3 BIG Ways to Keep Your Website Fresh

We all know that big companies have big marketing budgets. As such, their websites are usually hugely successful. Quite simply, they use a few very basic strategies to attract and engage visitors.

Both for the purposes of improving search engine optimization (SEO) and to keep your website visitors engaged, your website must be kept fresh and relevant.

When you first worked to build your website, one of your key reasons for doing it was probably to draw in more customers and business. At the same time, you were building a website in a vacuum: How could you really know what would and wouldn’t work until the site launched?

Now that you have a few months of active results to study, it’s time to re-evaluate:

strengths and weaknesses in your site’s organization and structure,
how it could be improved from a content perspective, and
what online technologies, new media, and marketing strategies you might want to implement at this stage in the game.

It’s up to you as the business owner to actively participate in the site’s success.

1. Boost Your Content

Even as a web professional, I still navigate through the 816 website every few weeks and evaluate it. In fact, just yesterday, I reconfigured our homepage to modernize it and present the business in a fresh way.

Take about an hour every month to review your website. Look at the copy and pictures. Consider the navigation and feedback you’ve gotten (or not gotten!) from your customers. What could be done more effectively? Might you include a promotion to draw in new clients and build your database? Study it page by page and determine if there is a way you could build on what you have. Always be thinking about how it presents information to your visitor.

For product-driven websites, add a way for customers to review and comment on your products. Commonly used on sites like Amazon.com and Crutchfield, reviews add interactivity and credibility to your site and the products you offer.

Adding a blog to a website helps you to draw in new connections. Maintaining a blog keeps you actively involved with your audience and the marketing efforts of your business. Not much of a writer? Use a service like BloggingPro to hire a freelance writer to post articles for you.

2. Add More Media

Present your information in a way that is approachable for all different people. Some visitors will want to read, some will want to watch video, still others will seek out pictures to gain an understanding of your products and services. Engage your audience by adding video, photo galleries, audio, any type of rich media that could be applied to your business.

Does your business get lots of press, or are you looking for more? An online press room gives journalists what they would need to write a story. The Weather Channel has an amazing example. An online press room would include:

Recent news clips about your business or its staff so that reporters can get a sense for what types of articles you’ve appeared in
Biographical information, tailored for the media
Explanation of your specific area of expertise and knowledge in a succinct fashion (i.e, At a glance, could they tell what stories to call upon you for without having to read it in paragraph form?)
Awards and recognition
Contact info
Downloadable photos and graphics, including your logo and CEO’s headshot
Audio & video clips, with corresponding transcripts for reporters who might just want to troll through the copy for quotes to pull

3. Expand Your Reach

Investigate inexpensive pay-per-click ad campaigns. We recommend Facebook ads over Google Adwords, although both can be very effective. Facebook ads offer incredible targeting, by interests, location, age group, marital status, gender, the list goes on. We’ve found them to be exceedingly useful to help build a business’s brand and its exposure. Plus, you can limit your budget on a per-click, daily, and overall basis, meaning you never spend more than YOU want to.

Create a social media presence to add more variety to your audience. When used effectively and often, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media sites give you lots of different ways to reach new customers.

Build your database of contacts and customers by offering an email newsletter. Promote special offers, company news, new products or services, and tips to broaden your appeal and draw in more business. Use a free service like MailChimp or paying services like Constant Contact or AWeber to organize your contacts and get your message out there in a widely accepted way. Since our advertising budget is small, we use MailChimp; it’s an amazing service.

Have a question, comment, or need further information about any of these ideas? Leave a comment below so everyone can learn more!