As we continue to work in a climate where the world is at home and on their devices now more than ever, you need to prioritize one of your main vehicles for digital brand communication and business lead capture: your website. There is a lot to consider, from content development and layout design to functionality, user experience and SEO. You may be wondering, where do I begin? What can I be doing now in the short term to make quick positive impact, and what is going to require a longer-term strategy? Below are some quick tips for how to best prioritize your website optimization checklist.
Short-Term Priorities:
Optimize your contact form.
Determine who from your team is receiving notifications for contact form submissions through your website and make sure your form fields are set up properly for the information you need to capture.
Update key content areas outlining your services and contact information.
Evaluate the main pages of your website and make sure they are up to date. Note any changes in how you are delivering your services during this time and communicate them with a custom message that visually stands out and can also be revised and removed easily. Additionally, make sure your contact information is updated with how your audience can best reach you right now.
Optimize your website for SEO.
Optimizing your website for SEO is no small task. It requires a strategic action plan that is implemented over time. However, there are a few tasks you can identify that will help give you a quick boost now while you build out a long-term SEO strategy, including revising broken links and updating title tags for your main pages.
Long-Term Priorities:
Evaluate your technological integrations to optimize lead flow.
Outline the path to conversion for inbound lead capture and how the information is stored and determine opportunities for optimizing the conversion process through potential CRM implementations
Optimize your website content for SEO.
Conduct a full evaluation and build out your longer-term SEO strategic plan, including but not limited to reviewing inbound link sources, optimizing keywords and creating new content pages.
Update and redesign mobile layouts to optimize the user experience.
Evaluate your website on mobile and other devices and outline areas for improvement including visual content layouts and ease of navigation. Use your analytics data and heat mapping to draw insights on user behavior to help inform decision making.
Update your page layouts – are they responsive?
Determine if your website layouts are responsive to any device format and size including evaluating how your page structure and graphics respond to different sizing.
Build an integrated marketing strategy.
Activate Google Ads campaigns and other paid marketing channels specific to your audience targets that will increase traffic to your website.
Leverage data to drive your website optimization checklist.
This means not just reviewing Google Analytics, but evaluating how your website integrates into your overall marketing strategy alongside other advertising channels you may have active.
Don’t know where to start? Feel free to get in touch with our Creative & Digital Strategy team to talk to us about your business challenges. Email our team at creative@thebelfortgroup.com.