Grow Your Business Faster with an SEO-Powered Website
Many business owners create websites as the online billboard for their business, advertising their services and products to clients who pass by. The problem is that, frequently, the site isn’t designed so search engines like Google will recommend it to people who need your services or products. That’s like having a billboard on a desolate road no one drives on. Like one of those scary roads in a horror film. And honestly, what is more scary than wasted money and no clients?
That’s why search engine optimization is so important. SEO is the process of designing a site that appeals to Google and provides an ideal user experience. SEO works in combination with other key principles that make your website effective in attracting ideal potential clients, providing them with valuable information, and encouraging them to reach out directly to you.
An effective website usually boils down to three elements that make it ideal for Google to recommend and for users to interact with, SEO, web design, and accessibility.
Is Your Website SEO Ready?
No matter what search engine you want to appear on (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc.), the goal of good SEO is to create content that the search engine considers valuable, authoritative, and relevant. Here’s a quick breakdown.
Valuable SEO Content for Your Website
‘Valuable’ is a tricky term to define because websites for different businesses offer different values. However, the central proposition of value is that you are providing something to the visitor that they need or appreciate.
For businesses, that usually means users want information about the product or service, or facts and context about the industry that would be of interest to ideal potential clients. It’s also important to know what things you should avoid because they are considered not valuable, such as excessive splashy graphics and images that don’t help clients or add to the experience in any significant way. This is especially true when all those bells and whistles take the place of the information a visitor is seeking.
Authoritative SEO Content for Your Website
‘Authoritative’ means that the content presents the information in a way that would be considered reliable and well-trusted. In essence, authoritative indicates that search engines find you credible as an expert.
Well-sourced information is one way to guarantee that Google trusts your site. For example, when discussing how Google ranks content based on its helpfulness, it’s a good idea to link back to Google’s own thoughts on the matter.
Relevant SEO Content for Your Website
Finally, ‘relevant’ is an important factor. Google and other search engines don’t recommend websites to users when they don’t seem likely to address their needs. When a user asks where to order a pizza, Google won’t send them to the Wikipedia entry on the history of pizza because that won’t get them what they want. That means, if you want your website recommended to your ideal types of clients, the content of your website needs to be clearly and directly relevant to the needs of those potential clients.
A business that can effectively combine valuable, authoritative, and relevant content on their website will always rank higher and perform better than a beautifully designed visual site that is useless when it comes to information the user (and Google) is seeking.
Is Your Website Attractive, Clear, and Easily Navigated?
Once you’ve gotten over the first hurdle of getting search engines to recommend you to users, the next goal is to make sure your website actually appeals to the users visiting it. If you build a website that Google recommends, but the experience isn’t good for the user, then many people visit you, but no one hires you. You haven’t created a business, you created a museum.
Better Performance with an Attractive Website
The first aspect of user appeal is an attractive website. That can mean different things depending on your business, but usually it involves eye-catching and pleasing visuals, clear graphics and images, and readable text. If you have a specific hook or concept that sets you apart, that’s great, too. Just make sure that it still makes for a compelling and visually pleasing experience.
Better Performance with a Clear Website
You have got to be clear! This refers most often to the written content. Are the pages clear in their topics and subject matter? Is the content easy to read and understand? Is there too much industry jargon, sales and marketing language, or generic copy that is easy to ignore or skim over? The primary role of good content is to get search engines to recommend your website, but just as importantly, the content needs to engage the real humans who are reading it, too.
One aspect of this involves AI-written content and how it mucks up your site. Clunky AI content doesn’t appeal to actual potential clients because it is generic and has all the tell-tale signs that a robot created it.
Better Performance with an Easily Navigable Website
The final aspect of user experience is making the site easily navigable. The most compelling content in the world doesn’t help the user if they can’t figure out how to use or interact with it. Does your site have a simple menu bar with clear names for where the links take you? Is there somewhere on each page that they can click to contact you? Does the page load quickly so that they aren’t waiting for certain elements to load on their phone or computer? The user’s journey should be as clear, direct, and as straightforward as possible.
Sites that combine these three elements stand a much better chance of appealing to the users that search engines send your way.
How Accessible Are You on Your Website?
‘Accessibility’ has more than one meaning when it comes to websites. The most common thing people think of is designing your website so it can be used by people with various disabilities. That is obviously of significant importance, but it is an element that should be addressed in the SEO and design steps mentioned above, as many of those accommodations are technical and should be handled by web and design experts.
However, there is another type of accessibility that is vital on your website: your level of accessibility to the user. Many websites have a contact page where they put the physical address and phone number of their business, along with a window for typing a message. Sure, this is cool, and every website should have it, but that’s the bare minimum, and an effective website should have considerably more.
Some examples: your phone number should be a link so that a smartphone user can immediately call you. There should be at least one main business email address available as a clickable link. The top border of every page should have a phone number, etc., etc.
Many businesses also benefit from having other types of outreach available, such as chatbots or the ability to text your business rather than call. Many potential clients now prefer to communicate through text rather than voice communication, so you don’t want to miss out on those clients by not having a method for them to connect with you. The more ways that a potential client can reach you, the more likely they will try.
How Do You Build a Website That Brings in Traffic and Clients?
It can be challenging for business owners to know who to trust with their most valued marketing avenues, from their SEO-designed website to their online ads to their social media and branding presence. That caution is understandable, but it also leads business owners to make risk-averse decisions that end up hurting them in the long term.
Out of uncertainty, you might choose based on questionable factors like “Who promises the most, the fastest?” The wrong questions don’t get you the right team for the job, because nothing of quality has ever been built by doing things without innovation.
You need a team that has created websites for hundreds of businesses across various industries, so their variety and depth of experience benefit your business. You need a team of technicians and artisans who have honed their skills and talents over years, not opportunists who sub their work out to AI.
We Are Your Neon, LLC, has years of combined digital marketing experience and more than 30+ years of creative writing and design experience across a dozen industries. Our team doesn’t do anything halfway or halfassed. We work like our future depends on it because we know your future does. And we take that seriously. When you need us, reach out to us through the form below.