Here are our five top tips for small businesses to improve their website to celebrate Small Business Saturday.
Keep blogging, keep evolving content
Creating new articles and content on your website is vital for search engines to rank you effectively. Without good new content your website will stagnate and you’ll find new business harder to reach. Don’t leave your main page content stagnant either. It’s now recommended to refresh the content at least every 3 months to keep ranking well.
If you sell online, then tell online
You may have a great ecommerce website but if you don’t advertise your products via free channels like Google Shopping then you can be sure your competitors will. If you want to pay to advertise online then Google AdWords, Bing Ads, Facebook Advertising and Twitter Ads are your first points of call.
Complement online adverts with traditional ones
Google keeps on reminding us business owners that you shouldn’t forget the power of offline advertising to complement your online ads. Not only does it build your brand recognition, you’ll also find that you’ll reach a bigger variety of audience and potential customer. Some people just respond to print better than online too.
Get a responsive website
If you haven’t already gone responsive in your web design (meaning your site responds to the size of mobile, tablet and desktop screens automatically) then you’re already losing ranking in organic searches. Google now even tells you when a website is ‘mobile friendly’ in search results, so don’t delay and get your site redesigned now.
Get a professional email account
When I speak to startup businesses I can’t believe that they’re willing to spend money and invest time in creating a great website, only to then advertise their email with a gmail.com or hotmail.com account. In this day and age it reflects badly on your professionalism as a business and for a relatively small fee you can use an email associated with your domain (e.g. [email protected]). The most popular cloud based email services are inexpensive with Google Apps for Work currently just £3.30 a month and Office 365 for Business from £3.80 a month.
If you need some small business website help, or want assistance setting up one of our top tips above, please get in touch with us and we’d be happy to help. We’re an experienced, friendly SME web design company based in Bath and understand the importance a website has to your business.
