Many businesses have been working on redesigning their websites in order to keep up with search engine requirements that dictate what websites are considered most valuable to rate highly in their search pages. Since search engines are always changing how they evaluate your website, making adjustments by redesigning your site to better appeal to them is an activity that will increase your popularity with them.
Also, with social media becoming more important to stay engaged with, adding social elements is another way businesses are redesigning their websites. If you think it’s time to redesign your own business website, include social media tools. Giving visitors the opportunity to quickly join your social media sites, and also “Like”, “+1”, or otherwise share your content with their friends and followers.
Before you start to redesign your website, run thorough analytics to see what is currently working and what might not be working well. Review information such as number of unique visitors, how long they stay at your website and how many pages they visit while they are there. You will also want to know how many visitors come back to your site, number of leads generated and conversion rates from your online sales efforts. Whatever is weakest in these areas should be improved. For example, if people are quickly leaving your landing page, making sure you have a call to action, and giving them great reasons to click through to additional pages will decrease your bounce rate.
Next, run a review of your search engine optimization practices. Gone are the days of relying solely on backlinks for search engine success. You want relevant and valuable content that includes great keywords and keyword phrases, but not too much. Over optimization is frowned on by the search engines. A good 3 to 4% of your content should be keywords and they should be worked in for high quality readability. Content includes information about products and services, your “About Us” page, blog articles, white papers, and descriptions or products and services.
It can be helpful to ask your current customers what they would like to see added or changed about your website. You might find out that many of your customers have excellent ideas and will become more engaged with your site when they see that you value their opinions. When you keep your site designed with the latest best practices in SEO and social media elements, and include your current customer’s opinions, when applicable, you will notice that it performs much better for you.
