It doesn’t matter if you’re just getting your business’ feet wet in the online world, or whether you have been online for years.
There are still some simple mistakes that are made over and over again which could be fatal for your business in this crowded digital space.
To avoid the internet showing your business the ‘Game Over’ screen, there are some simple, but essential things that your website absolutely must do keep your visitors.
Here are two things your website must do and the tech that you can use to make implementing this on your website a breeze:
- Leave your visitor with no doubt about what you do
Have you ever been on a website, read a pretty decent piece of content and wanted to find out more, but been left pulling your hair out because the website doesn’t make it obvious where to find more information?
What usually happens after this annoying experience is that you immediately hit the back button on your browser, never to be seen again. That website has just lost you as a potential customer forever. Don’t be like this business.
You’re going to be different to this business. You’re going to design your website and organise your navigation menu/header area in a way that leaves your reader with zero doubts about what you do.
These are some of the things, if not all the things, you should include links to in your header area or navigation bar:
- About page
- Social media links
- Contact page or information
- Link back to the homepage (at the very least, absolutely make your logo link to your homepage)
- Your most important links (what you do, services you offer, pages you most want readers to see etc)
Including all of this information will give your reader no reason for frustration should they want to know more about you and your website.
WordPress plugins that can help you achieve all of this:
- A proper technical structure that allows your website to be found by Google and your visitors
If every page on your website isn’t accessible to the reader in three clicks, then they are likely to say bye-bye to your site.
We live in an impatient society. How long do you think your potential customer will last on your website if you keep making them click four, five or even six steps deep into your website?
I can almost guarantee you that they won’t even bother. If you aren’t making your information easily accessible for them, why should they reward you with their time or business?
A simple way to organise your site is in the following way:
Homepage > Category page > Article
That’s two clicks to access every page on your website. This structure also works:
Homepage > Category > Sub-category > Article/product
If you’re creating sub-sub-categories, it might be time to think about making it a separate sub-category.
Your link-building SEO strategy, beyond your foundational links (like your social profiles, business directory listings), should be in an opposing manner to this structure.
What does this mean?
Well, it’s not often that we find ourselves linking to the homepage or category page of a website. More naturally, we read an article, enjoy it, and link to the article.
This is how Google sees it too and this has been coined the ‘reverse silo’. Gaining links which provide authority to your whole site (if you’ve initially structured it in the way I mention above.)
Your article, which will now have authority transferred to it from the link you gained, will pass that juice to the category page it is under, and that in turn will pass to the homepage.
If you’re confused, the flow of the link juice/authority will look something like this:
Original link > Article > Category > Homepage
The WordPress and web technology that can help
These plugins are available with free and pro versions. Some will also be available on other website CMS’ like Joomla as well so be sure to check.
Yoast SEO: contains features that allow you to easily create an optimal internal linking structure for your website. Features contain things like an internal linking tool, cornerstone content analyser and internal link counter. These features all help you achieve the proper ‘reverse silo’ structure for more website via Google.
Mega-menu: a cool plugin that allows you to put more content formats into your navigation bar. Typically, a navigation bar allows only text. Mega-menu allows images, videos, icons and stylish drop-down menus. Be careful of going overboard. Only present the essential information in an interactive way that helps your visitors. Don’t add so many things that will distract them and also hurt your site performance.
Ultimate Landing Page: another awesome plugin that can help you create a welcome gate on your homepage. This is basically a splash page that can explain to your visitor exactly what your website is about, provide them with a relevant offer or get them to sign up to your email list. Even the White House used to use a welcome gate for first time visitors. If that’s not a positive review for a welcome gate, then I don’t know what is. As always, track your users behaviour in Google Analytics to see how they are reacting to your homepage. If they are getting annoyed and leaving, it will be worth tweaking your settings or removing the landing page altogether.
