Where did 2014 go? Last year flew by and it's 2015 already. So how did your website do in 2014? Did it bring leads, increase traffic, increase engagement? Perhaps you're not sure your website did, or didn't do, for you last year. Don't fret you can use 2015 to get your website on the right track. We have provided some of the most pertinent items that you need to do in order to make your website awesome this year.

Blog More Often

This can be a tricky subject because blog frequency can vary by industry. With that said...if you're blogging once a month you need to increase your frequency. So how often should you post? We have tools that assist in figuring out the proper times per week and the best time of the day to post. Something to keep in mind for you blog is how "salesy" are your post? You want to make sure that you have a diversified blog that answers question customers or clients may have. If every post is the same your readers will grow tired and stop visiting you post! Another important aspect to your blog is email subscriptions. When visitors begin reading your blog they will want to be alerted when a new post is out. When they sign up for email alerts they get the blog title, an excerpt, and the featured image. We can then track people coming from an email and automatically put them into our sales workflow.

Review All Content and Update or Revise as Needed

Believe it or not the content that lives on your website is your greatest asset. Your content should be able to far outlast your website design. One of the greatest mistake people make with their website is that they build their content around their design. The problem with developing content around the design is that when the design becomes outdated your back to square one. In 2015 go through your entire website page by page and ask yourself "would this content stand on its own without any design?". If your answer is no then you've got some work to do. Here are some tips for creating outstanding content:

Plan

Before creating content, be sure you know what you’re going to create and why you’re creating it. That is determined by your personas, buyer’s journey, and business goals.

Produce

Create your content. Follow your plan for what you’ll produce, who will produce it, and by when.

Develop a product strategy that makes sense to you.

Distribute

Make sure that your content is being distributed to the people that care about it. Having great content means nothing if you can’t get it to the people that care.

Utilize relevant platforms that will encourage your buyer’s to share your content with their peers.

Analyze

So far the content creation has be built around assumptions we have induced based off previous experiences. Now we need the cold hard numbers to the proof in our pudding.

If we are writing content that is answering questions and people are sharing this valuable content we should see our visitor count grow. From there we can analyze if we need to make adjustments or keep up the good work.  

SEO Checklist

Upon every website launch there should be an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) checklist completed. So many times we have seen that the most important task for being found on search engines don’t get completed upon launch. Completing these simple task can help you jump up on google results page. Here are some items to look into this year:

Meta Descriptions

This is the snippet people see on google below the site title.

This meta description should be under 150 characters.

It sets the users expectation of where they are being directed to and what content they can expect. Don’t try to trick anybody here...google knows all!

Check Your Page Titles

The page titles should be short and sweet.

Pages titles should be under 70 characters.

They should have a keyword focus

H1 Tags

Google is scanning every page on your site and looking for the “H1” tag. H1 standing for Heading 1 with 1 representing the largest font size. This is the large text you see at the top of pages.

H1 tags should be different that the page title and give an accurate description of the content on the page.

All Images Should Have ALT Text

ALT Text, or “Alternative Attribute”, is used as a fail safe should images not load on the page. The ALT Text will load in lieu of the image. This should be a short description of what the image portrays.

Google utilizes ALT Text to analyze if you're using relevant images with relevant text.

Another aspect to consider is that ALT Text is used by the visually impaired. If the computer is reading the content on the page for the user the image descriptions shouldn’t be irrelevant and stuffed with keywords!

Website Audit

Ok...so by now you should know if you’re on the right track or if you have heaps of work to do! Don’t worry. Should not have the time or energy to check these aspects of your website we would love to offer you a FREE Website Audit. Our team will complete a general overview of your website and send you the score. Get started on the right track and get the most out of your website in 2015!