Where is Your Website? - Ideas to be better seen.

Do you have a website?  How often are you asked this?  Do you ever ask it of others?  A contact in America recently asked if she could stock my books in, supposedly 4 shops.  I sent her all of my info and asked her for her website, she didn’t have one and said she has physical shops.  Really?

Many people now regard having a website as ‘doing it right, in a professional manner’ so we need to make sure that we invest into our websites.  I always say that a website is like a shop window, it needs to be visually attractive and convey your message quickly.  It is now said that the online attention of the average person is 8.25 seconds, so make the most of that time.

If your shop window isn’t right, people will drift on past your shop.  Marketeers use techniques to make you find, stop, stay and shop, so how does your window, your website manage to do this? 

Can you remember the day that your website first went live?  Did you shout, “Hooray, we are alright now.”  Have you, since then, realised that having a website is only the start and that you need to do far more work so that people can actually find you.

As an author, I often Google another author’s name so that I can visit their website, only to find out that they don’t have one or if they do have one, Google doesn’t find it.  So I’d like to now share with you a few tips to improve your website, if you don't already know these. 

Time to get excited

 

1.  SEO (search engine optimization) – Yes, this is still a thing and yes, it still works.            

·         70% of marketers see SEO as more effective than PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising.

·       Longtail keywords have 3-5% more click through than generic searches. (Use key content from pages)

2.    2.  Backlinks – Make sure that your website appears on as many other websites as possible.       I have 8 books on Amazon and in the description for each one, you can find my website’s         author landing page. 

  • 91% of pages fail to see traffic due to lack of backlinks
  • Top results on Google have 3.8 more backlinks

3.     3.  Mobile optimised – have you checked that your website works properly on a mobile               phone or tablet?  How often have you viewed a website on your phone, only to find the             content in a jumble, uncoordinated mess?

  • By 2025 it’s estimated that 73% of internet users will access via mobile only.
  • Nearly 24% of the top million websites are NOT mobile friendly.
  • Only 30% of small businesses have mobile friendly websites

4.     4.  Secure site – Check to the  left of your website URL, is your site secure?  Does it bother         you if it isn’t?  It should.   

  • 46% of users will not do business with you if your website is not secure.

5.     5.  Links out – Do you have links to buy your books? Don’t just tell people to go to Amazon,         include links.  Crawl Bots like links and they will find you easier, plus your customers can         buy easier.

6.     6.  Blog – This helps to keep your website alive and current.  Crawl Bots like sites that are            regularly updated.  

  •       A blog helps to make your site easier to find and can actually help to rake in up to 126% more sales.  
  •      Even updating and republishing old blogs with new content and images can increase  traffic by up to 106%

7.     7.  Newsletter – Do you have a Newsletter page?  This works in the same way as a Blog, in         that it keeps your site alive.  Linked with this, do you have a Pop-up Newsletter sign up             (with or without free offer)?  This tool will help to grow your audience faster than waiting for       someone to find the sign up form.

      8.  Video – If you are not using video on your website, you will be losing out.

  • Videos grab 82 percent of all internet traffic. 
  • Every single day, over 500 million hours of video is consumed on YouTube.  Video is 50x more likely to grab organic traffic.

1  9.  Social Links - How many social media platforms are linked?  A simple Twitter feed will           keep your site active and more visible to the Bots.

9. 10.  Branding – Do you have an easily identifiable look? - Logos, fonts, colours & images

1111.  Email Signature - Include branding and your website at the foot of your emails.  This               should be your first backlink.

I realise that this is a longer blog than usual, but hope that you find this useful.  Oh, by the way, if you don’t believe it works, try Googling my name and check out the first search engine results page (SERP).

If you need help understanding any of this, please just let me know. 


Brendan Conboy has an Advanced Diploma in Digital Marketing level 5 He is a creative Christian; digital marketeer, podcaster, film producer, poet, and author of 8 books, including 'The book of PSALMS in Rhyme.'  He lives in Stroud Gloucestershire.  There are 'self-made men' and 'God-made men', Brendan is the latter.  An associate speaker with Christian Vision for Men.  A member of the Association of Christian Writers and Evangelical Alliance.

Click here to visit Brendan's website

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