How to Improve Your Business’s Website in 2018

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laptopA website can serve many different purposes for your business, depending on the industry in which your company operates and the primary objective of the site itself. Many companies gain revenue via eCommerce sites, whereas others rely on their websites to maintain their online presences and market themselves efficiently.

No matter what purpose your website serves, there is always room for improvement. In this article, we’ll highlight a few simple, yet effective ways to make your company website more efficient and productive in 2018.

Content Is Crucial

High-quality online content is an essential aspect of a great website. The writing on the various pages of your site is in many ways just as important as the products or services you offer. Without content that engages your audience and gives people a reason to spend time on your site, you’ll struggle to capture interest, convert customers, and make money.

Blog posts are one form of content that has proven to be especially useful for connecting with an audience and improving your site’s search engine optimization (more on this later). They allow you to speak directly to your customers, provide insight into your industry/products, and establish your brand further. It is likely that your competitors will have blogs of their own. If your company doesn’t have a blog, you probably will not reach the level of brand recognition your competitors will.

Social Media Is Your Best Friend

Billions of people use social media sites every day. Billions! That means these channels give you access to an enormous audience of people from all over the world — and you don’t even need a marketing budget or lavish campaign. To maintain high levels of site traffic and gain more conversions, you should regularly update your social media followers. Post statuses on Facebook, send out interesting tweets, and share images on Instagram. Wherever your audience hangs out online, you should be there, too.

Better Web Hosting Services = Better Site Performance

When you think about improving your website, your mind may first jump to content and design. However, it is equally vital to consider the service you use to host your website. Choosing the right web hosting service grants you the necessary bandwidth and web space to host and maintain a successful website. If you don’t have the right hosting service, the aesthetic features of your site — not to mention your actual products and services — may end up inaccessible to portions of your audience. It should go without saying that a quality hosting service is crucial for success.

New website owners often choose the cheapest website hosting options available when creating their sites. From a budgetary standpoint, this choice makes sense. However, as their website needs change and traffic increases, these website owners often run into trouble.

computerSite performance is one area in which you can expect to face issues if you opt for lower-quality web hosting services. With cheaper hosting options, your website will take longer to load and may suffer from frequent periods of unexpected downtime. Both of these problems lead to people spending less time on your site, which in turn decreases the likelihood of site visitors making purchases.

Better website hosting will massively improve the overall performance and security of your site, both of which are essential to your business success.

Make Your Website User-Friendly

A site that loads quickly is practically useless if the user experience is frustrating. Make sure your site is as easy to navigate as possible. If it is not, your customers will have a hard time finding the information they need. As a result, they may decide to shop with your competitors instead.

To make your website user-friendly, it is vital that your menus and other navigational tools are simple and working correctly. You also need to check that all links are working, as this will have an impact on your site’s search engine optimization levels. A contact page is also a key part of making the experience as effortless as possible for customers, as this gives them all the information they need to get in touch with you.

Embrace SEO

You have likely come across the term “SEO” before. This stands for “search engine optimization,” which is of crucial importance to every business owner, blogger, and anyone else with a website.

In general, SEO refers to a range of marketing techniques that can be used to make your business’s site rank higher on search engine results pages. In turn, this makes it easier to reach a broader audience and make more money.

SEO can seem somewhat complicated at first, but there are two techniques you can adopt immediately to improve your website right away:

  1. Keywords: These are words and phrases related to your business or industry that should be sprinkled throughout your website’s copy and blog posts. Increasing your keyword ranking will help your site appear in more searches related to your industry.
  2. Backlinks: Inserting links to high-authority websites into your content  shows search engines that your site is a quality source of information. This improves the authority of your own website, which in turn improves your rankings in search engine results.

The simple website improvements outlined above don’t require a ton of time, effort, or technical know-how, but they can have powerful results for your site. Using the advice in this article, you will be well on your way to owning an efficient, engaging, high-performance, SEO-friendly website. There’s no doubt your business will benefit significantly from these changes in 2018.

Chris Danks is the owner and director of Cyber Host Pro.

By Chris Danks