Today, a business, company, or brand without a website is outdated and risks being left behind while competitors continue to advance. With 3.2 billion people accessing the Internet daily (that's approximately 51% of the world population), not having a website to reach these potential customers is a missed opportunity.
If you don't yet have a website and want to be among the companies that do, contact us, and we’ll help you get started! In the meantime, let's dive in.
The Importance of Having a Website
Today, four out of five people use the internet to find the information they need. This means that most people use search engines like Google to find businesses offering the services they’re looking for. Having a website allows you to compete with the millions of other global companies, aiming to appear in search results for customers seeking your services.
In 2016 alone, companies invested approximately $65 billion in SEO to ensure they appeared as top choices when potential clients searched for their services. However, having a website and making it appear in Google’s search results are two entirely different things. For the latter to happen, you need to make your website a key part of your marketing strategy.
SEO and Digital Marketing
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the process of optimizing web content to make it more appealing to search engines like Google. In essence, SEO refers to actions taken to improve a website’s ranking in search engine results, enabling it to reach a larger audience.
We have a previous article discussing how SEO helps users find the companies they’re searching for. We recommend reading that blog before continuing.
While SEO might sound straightforward, it’s more complex than it seems. Adapting your website to align with Google’s algorithm requires consistent effort and the right tools. Without these, you won’t see any real results. Essentially, it’s about transforming your website so search engines recognize it, boosting its ranking, generating more traffic, increasing site visits, improving domain authority, and ultimately making it a top choice in search results.
Now, you may be asking: How does this fit into my marketing strategy? It’s simple—by improving your website and optimizing it for SEO, you attract more traffic, which translates into potential customers. As your ranking increases, so does your exposure to more potential clients.
Transforming Your Website into a Digital Marketing Tool in 4 Steps
1. Leverage Your CMS to Its Fullest
Whether your website is built on WordPress, Drupal, or another CMS (like Joomla), these platforms offer hundreds of modules and features to enhance your SEO strategy. From adding meta tags to defining keywords for each blog post, these features enable you to incorporate your CMS as part of your broader strategy to rank higher in search engines like Google.
2. Define an SEO Strategy
We’ve touched on this before, but it’s worth repeating. If you want to make your website one of the best marketing tools available, you need to establish a solid SEO strategy. This can be broken down into several sub-steps, which include but are not limited to:
- Evaluate the current state of your website (ranking, daily visits, traffic, etc.) and determine which sections need immediate improvement.
- Set measurable goals for both the ranking position you want to achieve and the desired traffic volume, and establish a timeline for reaching these objectives.
- Maintain a consistent flow of content from the start, tailored to both your website and the audience you want to attract.
3. Invest in Essential SEO Tools
There are two must-have SEO tools for anyone aiming to make their website a key component of their marketing strategy: SEMrush and Google Analytics. These tools help you assess your website's current status, define keywords, organize and monitor campaigns, and even track your competitors. They allow you to see which keywords your competitors are ranking for and adapt your plan to match or surpass them.
More importantly, these tools enable you to monitor traffic, visitor numbers, keyword performance, and even audit your site to address problematic pages.
4. Consistently Create Valuable Content
A critical aspect of managing a website as a continuous digital marketing tool is creating valuable content regularly. This doesn’t mean sacrificing quality for quantity, but rather finding the right balance of producing valuable content that aligns with what your audience is actively searching for.
Of course, this will depend on the research you’ve conducted and the strategy you’ve devised. However, the quality of your content and how you present it will play an essential role in your marketing efforts.
