The Top 3 Things You Want to Know More About Around Your Website

We have conversations with literally hundreds of small business owners on a regular basis, both our members and those who have used some of our free resources and often the same topics of discussion come up.

We thought we would share the top three things that people want to know more about around their website.

How do I improve my website SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)?

There are some key things that you can do to improve your SEO:

• Make sure your website is secure by having a valid SSL certificate. If your website has a closed padlock next to the web address in the browser, you are fine, it is secure. If it has an open pad lock or “not secure” in the browser. Then you need to contact your web host to get an SSL certificate.
• Ensuring your website loads quickly is important. Google is very hot on page speed. If your website is slow Google will penalise you for it. You can find out how well your website is performing from a speed point of view by running a test at gtmetrix.com
• Make sure your headings contain the words people will be searching for and make sure they are actually text. Don’t include them as part of a header image that you have created on Canva or similar. Have a lovely image but put the heading as text over the top.

There are other things you can do as well but these are some of the really important ones. If you want to find out more about this, we did a Facebook Live on this a couple of weeks ago which you can watch here.

How do I use Google Analytics effectively?

We love using figures to help us grow our business and Google Analytics is one of the places we get our figures from. These are some of the key pieces of data you can use from Google Analytics.

• Look at where your traffic is coming from. This will help you to see where it’s worth focusing your time promoting what you do. We can see that the social media platform that works for us best is Facebook and so we spend a lot of our time on there compared to other social platforms. It also means we only pay for ads on Facebook and not Instagram because we know it’s less likely that the right people will see our ads on there.
• Look at the content that gets most visits. We write blog posts every week and it’s really useful for us to see which are the posts that have been read most. This helps to guide us as to which titles get people clicking and which subjects people are most interested in so we can write more posts like these.
• Look at the search terms people are using that get them to your website. If the search terms make sense then that’s great, you know your headings are copy are doing a good job getting people to you. If people are coming to your website from searching terms that aren’t quite right for what you do then perhaps your copy needs tweaking.

How can I get more people to actually take action on my website?

This is a big one for a lot of people. They put a website together, they put it live and then they are disappointed that they aren’t getting any leads. Well, here are a some things that might help.

• Make sure your homepage copy is focused on your ideal client. The copy on your homepage should basically say this – I understand why you are here, I have a solution for your problem, once you have used my solution you will feel like this and here is proof from people who have used it.
• Make it easy for your website visitor to take action. You should have very clear call to action buttons on your website so that people know where to click to buy or book, whatever it is you want them to do. You should also have a secondary call to action such as offering them a free resource or an option to sign up to your blog. Something that means they stay in touch as a warm lead if they aren’t quite ready to buy from you.
• Make your website easy to find things on. Everything should be within three clicks on your website and page names should be clear so it’s obvious where to find things. If you create a rabbit warren of pages or give things names that you think are clever or funny but aren’t very obvious then people will give up.
• Ensure your website looks good. If your website looks dull, uninspiring or unprofessional then people will leave. They may not even read your copy so, make sure it reflects your business with a great design.

For more input on planning or improving a website so that it actually generates leads, you can download our Website Blueprint now for free or take a look at our mini course that will help you tweak an existing website.

We would love to support you further

We know that this just scratches the surface of these topics and there are so many other things to consider to ensure your website and online presence is actually doing an effective job in helping you grow your business.

That is why we are currently developing the idea of a Ready Steady Websites® Mentoring Membership. This membership will be to support anyone, whether they have created their website with Ready Steady Websites® or not, so that they start to see the benefit their website can have on their business by increasing leads, sales and streamlining some of their processes.

You can find out more and register you interest in the Mentoring Membership here. It’s something we have been asked for by many people and something we think virtually every business owner will benefit from.