For many businesses, your website is where potential customers visit you first. So, it’s worth asking: Is your website really living up to expectations and performing accordingly?
Whether you’re a financial institution supporting the financial well-being of your community, a healthcare organization caring for the wellness of others, an educational institution reaching out to the next generation or a local business serving your neighbors, your website should make it easy for people to find you and understand who you are.
When it comes to finding you, search engine optimization (SEO) is key. A website that was created long ago and left untouched can create barriers between you and potential customers.
As for understanding who you are, that’s branding, and it’s a big deal. It shows people the personality your business has and brings cohesiveness and recognition to your marketing.
The good news? A website enhancement doesn’t mean tearing everything down and starting from scratch. You can simply optimize a handful of pages and refresh your brand.
So, is it time to breathe new life into your website? If your answer is yes, here’s how to get started.
- Start by asking: Why am I enhancing my website?
Before you begin, be sure of your “why.”
• Do you want your website to perform better in search results?
• Do you want it to include more educational resources, like blogs, to give regulars reasons to keep coming back?
• Do you need to include important product or service webpages that are currently missing from your website?
• Would you benefit from adding FAQs because you get asked the same questions often?
• Has your organization undergone a brand refresh?
• Does your website complement your other marketing materials (colors, fonts, images, logo)?Truth be told, you may have one reason for updating your site or several. Identifying the pain points upfront can guide the decisions you make throughout the process and keep your website enhancement focused on the improvements that truly matter.
- Take stock of your current website.
Now that you know the “why” for what you’re doing, take a closer look at what you already have.
Ask yourself:
• Which products and services are showing up in searches, and which aren’t?
• What are my competitors coming up in search results for?
• What questions do customers frequently ask staff?
• How does the look and feel of the website compare to other marketing materials?You don’t need to change something simply for the sake of changing it. Website work is just as much about identifying what’s already going well as it is about finding opportunities for improvement.
- Build your list of pages to improve.
Once you understand the strengths and weaknesses of your existing website, it’s time to create your to-do list.
Think about the customer journey from searching for one of your services online to landing on your homepage to diving further into your website and even completing an action – like filling out an online Contact Us form.
This is also a great time to identify opportunities for new content, such as:
• Product or service pages
• Overview pages
• An FAQ page
• Blogs and educational resources
• Testimonials
• Events
• Community involvement
• Local or geographically focused contentAnd don’t be afraid to think beyond your core products or services. For example, a local hotel might benefit from highlighting things to do in the surrounding area, while a credit union could showcase its involvement in the community. Useful, relevant content gives people more reasons to visit your website while creating additional opportunities for it to appear in search results.
Also, look at your other marketing materials – social media posts, welcome folders, postcards, posters, emails – and consider how well your website aligns with them:
• What tone of voice is used? Is it fun and casual, professional and formal, bold and playful?
• Does the imagery style represent how you want to be perceived?
• Look at colors, headlines, fonts. Are they willy-nilly or intentional and on-brand?
• Think about design elements too. Do you use soft edges and subtle curves or bold, hard lines? Which would mirror your organization best, and are you consistent in their use?Don’t forget about your copy! Consistency across print and digital assets can help strengthen brand recognition. Establish brand standards for elements like headline and subhead capitalization, callouts, grammar and style. Then, identify a few brand descriptors that can help guide your voice across all your marketing.
- Speaking of print and digital assets, write for people and search engines.
You’ve created your to-do list. You know what pages would benefit most from optimization, and you’ve determined where your brand is straying from your guide. (You do have a brand guide, right?) Now comes the fun part: bringing the enhancements to life!
SEO plays an important role in website strategy. Look for opportunities to naturally incorporate keywords and phrases your audience may be searching for without sacrificing readability or your brand voice. But keep in mind: Keyword stuffing or forcing awkward phrases into your copy can make your content harder to read, which ultimately defeats the purpose.
Beyond keywords, consider:
• Calls to action: Give visitors clear next steps with call-to-action buttons that make it easy for a visitor to act, whether that’s scheduling an appointment, applying for an account, requesting a quote, registering for an event or contacting your team.
• Internal links: Connect related pages throughout your website to help visitors discover additional information and help search engines better understand your site structure.
• FAQs: Answer the questions your audience is already asking. In addition to a standalone FAQ page, consider incorporating relevant FAQs directly within product and service pages.
• Headings and subheadings: Break content into easy-to-understand sections so visitors can quickly find the information that matters most to them.
• Scannable copy: Keep paragraphs manageable and use bullets, callouts and other design elements to make information easy to digest.SEO can help bring visitors to your website, and helpful, user-friendly content will keep them there.
- Don’t lose your brand while incorporating SEO.
Your website needs to perform well, but it also needs to stay true to your brand.
As you work on optimizing your site, maintain course with your brand voice, tone and personality. What makes your organization different from your competitor down the road or the dozens of competitors online?
Your brand should influence everything from your headlines and taglines to your photography, design and calls to action. Even the amount of copy on the page can depend on your audience and what they need to feel comfortable taking the next step.
Testimonials can also help bring your brand to life by letting your customers tell your story for you. Authentic experiences can reinforce your organization’s value while building credibility with prospective customers.
The goal isn’t simply to optimize your website for searches. It’s to create one that looks, sounds and feels like your organization.
- Look beyond the launch.
Your optimized and on-brand website is live! Time to check it off the list forever, right? Not quite.
Your organization will continue to change, and so will your customers, competitors and the ways your audience searches for information online. Treat your website as an evolving resource rather than a one-and-done project.
You should periodically review:
• Search performance
• High- and low-performing pages
• Broken or outdated links
• New frequently asked customer questions
• New products, services or benefits
• Outdated information
• Opportunities for new contentContinually monitoring, optimizing and improving your website can help you catch small problems before they become bigger ones while also uncovering new opportunities to reach your audience
Give your website the attention it deserves.
Enhancing your website doesn’t mean starting from scratch. Whether you’re updating a few important pages, identifying new content opportunities or looking to improve your visibility in search, a strategic approach can help your website do more for your organization.
And that’s where image.works can help!
Want to know how your website is performing? Sign up for our FREE Digital Marketing Assessment to gain valuable insights into your website’s overall health, your competitors’ digital efforts – including ads they’re running and keywords they’re targeting – and other opportunities to strengthen your online presence.
From there, our SEO services can help you put those opportunities into action. By optimizing existing webpages, creating unique, SEO-focused blogs and developing location-specific content that targets people searching for your services nearby, we can help you build a stronger online presence.
And because a strong website is about more than search performance, we can help you strengthen your brand, too! Our FREE Brand Audit gives you an outside perspective on your current marketing materials. A copywriter and designer will review your materials and provide initial impressions and recommendations for enhancing your brand.
If you’re inspired to take things further, we can help you develop a more cohesive brand with elements like imagery and illustration direction, colors and fonts, brand descriptors and phrases and grammar and style preferences. For more on branding, check out our Brand Style blog.
And remember: A good website shouldn’t just be pretty. It should be working for you.
Ready to make your website work harder? Let’s talk.