The 10 Website Commandments – How to Get Found Online and Get Your Website Working FOR YOU
1. Know your market – create your website based on your target market – colors, layout, navigation, images and information. Make it relevant. Ask yourself “If I was a visitor to my website what would I expect to see, how can this business help me solve my problem”. Be different. Be the purple cow.
2. Keep it simple – in this age of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) it pays to deliver information as quickly and easily as possible. Pretend everyone of your website visitors has ADD. Now, how can you change your website to deliver what they’re looking for ASAP?
3. Be active – add to your website daily – Facebook updates, twitter updates, blog. Imagine if you only turned up to your retail storefront one day a month, how successful would your business be? Your website should be treated like a retail store, open it everyday, update things, add things, make it fresh and interesting.
4. Educate yourself – saying “I don’t understand computers or the internet” won’t grow your business, open your mind and treat it as your new hobby. Read up on internet trends and Search Engine Optimization and take action.
5. Get involved in social media – with 500 million customers on Facebook do you think your prospects and customers may be members?
6. Adopt new marketing media – create short slideshow videos of your product or service and upload them to You Tube and put those videos on your own website as well.
7. Carve out your niche – by focusing your website on one or two keywords your website customers will find you more relevant to their search. Don’t try to be all things to all people by placing 100 keywords in your meta tags. Use no more than a dozen.
8. Capture visitor contact details – the value of your business is determined by the value of your database, capture visitor details and follow up regularly. Are you leveraging your existing client base or are you always striving for MORE customers? Use email marketing to invite existing customers to do business with you again and again.
9. Create credibility – add official logos of associations, networking groups and industry bodies that you’re involved with to your website for that air of credibility.
10. Create a marketing funnel using keyword domain websites that act as lead generators for your branded domain name.