When someone is interested in any kind of digital marketing service(s), we take some time to evaluate their presence online.
Finding weaknesses helps us develop action items that ultimately will guide improvement and growth.
We’ve done this for years, and over that time have developed some common reasons why websites aren’t generating traffic.
They’re outlined below. What opportunities does your business have?
Website/On-Page Issues
Content is minimal, thin, disconnected
Content has always been one of the most important components of a successful website. In the majority of audits we do, we find that content is lacking or disconnected. If you don’t have good content, Google likely won’t trust you as an authority, and it will be difficult to rank well.
Content should be helpful to prospective customers while considering your target audience’s interests and search habits.
A good example of successful content development is Home Depot. They break down their content into categories, and subcategories, that cover the basics, then they have project and inspiration guides to drill down. They’ve set themselves up to be in a position where they can educate and assist, and from that derive benefits. For example, they have a guide on how to start a vegetable garden. They discuss it step by step, and throughout the guides link to various products that folks can purchase at the Home Depot.
Most small and medium-sized businesses will not be able to create this much content. When the budget is limited, it’s all about planning, prioritization, and slowly chipping away at topics. Technically, we have ChatGPT to help now too.
More on leveraging and managing content.
SEO Fundamentals not in place
webFEAT started before SEO was even a thing. When it started growing in popularity, it was understandable that so few businesses were taking advantage of the opportunity. It was so new. But now it’s 2023, and we’re still seeing outdated, not optimized websites every day. C’mon!
Having updated meta information (what appears in search results as the link and description-see below), updated sitemap.xml and robot.txt files, favicon (image in tab), strategic headings, verbiage backed by research, eliminating broken links, etc.
Having the fundamentals in place alone can be a difference maker against your competitors in the search results, and it sets up the foundation for rankings in the long term.
If your business is looking to grow, but hasn’t done any SEO (or digital marketing in general)-we urge you to explore and consider it. It could make a huge difference in a relatively short period of time, and it’s measurable. Here are some recent client digital marketing results that prove this.
Not Optimized for Conversion
There are a lot of little things you can do to improve conversion rate.
It’s a combination of target audience knowledge and best practices, usually very minor adjustments.
You want to make the path to conversion (form fill, purchase, download, etc.) as easy as possible for prospective customers.
Let’s say your goal is to get RFQ form submissions from your website.
That form has fields for first name, last name, company, address, phone number, email, and message. A CRO improvement would be to remove some fields and make the form less intimidating, and time-consuming. You could make the fields: Name, Company, Email, and a message.
To showcase this visually, take a look at these two forms. One clearly has a better chance to get filled in and submitted:
This is one of the many things you can test to improve a website’s performance, relevant to your business goals.
Indirect/Online Presence Issues
Lack of Social Media Usage
Social media is helpful to digital marketing efforts in so many ways. It helps amplify content, and activity/engagement on social platforms sends positive signals to search engines and social media algorithms, among other things.
There is a common misconception that certain businesses don’t need social media. We can certainly understand if it is a lower-priority item, but to disregard it doesn’t make sense.
We see businesses all the time that don’t have an account on one or several platforms. EX: Maybe they have Facebook/Meta but they don’t use LinkedIn.
We also see that businesses have set up their pages, but don’t post anymore, or haven’t taken advantage of any new features.
Creating, claiming, and updating social profiles is a simple, direct way to improve online presence.
Regularly updating, posting, and engaging can be the start of a positive snowball effect.
Consider a listing like the below, versus a page with minimal business information, grainy photo(s), and a most recent post from 2018:
Not giving enough care to Local Listings
Similar to social media, we find that a lot of businesses do not stay on top of local listings.
We see listings that were auto-created and are not claimed. Listings that are claimed, but business information was never fully updated with features that aren’t being utilized.
Updating the listing(s) is just another way to set yourself apart. Like social media, it can influence algorithms and give another point of entry for prospective customers.
2 places we usually get started to find listing opportunities: looking at the search results (do a search for “[service] [local area]”, and running a backlink gap.
Put 2 local businesses with essentially the same online presence next to each other. One of those businesses is involved in numerous directories and other local listings that link back to the website, one is not.
Which one do you think Google would trust more, to show to its searchers?
Bonus: Dated site
Website shelf life used to be 5-7 years, now 2-4 seems more fitting.
When prospective customers get to your website, they should be confident in your business and inspired to ask more questions or move forward.
If your site is old, slow, has a dated copyright year in the footer, and is not showcasing knowledge and credibility, prospective customers will be a lot more likely to continue their search elsewhere.
Don’t let that happen!
Please make sure you don’t forget to implement redirects if you do redesign and relaunch your website.
Does your website have growth potential? Could you be separating yourself from competitors?
We’d love to do a Digital Marketing Review of your business and discuss it with you.
We’ll review your website and online presence in general, from there recommending the most important action items, and a month-by-month outline initial game plan should you decide to move forward.
Fill out our short form or schedule a call directly, here.
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