Fresh Content Brings Visitors Back
Thursday, January 14, 2010
By Maria
Make Your Website a Valuable Business Asset
We have found that some small business owners recognise that
websites are a useful promotional tool, but they do not want to
spend a lot of time or money on it.
It is very easy to create a free website and there are many free
online website building tools available. Our experience has been
that while the websites may look professional, there are problems
with search engine indexing and hence poor search results, or
updating the website is difficult and hence it rapidly becomes out
of date (I will write more on this in a later blog).
We are 100% confident that umbraco's content management system,
coupled with Paul's awesome developer's skills ensure that our
websites are easy to update and searchable on Google.
Once the first hurdle, a useable website, is
taken care of, having the confidence and skills to build a website
into a valuable business asset then requires time and
commitment. It might also take you out of your comfort
zone.
Make a Website Maintenance Plan
Planning a website maintenance strategy might sound daunting,
but can be as simple as planning to review and update one page
within the site per month and writing a weekly news article or
blog.
Keeping website page content fresh and releasing regular updates
will result in better search rankings and is a sound strategy for
long term growth.
Better Search Rankings
Search engines such as Google rank websites that have new
content higher than websites with static content. Google
places a high value on updated content, to avoid displaying
websites that are no longer active.
Being in the number one spot in search results also increases
click rates exponentially over subsequent search results, so
refreshing page information and releasing keyword-rich news on a
regular basis will be worth the time investment.
Get Customers to Notice Your Updates
Regular information updates encourage visitors to return to your
website. Social media sites are a great way to reach out to
customers and remind them that you have a service or product to
offer them.
An RSS feed on a news column or blog (we are adding an RSS feed
to our blog this month - we are just waiting for a software
release), twitter updates and facebook pages all bring your
information to your customers.
How Do Social Media Sites Increase Website
Visits?
Take twitter for example. I follow a number of people
through my twitter account @fairliebusy. When someone tweets
about the latest blog update on their website and I follow the
link, I am taken to the blog. I will read the article and
then I might look around the website for related articles or any
other interesting information. I might not buy a product or
service this time, but I am building up trust in this contact and
when I need that product or service - I am more likely to buy from
a trusted source than an unknown source.
But I Have Nothing to Say!
There will always be something you can say about your
business. We regularly blog about topics that our customers
bring to our attention, we feel that if one customer experiences a
problem, others might have the same problem too, so why not publish
some information about it - the rest will think you are amazing for
anticipating the issue.
If you have no news of your own, you can also link to an
industry-related article written by someone else. They will
be thrilled for the promotion of their work as well.
Measure, Measure, Measure
I love statistics and I use Google Analytics to check page
visits, page source and traffic information on a regular
basis. I can see that when I publish a blog the number of
site visits increases. Analytics can also help you to see the
popular areas on your site. Checking your statistics can help
you work out if you have any problem areas on your website and you
can fix them. If you have access to your site's statistics
then use the information to target the problem areas and see your
efforts making a difference.
