My content marketing experience has taught me valuable insights into what makes a business website successful. Thriving business websites have the same building blocks: They all have excellent SEO, video content, and streamlined payment processing pages.
Strong SEO
To build a business website, you will need a website platform such as WordPress or Squarespace along with compelling images and website copy. You also need to think about search engine optimization throughout the process.
On-page SEO and technical SEO improve the visibility and success of your website after it is up and running. On-page SEO is copy that contains keywords and search terms that help your website rank. Technical SEO is code that you place in images and URLs for the same reason.
You can find many tools to help you with SEO optimization, including SEMRush, DemandWell, and Google Search Console. If you have the budget you can also work with SEO specialists or consultants.
It’s important to set an SEO strategy that incorporates your business objectives and aims to reach your target audience/customers.
Video content
When it comes to video content, there are two schools of thought. One of them says that there should be no video on the website because it impacts page loading speeds — a key metric for search engine rankings. The other encourages video content as it helps to boost your sales.
The reality lies somewhere in the middle. Video content can slow down your website, especially when you have large files and the content is not relevant enough to the product, but video content can also boost sales when done correctly. Make sure any video is relevant and short.
Payment processing
These days customers expect a slick payment processing page that’s safe and secure. They also often expect your website to save their details for future purchases. Having a professional payment processing page is one of the best ways to instill confidence in all your customers.
If you don’t know where to start with payment processing, you can use third-party solutions to set up a professional system that delivers results. Use a third-party service to set up card on file payments that save your customer’s card details, boosting your customer retention and sales.
Content marketing
Content marketing is the process of creating industry-relevant content for your website. The content serves your customers, builds brand loyalty, increases visibility, and makes your website easier for search engines to find. Anyone can write content, but quality content is SEO-ready.
The content you make should be relevant to your business or industry; it should also contain relevant keywords to attract customers to your website. Quality content doesn’t have to stay on your website either; you can break it up for your social media channels or create video content.
Include calls to action in your content, such as requesting a demo, scheduling a call, downloading a gated asset, signing up for a newsletter or registering for a webinar.
E-mail capture
When you have the building blocks in place, you can start to think about marketing on your website. There are many marketing channels available, including search engines and social media, but one of the most powerful and effective of them is email capture and marketing.
Email is a direct-to-customer channel that allows you to market to the right people at the right times, but first, you need to capture the emails. Capture emails on your website by creating gated content or offering a discount for an email. You can also capture emails during payments.
These tips can get you started on the path to building a successful business website. What tips would you add?
