Your website is the face of your business.
Having a clean, modern, and easy-to-find website legitimizes your business and can draw in new customers. If you don’t have the time or funds to hire someone to give your website a facelift, here are some basics to help you stay in the game:
SEO
Search engine optimization—or SEO—is quickly becoming just as important as advertising. Basically, if you can get your website to show up on the front page of Google, you have a greater chance of attracting new users. SEO is determined by a number of factors and analytics set up by Google to determine a website’s legitimacy. Google finds that people gravitate towards websites that push out new content on a regular basis, have a clean, simple aesthetic and user flow, and use keywords that are commonly searched in their target audience.
SEO is an essential step for marketing and branding. If you have a small and/or local business, you can give your website a facelift by learning the basics of SEO here. Larger or web-based businesses are usually better off hiring a professional or agency for search engine optimization because of the reliance and importance of attracting new users to their site.
We highly recommend reading Moz’s guide on getting started with SEO. Before you begin, download an SEO plugin or software to track the progress, metrics, and quality of keywords/content. We recommend using Yoast’s Wordpress plugin, which you can find here. At the very least, you should be researching and implementing keywords that your target audience is looking for. Google AdWords is a great tool for finding the highest searched phrase with the lowest competition. Once you’ve determined the keywords for your website, begin fine-tuning other aspects of your site, like adding links, images, and registering your website with Google.
NEW CONTENT
Pushing out new content is an important metric used by Google to rank your website. By keeping a blog or a feed, you are actively engaging users and encouraging them to return to your website, which boosts your SEO ranking. The longer you can convince an audience to stay in your site, the higher you will rank on Google. This can be achieved by adding numerous internal links, adding photos to engage the user, and providing comprehensive and unique content.
Adding new content will only boost your score if the content is original and well-written. There are several metrics used to determine content quality, such as use of active voice, sentence and paragraph length, and keyword usage. Many times, an SEO agency will also provide additional assistance in perpetuating content to keep your website highly ranked.
AESTHETIC
Changing a few details can freshen up and modernize your website. Google provides a typeface database called Google Fonts that is full of free and web-friendly typefaces. For easy readability, choose a sans-serif typeface for paragraph text, and a display typeface for headings. Serifed typefaces do well for readability in print, but can get lost in low-resolution.
Cheesy stock images can kill an otherwise good website. Make sure you choose images that are authentic to your brand and voice—they don’t have to be literal representations of your product and services. Lifestyle images give a sense of approachability and attainability. Stocksy.com has great stock images for an affordable price, and stocksnap.io has images that are completely free.
Making these small tweaks every few months can prevent you from spending a few thousand dollars on an updated website later. If you can’t find the time to update your website, let us know and we will be happy to help.
President and founder of DVI, Aaron Boerger realized early in life that he had a unique combination of x-ray vision and business acumen for seeing the weaknesses that held businesses back – and the ability to define the right tools, technology and strategy to make them stronger.
From founding a successful technology support business in his early teens, to serving as Chief Operating Officer for several companies in the financial, technology and marketing industries, Aaron has developed a reputation for reinventing technology implementation tactics – and the willingness to tell people not what they want to hear, but what they need to hear, in order to achieve success without overwhelm.
Aaron will always go the extra mile to provide the accountability and support his clients need to achieve their goals, yet isn’t afraid to tell them when they are doing something wrong.