Websites are living documents. They require care and maintenance to sustain their search engine rankings and to be the optimum showcase for your business.
When you purchase your domain you own it, which can be done using Google Domains or a number of domain registrars like GoDaddy. If you choose a public platform and buy your domain there, be sure you own your domain, instead of the platform owning it.
Two platforms exist today: public website builders and the other is buying software that builds your website.
Public Platforms: WordPress, Wix, GoDaddy along with dozens of “corporate” platforms offering website hosting usually have a website builder included. These platforms also provide hosting for your website.
Website Software Platform: you purchase, or rent, software that allows you to build/code your own website. This website is then hosted by any website hosting service since you simply upload the files to your designated website host and use their name servers in the DNS settings of your domain. Examples of website builder software include RapidWeaver using Foundation and/or Foundry (Mac), and DreamWeaver (Mac) (PC). With RapidWeaver you own your software, but with DreamWeaver you rent the software (subscription) through Adobe.
Websites are living documents. They require care and maintenance to sustain their search engine rankings and to be the optimum showcase for your business.
When you purchase your domain you own it, which can be done using Google Domains or a number of domain registrars like GoDaddy. If you choose a public platform and buy your domain there, be sure you own your domain, instead of the platform owning it.
The page layout of your website is going to give you a decent website or a terrible website. This interpretation adheres to humans and search bots.
A quality resource, that has useful articles without paying a subscription is HubSpot. They provide good comparisons on page layout examples at this page.
These days it goes without saying, but I will mention it here: you must have a responsive design in your content. This means it will the page layout will adjust automatically to different sizes depending on the viewing device being used.
This is an essential piece for the growth and SEO, Search engine Optimization, of your content. But, it’s also hidden from view. The website visitors see your style while the search bots deal with the architecture.
The cleaner you build your architecture the better off your search rankings will become and also the easier it will be to continue adding content on your site.
The two most important elements are navigation file organization.
Navigation: refers to how you display your site menu, and links on web pages. Overall, how intuitive is your website to view?
Organization: refers to file naming conventions and directory structure which applies to website pages and also images and videos.
This is an ongoing effort to understand your competitors in terms of their online presentation, their search engine rankings, and your data about your target audience.
Five essential questions you consider as you build and sustain your website;
Two necessary requirements for website content are that it must be optimized for speed and the content design must be scalable.
One example of making images load quicker is using software that crunches the file size. This is best accomplished with jpg or jpeg files but png file sizes will reduce, just not as much.
There are methods to reduce the size of your videos and PDFs as well.
How To Reduce Fles Sizes
Do a web search on “software to reduce image file size” or “reduce image file size” to find free online tools.
Consider using limited popup windows, studies show they do attract attention to special offers when used in the correct manner.
I mentioned about about optimizing this content for speed.
Speed, the time it takes for a page to load in a browser, is a top priority when search bots are analyzing your content to report back to the mother lode which will impact, good or bad, your organic search rankings.
Two methods depending on your platform.
In a public platform, your website pages get published when you push the button.
When you own your own software you can set up the software to publish when you push a button. This setup process involves establishing FTP, File Transfer Protocol, software to connect you laptop to your website hosting account.
The FTP software is free. I use FileZilla software and it has worked flawlessly for years.
The important characteristic of success in website publishing is keeping the content fresh.
This is easily accomplished using a blog. One segment of owning a business is telling the world about your products/services and a blog is the perfect digital tool.
A newsletter will work if you already have an existing email list, or if you want to purchase email addresses and do email marketing.
It's an unwritten rule, content must stay fresh on the website to appease the search bots and demonstrate your business is alive and well.
Google developed have key elements to consider in your content strategy they call EEAT elements.
Be sure to install analytics when doing your website setup. This will identify who is visiting your site and what they do as they visit pages. Analytics is a comprehensive subject.
At the very basic level the analytic software provides visitor information. But you can also use the analytics to define sales tunnels on your website and establish metrics, using tags, to better understand where or hot to adjust your content so more website visitors are converted.
Anyone who visits your website is a website visitor, but a converted visitor is someone who took action on a webpage: pushed a button, clicked a link, watched a video, and so forth. The goal is converting visitors to connecting with you, such as being a free subscriber or a paid subscriber, and ultimately buying a product/service from you.
Your sales funnel, using your web page content, is the structure in the conversion process.
For analytic software, there is Google Analytics which is free. I use a company out of Germany, a paid subscription since Germany has the strictest privacy laws Matomo Analytics.
Be sure to use a privacy policy on your website to describe what analytics software you are using and the basics about what it’s tracking on website visitors.
With this plan of development, you have a map of success.
If you are building a new website, fine-tuning an existing site, or repairing a website this development plan provides a standardized method to accomplish quality.
Every development plan is customized and includes the marketing intelligence and SEO research that ensures your content is optimized for sustaining organic search results.
Call today to schedule a free website review (727) 370-0011.
Stay Mann
November, 2023