1. CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT
In 2019 Google indicated, nows the time to “focus on content” Google, 2019 It is more important then ever to have quality & unique content on your website. Giving your visitors great value is key.
When speaking about content it should portray your businesses expertise, authority & trust.
Express what makes you an expert in your field of business. You can do this by adding portfolios, case studies, examples, blogs or e-books to name a few.
Many times your authority is displayed through being an expert however this should not keep you from including relevant background information on your content and show that you know the topic well.
Your trustworthiness as a business can be portrayed many ways. To begin with an SSL certificate (padlock icon next to your domain name in the address bar) shows that your website is secured, and any information that is entered on your website will be encrypted. On your website include testimonials, FAQs, reviews and a privacy policy.
Content marketing is an ever growing industry so create good content now and continue to improve and add more as time goes by.
2. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
You may have heard someone talking about SEO and perhaps have wondered what it is and how does it work? SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic that is driven to your website through organic searches. The point of having a website is for people to be able to find you when they search for your business name or business industry.
With the growth of technology there has been an increase in websites making it more of a challenge to stand out amongst the rest. There are approximately 380 new websites created every minute!! ( How Many Websites are There Around the World? ) So being able to be found is detrimental to the growth of your website & business.
Search engines such as Google use algorithms to determine the ranking of websites and these algorithms keep evolving. Google alone takes into consideration over 200 factors in their search engine algorithm. Google’s algorithm includes things like site speed, title tags, mobile friendliness, links, content length, keyword density etc ( Backlinko )
Because SEO has evolved over the years something that worked 5 years ago may not work now and could actually be hurting your website now. Old get rich quick schemes such as keyword stuffing and link farms are old methods of SEO and they can actually penalize your website. It’s important to do you homework before listening to anyone about SEO practices or hire a professional.
3. User Experience (UX)
Your users experience is very important, it aims to enhance customer satisfaction and engagement by providing pleasurable positive interaction between your website and the user. To have a good user experience your website should meet these requirement. 1) Should be visually appealing, 2) user-friendly is essential so your visitors can navigate your website easily and find what they are looking for, 3) enable users to accomplish their goal efficiently and effectively, and 4) must be accessible to all (ADA compliant & multi-lingual).
The objective is to ensure a smooth and seamless experience to all your website visitors. Most modern websites provide interaction opportunities to promote engagement, this can be done using motion, color, buttons, and graphical elements.
Above all keep things simple. Use buttons and call-to-actions to make the next steps apparent. On the homepage you want to get your main points across, straight to the point and for those who want to learn more and read on give them the opportunity through a blog or other pages that go into detail.
4. Mobile First & Responsive Design
As you may have known mobile devices have been growing more and more popular, in 2018 it’s estimated that 58% of US screen time was on mobile devices. Mobile vs. Desktop Usage in 2019 / Perficient, Inc. And that number is expected to grow exponentially, statistics show that 8 out of 10 visitors will leave a website if it is not mobile friendly.
Websites that are designed to be responsive are setup so that whatever device is used to view the website are automatically adjusted to fit the device, wether it is a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone. For optimum viewing experiences, responsive websites automatically respond to the users device and adjusts images, fonts, buttons, menus and other graphical elements and content repositioning.
Not only is it essential for your website to be mobile friendly for your visitors but in July 2019 Google implemented “mobile-first indexing” for new websites. Basically this means that Google will crawl and index the mobile version of your content to determine its ranking in Google since most users access Google Search on mobile devices.
