5 ways to increase engagement on your website

You’ve written your website pages, created and posted all that content, now you’re ready to sit back and watch the visitors flock to your digital door.

Unfortunately, it’s not always as simple as that...

Visitor number and engagement are some of the most common concerns for businesses with an online presence.

How do you not only become more popular but increase engagement with your site as well? Here are 5 strategies that you can implement right now:

1. Have a marketing plan

It might seem like a no-brainer but putting in place the right marketing strategy for your business is critical.

According to software firm OutboundEngine, however, half of businesses don’t have one.

It's surprising how many businesses have a piecemeal approach, dabbling on social media here, trying out some PPC advertising there or writing a few blogs now and again.

If you want more people to visit your site and become customers, you need to:

• Understand your target audience.
• Have a range of ways to reach out and lead them to your website.
• Bring all the different strands of your marketing together to create a coherent strategy.
• Measure results and adjust your approach to further improve engagement.

The big challenge small and medium-sized businesses have is making the most of their marketing budget. It’s difficult, I know, but that still doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a plan in place.

2. Invest in SEO

It sounds simple, make your website easier to find on search engines such as Google. But, it’s more nuanced than that.

SEO is not just about including the appropriate keywords in your service pages and on your blog.

When Google decides your page ranking it takes several things into account. These include:

• How relevant your content is. Does it answer the searcher’s query?
• How quickly your pages download. Slow downloads turn people off.
• Whether you have a mobile-friendly website or not. Most of us view content on a smartphone nowadays.
• How many reputable sites link to your web pages. It means you have authority.

It pays to invest time and effort in learning how SEO works and understanding what it can do to improve the visibility of your website. Check out this simple guide to get you started.

3. Build meaningful content

Content is everything that you put on your website, including the written stuff, videos, images and the odd infographic.

Each piece of content you produce needs to have a reason to exist. I can’t say it often enough - look at it from your customer’s point of view.

I often find that businesses add content for the pure sake of it. They are not focused on value but things like building keywords and vainly trying to improve SEO.

This may get more customers to your digital door, but is it going to convert them to customers?

Look at a range of content options from regular blog posts, video, infographics and your service pages. Keep things focused and relevant to your customers. If it doesn’t have a good reason to exist, don’t bother creating it.

4. Make it easy to buy your products or hire your services

One of the big barriers to effective business websites is linked to functionality. I’ve lost count of the number of sites that obscure the purpose of their site with too much irrelevant content or poor navigation.

It happens a lot on service pages where there seems to be a fetish for including long passages of text that are not relevant.

It’s summed up by this question:

How easy it is for someone who visits your site to convert to a customer?

Look at your website today from your customer’s point of view.

• Is there a clear call to action on your service pages?
• Are your landing pages focused on one key marketing point?
• Do people have to scroll through huge amounts of text to get what they need?
• Is your navigation easy to use?

5. Link to social media

Finally, social media is probably the most powerful, free tool available to you today. It’s important to link your website to your Twitter, Facebook or Instagram account and vice versa.

Have social media sharing buttons on your main service pages and, just as importantly, on your blog posts – it allows people to quickly share what you are saying with their friends, family and followers. And that should increase engagement.

Check out my quick guide to choosing the right social media platforms here.

I hope you have found this article useful. If you wish to receive more marketing goodness like this, don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter – subscribe here

If you're not sure where to start with your marketing plan - Download my free guide here: ‘How to create your Marketing Masterplan Blueprint’

If you need ‘a fresh pair of eyes and ears’ to have a closer look at how you market and grow your business, let’s talk / meet for an informal chat – message me or email: [email protected]