Make the Most of Your Website

With more people than ever searching for businesses online, having a strong website has become as important as a shop front once was. Get it right and you’ll have a steady stream of customers queuing up to buy your services. Get it wrong, however, and you could miss out on vital new business opportunities. There are three key components every great website must have:

1) It should be found easily by people using search engines
2) Retain people by having interesting, relevant content
3) Convert visitors into paying customers

1) Website visibility

For this article, we’re going to concentrate on Google. Why? Google has the lion’s share of searches at around 77%. All other search engines make up just 23%.

Here are some easy steps to website visibility:

a) Google has 2 different methods for visibility – paid advertising or organic results

Paid advertising is through their AdWords service, where you pay to have your website show up for certain keywords.

The advantage here is that you can reach the top of Google fast. The downside is that it can get expensive very quickly!

Using the organic results route is much slower, but the advantages are that it’s free, and are more ‘trusted’ (paid results have the word ‘sponsored’ next to them, which can make some people see these results as ‘adverts’).

It’s not for us to say which route you should take (some businesses do both) – it’s all about working out how much money you have to spend, and also how much you expect in return on investment (ROI).

b) Create a master list of relevant keywords

For example, ‘Boiler Services.’ Also, specific keywords work better than general keywords.

Yes, ‘boiler services’ may get 100K searches a month, but think of the competition from similar companies in the country, and even the world!

Instead, how about adding the location of your company? E.g. ‘boiler services Southampton’

This may only yield 100 searches a month, but they will be from people in your area searching for your services.

If you need some keyword inspiration, check out Google Keyword Planner

Although designed for those using Google’s paid AdWords, it’s also a great place for you to brainstorm keywords for organic results.

c) Add content to your website that reflect your chosen keywords.

This is essentially about signaling to Google, ‘Hey, this is what my website is about!’

First of all, you want to use your most important keywords on your homepage, ideally in prominent places, such as headlines.

Then, create content on your website that uses your main keywords on a regular basis.

Warning: this not an excuse to write shoddy material that simply uses your keywords again and again.

Google will heavily penalize websites that use this type of ‘cheating’ (known as keyword stuffing).

Instead, try to write regular informative, interesting articles (once a month is fine), and then make sure you add in your keywords in a way that feels natural.

So long as you are consistent, Google will reward you with more and more traffic.

2) Website Retention

Website visibility is just the half of it. You also need to make your website enticing and interesting, so that once someone is on your site, they stay on it.

Adding interesting, relevant content regularly to your website:

We’ve already touched on this previously.

Apart from the fact that badly written content and articles, stuffed with keywords, will lead to Google penalizing your website, it’s also of no real benefit to you anyway.

The traffic Google sends to your site is full of actual human beings…..your potential customers!

What questions are they likely to have? Writing content that answers these questions will keep them engaged.

3) Convert visitors into customers

After all of the effort to get visitors, you really need to make sure that you get their details and give them the exact information they are after.

Both giving what they want and getting their details go hand in hand.

Good examples of this are Instant Boiler Quoting Tools and Chat Bots that give details of product and services, book appointments and request call backs.

For example, a potential customer can click on the type of service they want (e.g. boiler repair quote, gas safety check etc.) and may even be asked a series of questions to really understand what they want, so when they get a call back, there’s no need to explain again.

This kind of approach has been proven to convert more website visitors into actual paying customers. It also makes your business look extremely professional and helpful……all of which leads to more people staying on your site and only leaving once they have left you their details!

This Article is Originally Published in Registered Gas Engineer Magazine – Issue 109, April 2018