7 Reasons Why You Need a Website and Keep it Maintained
Does your website attract lots of visitors? Perhaps you don’t know how many visitors it attracts. In which case you should be using a tool like Google Analytics to find out. After all, why have a website if it doesn’t give you business?
If you have a business, particularly if it’s not on the High Street, many potential clients may not know you exist. A website will give you an online presence 24/7 and statistics say that around 90% of potential clients looking for products or services search online. Need I say more!
- Is Facebook enough?
Recently I spoke to a shop owner who hasn’t been trading in Uckfield for long and asked if he had a website. His reply was ‘no, we don’t need one, we’re on Facebook’!
While Facebook can be a good way to promote a business, it shouldn’t be used as a substitute. It tends to work best if you have a business that can be promoted visually ie: you sell a product.
Experience tells us that if you don’t have a website, whatever your business or organisation, you will be missing out big time.
- You’ve had a website for Years?
It’s easy to be dismissive and think that the website that you have had ‘forever’ will still work. Unfortunately chances are that it won’t, even if it’s only a year old. If it has barely been updated since the start it may not be giving you the business you had hoped for if any at all.
- What About Local?
Keeping business local is very important for many of us and research by Google into local search behaviour reveals that
‘business location is of prime importance’ when searching for products and services
If your business operates locally and nationally, you will need to create pages for each area that you cover, ensuring that you don’t duplicate your content of course!
- Why Responsive?
Having a responsive website means it works well, is user-friendly and potential clients can contact you easily on mobile devices too. If this isn’t the case your website will drop quite low down on Google search results, because Google frowns upon unresponsive websites. Even if potential clients do find your website when searching on a mobile device, if it is not responsive they will find it hard to access the information they need to contact you. Another client lost !
Statistics tell us that the majority of searches are done on mobile devices, so if your website isn’t responsive you will be missing out on a lot of potential clients.
- How often do you update?
Don’ forget to add new products, services and a blog on a regular basis ie – at least once a week. If your website remains unchanged over several months or longer, Google will penalise you again by dropping it in search engine results, making your website very hard to find. The more you add new content and submit to Google, the more likely you will appear higher in search results.
- Do you Blog?
New content, as we have already said, helps to keep you high in search results, particularly if it’s related to current news or info that’s ‘trending’ on social media. Blogging also gives you the chance to promote what you do as an expert in your field on as many channels as you can. Don’t make them too ‘salesy’ though or you will put readers off. You can also use your blog to link back to specific pages of your website.
Your blog is also an opportunity to encourage guest blogging or you can create the article yourself by interviewing the person, then link back to them too.
- Do you know what your clients want?
Lastly, finding out what your clients are looking for will help you to consider offering services or products that you can offer but may not have thought of. This could give you the opportunity to create a new page devoted to that service or product. However, before doing so it is advisable to do keyword research to find the search volume, which will tell you if it is worth offering it or not, as even if a few clients have enquired it might not be worth your while spending time on it.
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Article written by Sue Edwards Marketing
If you would like to enquire about web design, copywriting or SEO call us or visit www.dowlingcreative.co.uk
