You are busy working everyday in your business. But you may have forgotten something essential to your success.. did you forget to update your website?
A website isn’t something that can just be set up and left alone. Here’s a series of questions to determine if your website is up-to-date:
1. Do you have your social media icons displayed on the home page?
People are talking about you, whether you are active in social media or not. Social media isn’t going away, so it’s time for you to have an active account that’s optimized on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. When people visit your website, they should be able to share your content to the social media sites. You should also give them the opportunity, from your home page, to find you on your social media sites, by prominently displaying your social media icons, with hot links directly to them.
2. Do you have a content management system installed in your website so that you can post regular content and news?
The search engines look for fresh, original content. If you aren’t posting to your blog or news page at least once a week, your competition is going to rise up higher than you in the search engines. If your website doesn’t have the capability for you to post new content, easily and frequently- it’s time for an update.
3. Are you using video on your website, especially on your home page to gain better internet rankings?
With one of the most recent Google algorithm changes, videos are doing even better in the search engines. Videos are a relatively easy way to get a jump on the competition.
4. Do you have testimonials prominently displayed on your home page or at least a link to testimonials located in a tab on your home page?
3rd party referrals, such as testimonials are much easy to believe than advertising. Testimonials help prospective clients get to know you better, trust you, and want to spend their money and time with you.
5. Do interested clients have a form to reach you on your website?
Sometimes people just aren’t ready to walk in the door, or pick up the phone. For those who are interested, but only ready to send an email- do you have a contact form that’s easy to find and quick to use?
6. Are the keywords that people look for you and your business mentioned several times on your home page and throughout your website?
It doesn’t matter what you call the page, if you don’t cover your keywords in that particular page, Google and the other search engines will skip over you for the next website. It’s a bit of an art, to write content that contains enough keywords to keep the search engines attention, and to help your prospective clients find you.
7. Are you receiving the traffic you want, to your website?
If you aren’t showing up on the first page of a search for the keywords people use to find you, then I guarantee your competitors are getting more traffic than you.
8. Does your website include necessary meta-tags to attract the search engine spiders?
How to tell:
-Hover your mouse over a picture, does it show your keywords?
-Control “U” into your computer, when looking at your website (now you can see inside of it) Look for meta-title, meta-description and meta-keywords. Are those the words you want the automated search engines to see?
If you answered no to more than one of these questions, it’s time for a website makeover. (You might even need some online marketing!)
If you’d like more information, contact Shirley@SCDConsultingServices.com for more information.