Whatever type your business is, it’s always beneficial to have a website. It can be your unique tool to promote your products/ services and communicate with your prospects and customers. The success of your website is in your strategy, creativity, and understanding of your target audience. The more life, details, and purpose is on your website, the better. The best practice is to run both, a website and social media accounts. Social media let you easily connect and reach new people, while a website is your own, independent place on the Internet. So how to attract visitors and encourage them to keep coming back?

SEO

Also known as Search Engine Optimisation. SEO is a very wide field and it deserves a separate blog to fully cover the subject. Some SEO practices (like metadata) have to be done in the website’s code, so it’s worth engaging a programmer to set your meta information properly in the code or make sure you set the relevant title, description, and keywords in your website builder’s panel.

It’s also important to include the right keywords in headers, copies, captions, and descriptions. Think about words or phrases the potential customers use searching for your products. You can also use special tools, like Google Trends or Answer The Public.

SEO elements that you can improve yourself:

• Content. Its originality and frequency of publishing.
• Links to and from your website. Matters both, quantity and quality.
• Sizes of pictures you put on your website. Too heavy files slow down the speed of your website, which also matters. You should use photos with the right resolution for their size. You can also increase their size on TinyJPG.
• Alt texts. It’s a short written description of an image, which explains that image when it cannot be viewed for some reason, usually for people with disabilities.

SEO elements to improve by people with tech knowledge:

• Responsiveness
• Page-loading speed
• Page structure
• Security

Do you want to know SEO score on your website? You can check it for free on Seobility.

Also, it’s worth reading Google’s Starter Guide on SEO.

Local Searches

People often look for products and services available nearby. Make sure your business website appears when people search your local area. First of all, put a business address on your website (e.g. on the contact form and footer). You can also include Google Maps with your localization pinned. To do so, use the right plugin or Google API. Last but not least, create a Google My Business account. It’s free and gives you an overall profile, where potential customers can quickly see your contact info, photos, and reviews.

Social Media

Nowadays, social media are the easiest and quickest way for networking. Regardless of the website, you should run social media to boost your engagement. Find out which platforms are most relevant for your business and choose about three you will be active in. They will run a traffic to your website and also significantly improve your SEO. Remember to call all social media profiles and your website the same name, so it will be easy to find you.

Blogging

Blogging and content marketing are a common practice to run a traffic. Sharing knowledge from your field makes you trustworthy and gives you a position of expert. But also, it tells SEO algorithms that your website is valuable and worth showing to people. Provide authoritative, relevant and useful content. Include keywords, but don’t overuse them. Be helpful and give people a value, so they will always come back. Examples of useful and engaging blog posts are:

• know-how. Don’t be afraid to share your expertise. It will encourage people you know your field
• trivia. Trends, changes, forecasts, statistics, etc.
• mistakes you made or your clients make. It will show your human’s face and your experience.
• backstage. Your typical day at work, your workspace, etc.
• opinions and reviews. Share your experience with books, tools, products from your field.
• vocabulary. Explain jargon used in your industry

Online directories

There are many business directories specific for industries, but general business directories also can direct people to your website. There are both, free and paid directories. Examples of UK directories:

FreeIndex

Thompson Local

Yell

Yelp

PPC advertising

Also known as pay-per-click. An advertiser pays a publisher a fee every time the ad is clicked by a visitor. If your PPC ads are well-monitored, the campaign can be cost-effective, as you’ll pay only for people really intrigued and interested in your offer.

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