Tag Archive for: business website

Would you wire your own house? Don’t build your own website!

People often ask ‘Why should I pay to get a website developed when I can do it myself?’. Our response is usually something along the lines of ‘You know what, that’s true. I guess it’s sort of like being able wire your own house, instead of using an electrician.’

The reality is that just because you can do something yourself, or do something real cheap, doesn’t mean that you should! This is so true about creating a website for your business. Why would you spend the many many hours and go through the inevitable frustrations to save on something that in today’s world is a vital tool for EVERY business?

To build a proper business website, the following steps (as a minimum) should be thought through:

  • What is the purpose of your website?
  • How do you wish to use it within your business?
  • What message do you want to convey to your visitors?
  • What branding requirements need to be taken into consideration?
  • Develop your site/link map
  • What will your site look like – design each page before you even get close to developing anything
  • Have you included conversion prompters?
  • What will your back end look like? What will you use? How much flexibility does this give you?
  • Create your website to match your site/links map and to look like your design – this is often a  frustrating and time intensive exercise
  • Where are you sourcing images from?
  • How are you going to make the images look professional if they need editing?
  • What tools will you build into your website to: generate efficiencies, help you make more money, better connect with customers?
  • Add the above tools into your website and integrate them with third party products if required
  • If you are creating an e-commerce site: What platform will you use? What payment gateways? How will you integrate these into your site? Have you got your inventory management and your shipping procedures in place and working to your requirements on the website?
  • What about content?? Where is this coming from? Is it well written and legible?
  • Once you have your site created, you need to review, test, change, review, test, change and review once again!
  • Is your site responsive? Have you taken into account SEO requirements?

So as you can see, whilst it is possible for anyone to create a website, if you want it done properly a trained professional with the right team in place (developers, designers and business specialists) will not only be able to get the job done much better than you could, but they can also give you important tips, advice and strategies that will in the end result in a better product and a more professional online image and a structurally sound, secure site.

The 7 Step to Reviewing Old Website Content to Make Them Thrive Again

Using the right keywords in your blog is an imperative seed to its growth. As search results change over time, and as your business changes, you may find it a valuable exercise to re-evaluate some of your old content.  You will probably find some valuable content that simply needs to be altered using new keywords and used again.  Many of those old blogs that you posted that are like seeds planted on rocky ground, they can be replanted with the right keywords and can thrive.

Doing this is simpler than it may seem.  Here’s all you need to do:

  1. Look at your Google analytics and find your most popular posts.
  2. Read them and think how you could summarize them using only three to four words.
  3. Once you’ve got a blog topic figured out, look for what people are searching on Google—You can use Google’s Keyword Tool, put in your description, and Google will do the rest.  It will give you the results for your phrases and for similar phrases.
  4. Look for keywords that have low/medium competition.  This will help you to rank easier for those words.
  5. Check the phrases to be sure they’re targeting the audience you want to target.
  6. Optimize your blog post—Take the keywords you’ve developed and put them in your blog post.  Make sure to keep the content in readable format.
  7. Work the best keyword or phrase into your title and republish that post!