Lots of business websites have taken a real battering lately; Google’s Penguin and Panda updates have really mixed things up, knocking lots of sites off their beloved top spot and sent hurtling onto page 3… or 7… or worse.
But search engine rankings are not the most important thing when it comes to your website… If that statement comes as a shock, then read on!
If your site doesn’t engage your visitors, if it doesn’t take them by the hand, show them what to do and get them to take some kind of action, be it contacting you or buying from you, then what use is the top spot on Google? Very little…
So what can you do about it? Here are three suggestions that could help:
1. Improve your website speed
This is great for your users and the search engines. Did you know that there is a direct correlation between how long it takes your site to load and how many people leave it straight away? This great illustration by KissMetrics explains it beautifully. And Google tends to reward those sites that load quickly. One way you can test this is using Google PageSpeed Insights – you should be aiming for a score of 80+ and they will recommend changes you can make to improve your score.
2. Use call to action buttons and links
A ‘call to action’ is any statement that makes your user do something – it calls them to take action. Amazon are masters at this; ‘Order before 12pm and you’ll have this item tomorrow!’ You might already have a great call to action on your homepage, but if it doesn’t sing out to your site visitors, it’s not doing its job. Try using a different font or colour or making it bold, and use words that get people interested. They came to your site to do something, you just have to make them do it!
3. Use natural language
Try and make the writing on your site as natural as possible. In times gone by, you would engineer every sentence to be optimal for those crawlers, to try and make sure they ranked you on the search engines. That was great for search engines but rubbish for users; now it’s rubbish for both. Write for your website as you would for any other form of marketing and keep the spammy keywords out of it. This will ensure that Google views you as a quality site and, more importantly, it’ll make sure you get your message across.
Those are three of our top tips to get people onto your site and engaging and we’ve got lots more where those came from!
Contact us today to talk about your website, or for a free review of how your site is performing*. Email [email protected] or call 0117 230 3322.
*We’ll only do it for the first 20 requests, so get yours in sharpish!
