Targeted Results Driven Business Website Development
Does it touch you? Do you feel an emotion with the design work? Has it got value to your organisation? Is it a company asset?
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Pitfalls in the link between a SEO campaign and the website it is promoting
Many times companies will get involved in a SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
campaign to promote their website while seemingly forgetting that even if the
potential customers arrive, they will not be converted to a sale if the website
is not designed correctly. This article aims to lay out some of the pit falls in
the link between a SEO campaign and the website it is promoting.
Search engines and directories account for nearly 90% of Internet traffic
generated daily, however if you are not attracting this potential revenue stream
to your website then you are missing out on a huge sales opportunity.
The people who use search engines are looking for something specific. They know
what they want and are looking specifically for a place that provides it. On
average they will use 2 or more key words to search for what they want and will
rarely look beyond the first 3 pages of results generated. They are
pre-qualified traffic!
A SEO campaign in one form or another is essential to be successful on the
Internet by today's standards. As the web has expanded so too has the content it
contains, along with an ever-increasing difficulty for the search engines to
sort the vast amounts of information. Trying to get in front of the crowd is a specialised skill in itself and this is where SEO companies are more important
than ever for a website to be successful, and indeed profitable.
This article assumes your website has undergone a SEO campaign and is bringing
traffic in.
Not only you use your website
It is paramount that visitors to your website can use it. As straightforward as
this sounds it is surprising that at least 73% of websites are difficult for
users to understand or navigate which in turn drives them to a competitors
website instead, losing them the sale and repeat custom.
The most important thing is a clean, clear and understandable site layout,
navigation being paramount. If users are unable to locate what they want quickly
they will leave your website. FACT!
It is good practice to include an easily visible 'call to action' on your main
pages for your most popular service or product. An image of a book with "20% off
first order to all new customers" is likely to get a user to make their purchase
with you as they can get their product and they save money.
You now have their details and a potential repeat customer that will have used
you before and become 'comfortable' using your website and services which will
also go to help your word of mouth advertising when they tell others how easy
your website was to use. The more accessible you make your information to users
the more likely they are to find and purchase it. But this is just one benefit
of making sure you have a well structured and clear website.
Search engines are users too
Having a well-structured site that is linked logically and uniformly will make
things easy for the search engines to collect the content and index it. This
goes to help your search engine ranking, attracting more potential customers,
which brings more sales. Any professional SEO company will highlight any
potential issues that there may be with navigation and linking structure in
order to be sure that the SEO work performed will have full effect.
The correctly indexed information can then be served up to the users and help
them to find what they are searching for, the advantage being that they will
find it with you, on your website.
A touch of class
Even though the general attitude to purchase items online has been gradually
changing over recent years there are still a large percentage of people who
really need to trust a site before they will start handing out card details.
Trust can be achieved through a website simply by having a clean and
professional design, decent products, good prices, ideally some form of customer
testimonials or accreditations / affiliations with other businesses and be sure
to include easy to find contact details. You are trying to build up credibility
to your potential customers and assure them that you are a professional company
supplying quality services and products.
It is again another case of making sure that your site is correctly designed and
has appropriate functionality in order to ensure an easy user experience once
they have found the website via the search engines.
Goals to achieve in order to convert SEO to sales
Get into a good SEO campaign with a reputable company that will not only perform
initial optimisation, but will also supply an ongoing optimisation strategy that
will help your website progress in the long term.
Be sure that your website is of professional quality, being clear, crisp,
concise, and simple for the user to understand.
Employ a straightforward navigation system that is both easy to view and easy to
use. It should also not hinder the search engines from being able to crawl your
website and index the content it contains.
Make primary information available to users straight away by including plenty of
call to action’ links and imagery that will help guide the user experience to
the final purchase, either online or offline.
Stay professional and stay in contact with your customers. The best way to keep
any repeat sales is to stay in the customers mind.
Continue to adjust information and add new content to your website to help with
your SEO campaign and further improve your rankings within the search engines
and Internet directories. Content is King!
A great example of a website that has achieved all of the goals required to be
successful is Amazon. They have a great web reach to potential customers; they
have simple design and navigation, and plenty of customer feedback on most of
their products.
Amazon started out like any other company but have gained this reputation and
have an unbelievable number of repeat customers, simply due to the fact that
everything is so easy to do and they have achieved all of the goals above.
So consider your website design, navigation and content when you go for search
engine optimisation. All of these things go hand in hand to converting your SEO
campaign users into successful website customers.
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