For many of you, you’re at a crossroads. Budgets might be set, but the tactics of implementing your strategy may be coming together. Signalfire has assembled a group of helpful ideas to make marketing more effective in 2021.
Each one of the tips are ideas you can implement. These ideas are perfect your business’ marketing team looking to improve results. If you have questions about putting these ideas into use, connect with one of Signalfire’s marketing professionals.
5 Tips for Optimizing Your Website
We’ve been talking a lot about social media and content that goes on your website, but what about optimizing your website. Don’t be afraid to “pop the hood” on your website and get your hands dirty. Most websites that have a CMS like WordPress give you incredible access and tools for you to get your website humming. If you start diving in and feel you’re in over your head, just give Signalfire a call. We’ll be able to support you.
Protip: Always make sure you run a backup of your website before doing anything. If your website hosting provider doesn’t provide backups there are several backup plug-ins that work well. We recommend checking out:
Here’s a list of things you can do to make your website run better and deliver better results.
1. A TECHNICAL SEO CHECKUP YOU CAN DO
Search engine optimization (SEO) used to be this complex maze of smoke and mirrors controlled by a mad scientist behind a curtain. Not any more. If your website is built on a CMS platform such as WordPress, you likely have the tools you need to give your website a solid SEO foundation.
Here’s a list of things you can do to give your website a technical SEO tune-up. The links shared here are just my opinion. I have no affiliate agreements.
- Run a free test to evaluate your website such as this one from Neil Patel
- If you’re running WordPress, I recommend using the Yoast SEO plug-in to keep tabs on things
- Rewrite headers to include high search volume keywords (remember the keyword research discussion)
- Make sure you create critical metadata such as descriptions and page titles for every page
Protip: Don’t copy and paste the same material for each page because Google will ding you for duplicate content - Run a broken link checker to make sure you’re not sending site visitors to dead links
2. MONITOR YOUR TRAFFIC AND SITE VISITOR EXPERIENCE
Measuring your website’s performance is a fantastic way to see if your marketing is paying off. But not all website traffic is created equal. You can monitor and track traffic that is delivering leads and what traffic is just passing through.
In addition to monitoring your traffic, you should consider how site visitors are interacting with your website. Where are they clicking? How far down are they scrolling? Insight into your customer’s experience is hugely valuable.
What are some tools for monitoring traffic and site visitor experience?
- Google Analytics to monitor traffic, site visitor goals, and conversions
- Google Search Console to monitor your website’s performance with Google search
- Moz.com or SEMRush.com to monitor overall site performance compared to competitors (plus they have some super-useful keyword performance tools)
- HotJar will provide user experience tracking such as click-mapping, scroll-mapping, and even experience recordings
3. FREE PAGE LOAD SPEED TESTING TOOLS
In our current world of mobile-focused traffic, how quickly your page loads for users on any device is impacting your website’s performance. In fact, slow loading pages are actually pushed down in search results. Even if you have a mobile responsive website, how can you check if your website is loading as it should?
Here are some tools that test the speed and give some insight into performance.
- Google – mobile specific testing tool
- Google – general site testing tool
- Pingdom – speed testing, but also shows where the “hang-ups” are for slower speeds
For websites that are very mobile-focused, we recommend getting familiar with Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMP. Google and other search platforms have long stated they deliver preferential treatment to AMP-enabled pages in mobile searches. If your business has a lot of mobile traffic, AMP might be a good investment. Here’s a great summary!
4. PRIORITIZE YOUR EMAIL NEWSLETTER SIGNUPS
Imagine if Facebook decided to shut down business pages. If LinkedIn got shut down by Microsoft, what would you do? Out of all of your marketing vehicles (social media, etc.), email is one of the few direct links you have with prospects or customers.
Email remains one of the most impactful and effective ways to reach buyers. Most businesses under-utilize email or simply do it wrong. Delivering the right content to the right people is the name of the game. If you’re looking to get more out of your email efforts, give Signalfire a shout.
One tactic that stands out from the others is the need to continue gathering email addresses. Here are some ways you can gather more addresses.
- Ask for it. It might sound overly simple, but how often do you ask customers for their email addresses? Collect business cards?
- Pop-ups. I know that everyone hates them, but they’re crazy effective when set up right
- Incentives can make a fantastic lure. Extra savings, early access, or special giveaways are ways customers feel the value of being connected to you
- Email address in exchange for high-value content. Secret Method to Guarantee Repeat Shoppers! Download this guide by submitting your email address. Sometimes called “gated” content, it is a value-focused way to get that prospect.
Protip: Tell prospects or customers who are signing up for your email exactly how you will use their address. Reassure them it won’t be sold, you won’t bombard them with spam, and you’ll respect their wish to unsubscribe.
Once you have the email addresses, you need to treat them with respect. Give that list actionable content that is valuable to them!
5. OPTIMIZE YOUR CALL TO ACTION / CONTACT FORMS
Congratulations! You have fought hard and spent significant time and treasure to get the user to your contact, lead, or signup form. Don’t blow it at the finish line. Overly complex or excessively detailed forms will have your prospects bailing on you.
You need to keep your online forms simple and focused on a few critical elements.
- Design the form for mobile users
- Keep the form short and sweet — get additional details from later conversations
- Single column layout—easy trumps cleaver
- Be clear on which fields are required or optional
- Use action text for your completion button (sign me up, download e-book, etc.)
- When done, take them to a separate page that says thank you and what will happen next
This is the single most important page. Ever. The “thank you” page should be treated like the winners circle in racing. Just think of all of the hurdles that prospect has overcome and how far they’ve come through the buyer’s journey. Reward them. Thank them, but also make sure they know what to do next.
- How soon will you hear from us?
- What are the next steps?
- Follow us on social media
- How to contact us immediately?
This is your chance to establish expectations and chart a path for your newest customer.
How Can You Get It All Done?
This is a lot to accomplish! It can be scary to get started. You can do it! You can use this article as a map or schedule to attack each of these items in turn.
If you need help, you’ve got a team of marketing professionals that will paddle in to the rescue. All you need to do is give us a shout.