-Time-Spent-on-Digital

> http://www.forbes.com/sites/cherylsnappconner/2014/03/27/25-web-design-tips-to-honor-25-years-of-the-web/

Sources