Everyone knows that having an online presence can be an important element for the success of any small business today. Additionally, building a compelling website so that you can present the best side possible of your business to the outside world, is a prerequisite to help your business grow online. However, the challenge after building the website, is getting people to visit your website and engage with it.
So what are the biggest hurdles to driving high traffic visitation to your website? 91 percent of marketing professionals say that managing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is difficult, while it’s also no secret that, while e-mail marketing channels are highly effective when it comes to achieving a return on your investment, it is getting increasingly difficult to gain traction with consumers using this method. In fact, unique-click through rates via e-mail have dropped every year since 2010 and in 2015 reached a low of just 2%.
To help you master both disciplines, GoDaddy has created some helpful advice on how to stay relevant with both SEO and e-mail marketing.
Get noticed through search
The selection of your keywords is extremely important, and as a business owner, you will want to capture the interest of search engines by assigning keywords (or “optimizing” them) to each page of your website. Here are a few tips for selecting the right keywords:
- Stay simple and specific. The more you hone your keywords, the less competition you will have and the higher you may be able to rank. Your keywords represent the essence of what you do, where you do it, and what you offer. A private tutor group who specialize in after school classes might use specific words like “afterschool tutor group in Hong Kong,” “afterschool tutors” or “Hong Kong tutors”, for example.
- Be strategic. Put your keywords in page names, image names, page content, headers, and metadata. Without sounding like you’re trying, use each keyword (as well as some variations) at least two or three times per page. Use a few toward the top of the page so search engines pick up on them quicker.
- Be natural. Don’t overuse or overstuff your keywords; it will make your content harder to read for people and search engines alike. Evaluate context in your content, because your search engine will be doing the same thing when it looks at your page. Use your keywords where they fit naturally; don’t over-think their placement.
Creating e-mail content that stands out
We receive many e-mails every day from companies trying to sell their products and services to us and the majority of them either get put in the recycle bin or ignored. It is therefore important that you create e-mail content that helps you stands out from the crowd. Here are a few tips:
- The tone and style of your e-mails is important. Create a stunning and cohesive brand experience that provides a wide range of diverse content (such as newsletters, impromptu notifications and more) to your customers and give enhanced readability to them by offering interesting pieces of information that will keep them engaged when they read the e-mail.
- Always provide an engaging subject line on your e-mails that will catch the eye of your target audience. With the deluge of e-mails that we all receive daily, if the subject line cannot grab the eye of a potential customer quickly then it will be passed over in favor of other e-mails and never opened.
- Constantly monitor and evaluate the success of your e-mail marketing campaigns. Use monitoring tools to track your return on investment (ROI), tweak your e-mail marketing methods based on what you have learnt, and then repeat the process so you learn and improve each time.
Choosing the right website builder
While many existing website builders try to address issues surrounding SEO and e-mail marketing, GoDaddy’s new Website Builder is already starting out ahead of the game. With its 9-step SEO optimization process, customized e-mail marketing tools that create beautiful and engaging e-mail content templates, as well as in depth campaign monitoring tools, and a Social integration tool which allows you to quickly integrate your business onto social channels; GoDaddy’s Website Builder is the perfect solution for creating a business website and quickly attracting traffic to it.
Ultimately having a website optimized for SEO and a mastery of e-mail marketing in your arsenal, can help drive traffic to your website and reap benefits for your business. However, this is only one part of the jigsaw puzzle of getting your business online easily, affordably and fast. In the next blog we will talk more on how you can use mobile-first website optimization and social integration to further optimize your business website for success.