A guide to improving sales through your website
If you’ve got a website for your business and you’re looking to increase profits, you have to find ways to entice visitors–and visitors who want to buy! The answer, in part, is Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO. Google reigns supreme, and to find favour with the empire is to increase the success of your business. So just how do you get the attention of such a busy cyber-monarch? And more importantly, how can you turn high rankings into high rankings that make money?
Ranking for the RIGHT keywords
Sadly, it’s not as easy as simply selecting an assortment of keywords that define your product. There is a lot of competition in the market and understanding consumer search patterns, gaps in the market and which keywords are going to convert to profits is essential to harnessing the tools of SEO. Spend time broadening your keywords, and instead of selecting the same old battered words as every other similar offering, try to find some lesser-used words or phrases that still relate to your offering.
A well-designed website
Web Design is a fundamental consideration. Apply the same organisational logic to your website as you would to a physical store. Your website needs to be easy to navigate, intuitive, regularly updated and full of relevant, quality content. Things links back to your site from other sites are a surefire way to rise in the SEO rankings, and providing an option to link to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter is essential.
Lead Generation vs eCommerce
In most cases, SEO runs the most smoothly for your business when applied with the goal of lead generation; that is, generating consumer interest and communication that allows you to grasp the baton and run it home with your internal sales strategy. This might be an avenue you’d like to explore further, rather than simply trying to get people to buy from the website. If it end up making money for you, it’s worth the extra effort!
Email Marketing
Consumer engagement is the holy grail of internet marketing, and the best way to promote this is to keep up targeted communication in the form of email marketing Building and maintaining a strong database of consumers in your demographic and keeping up your end of the conversation with interesting email content is vital to your relationship and reputation as a brand. Know your consumer, and spend the time required to court them.
Have a good offer
You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. In other words, all the Search Engine Optimisation in the world won’t convince people to jump on your offer if it isn’t a good one. Apply basic business sense to this one—search engine optimisation doesn’t make money out of thin air, it helps you direct attention to the raw goods.
