and how much you can do yourself to improve your own site’s popularity
More than 12 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Site
Make the most of your website by driving it like a new car,
check it’s oil & water & pressure.
Like a car, property or business, there is maintenance you can perform and maintenance you should trust professionals with.
Make your site work for you to increase traffic, sales and get good return on investment. Here are 12 things you should or could do to get to the top.
Since 2017 Google has been warning that websites without SSL (http vs https) will show up as Insecure and unsafe. Contact me or your webmaster to rectify this.
1. Make sure it works
Surf your own site like a babe in the woods,
and check for:
Easy navigation to all pages & places on your website.
Working Links leading to the right places & pages (e-mail links too.)
No Broken links leading no-where
Press Control F5 to reload a page from fresh – this way you can test how long new visitors to your site will be waiting to see your page.
(Your clever computer keeps a memory of the pages you’ve visited and it seems faster after the 1st time – but – it is not fresh!)
2. Advertise Online.
Whether you opt for a pay per click campaign, banner adverts, affiliate marketing or a viral campaign, spread the word about your site. If you have a monthly newsletter, make it easy for people to click through to your site. Direct them to landing pages that form part of your site, and include your site menu on that landing page. Create interesting and appropriate in- and outbound links.
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3. Advertise Offline
Not all website marketing has to be done via the internet. Make sure your web address (URL) is displayed on your brochures, business cards and printed adverts. When you speak to people in person, give them the URL of your site.
4. Test.
Unlike printing material, a website can be changed easily. Test different actions on your website to determine which featured specials, are most effective in converting your visitors to customers. Change these regularly, and keep track of which ones are the most successful.
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5. Keep It Updated.
Nothing looks more uninviting & uninspiring than a site with old information, or with “upcoming events” that have already passed. Keep your information current. If you’re selling or advertising products via your site, make sure your prices are up to date.
6. Add Valuable Content Regularly.
Sites that are regularly updated with valuable content are likely to become popular with your target market as you’re providing a current and useful resource. Other sites will also be more likely to link to you – and inbound links are an important factor in getting your site high rankings on search engines.
7. Initiate a Call to Action.
Check how easy or difficult it to click through to a goal page, such as the product confirmation page, contact form or newsletter sign up confirmation page? Initiate a call to action in your site layout and copy to make it as easy as possible for your visitors to reach these goal pages.
8. Qualify your Contact Form
Ask your webmaster to design a thought-through contact form which will provide you
will all the necessary information about your prospective client.
It also looks more professional than just en e-mail link.
Unless you like the free flow of conversation of e-mails and have a lot of time to send back and forth information.
9. Track.
If you have a remotely reputable hosting company, you will have access to web stats which can be investigated to understand a Lot about your web visitors. If not and you would like to stay under a rock in stead of changing service provider or hosting company, you can invest in a web statistics package to see who is visiting your site This information can help you to become aware of which pages, offers or events are most popular to your visitors. (With some HTML coding knowledge you could insert free tracking like you
would find on www.extremetracking.com ) The more specific the stats, – like with www.hetzner.co.za Awestats – the more you can adjust your search terms to be seen on the first pages of Google and other search engines.
10. Optimize!
A professional webmaster will know to advice you on
Search Terms and Search Engine submissions.
Make sure your site is visible on search engine results.
This will involve extra time and money at the outset, but if its done properly, the resulting increase in traffic will pay for it many times over.
11. Visit your own site daily .
Try and keep an open mind about how new visitors will navigate themselves through your pages, do you give enough or too much information to keep their attention.
You will also be able to find out quickly whether you site is still on line.
(more than one site has gone “lost” – especially those 1$ hosting packages.)
Also you would be able to put pressure on ISP’s who had “cables stolen” to get them back on line.
(I love Africa – optical fiber apparently makes beautiful baskets)
12. e-ssential link reciprocation program.*Webwits advice
If you do not have a links or related appropriate page to add links to your website, get your webmaster to add one immediately.
Do research on the internet and negotiate reciprocal links
with every strong, high ranking site.
The main criteria: Does the link carry Search Engine weight?
Is it complimentary to your product and website?
Is it not direct competition to what you offer?
Constantly check whether the request was successful (can you see your link on the requested website?) If not, remove the link from your website, unless the Search Engine weight – ranking – is of such value that your site benefits anyway.
13. Strong Search Term Title * a little simple test:
What do you see right at the very top of the screen when you open your website. This line is called the Title bar – This forms an important part of the optimizing-mindedness of building a website. The chances are good that your website coding was not optimised with Search Term Rich content if you do not even have a Strong Search Term Title.
Watch this video to know more and also how to optimise your website to be more responsive (Mobile device friendly.)