Top 10 tips for making the most of your website - Part 1

Websites are brilliant - well we would think so, we're web designers. Seriously though, websites are an excellent marketing tool. They can help you reach a wider audience and do more business. Great! But one thing we would urge you to remember -  while a website is a marketing 'tool', it isn't the be-all and end-all of marketing your business. The World Wide Web is a big place with millions of websites competing for those top spots on Google - unfortunately just having a website isn't necessarily enough these days. In order to really work for you, you need to spend time promoting your website, monitoring its performance and improving it. Hey, but it's not all doom and gloom. Working on your website can be fun and very satisfying when you see your visitor numbers go up and more orders/enquiries come in, and remember there are people like us out there who would love to help you get the best results from your site.

Here are the first 5 of our top 10 tips for making the most of your website.

1 Decide who your target audience is

Obvious, isn't it? Your target audience are people who would want to buy from you. Yes, but you need to give it some more thought than that. What type of people would want to buy your product or service? Where are they based and what are they interested in? It's important to build up a picture of your target market so that you can fully understand their needs. Armed with that essential information you can make sure that your website answers their questions, is the right design style and has the right tone. Think of it this way, if you're selling the latest in designer surfwear you won't want to build a corporate-looking site with lots of wordy pages written in a formal style.

2 Research your keywords

Once you know who you're selling to the next step is to find out what search terms your prospective customers use when searching Google. These search terms are called keywords. If you've got a Cornish holiday cottage are your prospective customers most likely to search for "holiday cottage cornwall", "holiday let in cornwall" or "cornish holiday accommodation"? If you know what words and phrases people are actually using you can make sure that your website is optimised for those words. One thing to remember is that the more specific the keywords you choose, the more likely you are to get good results from them. Unless you're a massive, national or international holiday let agency you're not going to be able to rank very highly for "holiday cottage", but you should be able to get some good results for "holiday cottage sennen", a much more specific phrase.

3 Optimise it

Armed with your list of keywords you can now optimise your website for those keywords. You may well have heard of something called "meta tags", which is a place in the code of the site which isn't visible on the site itself. A good meta description is very useful but don't get hung up on the meta tags as being the answer to optimising your site. Instead concentrate on the visible text on each page. The knack is to include your keywords in such a way that the wording remains readable by your human visitors. Including keywords for search engines is important but your prospective customers are even more important, so make sure your wording appeals to them above all else. The good news is that your human visitors need to see the keywords too - keyword-rich wording reinforces your message. If a visitor has just found your site through a Google search for "holiday cottage sennen" it will help reinforce they are in the right place if you have "Holiday Cottage in Sennen" in a prominent place on the page.

4 Tell everyone about it

Don't be shy about letting people know you've got a website. In fact tell as many people as you can. Here are some suggestions:

• Put your web address on all your printed materials - business cards, letterheads, brochures
• Use an email address that ties in with your domain name - instead of This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it /yahoo.co.uk use This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Quite frankly this comes across as more professional and can help point people in the direction of your site.
• Include your web address in the signature of all your emails. You can set up your email so that it automatically appears every time you write a new email - that way you don't have to remember to include it.
• Mention your website to people that you're chatting to. If you're on the phone to a prospective customer point them to your website for more details - portfolio, product details, directions to your premises.
• Include your website on your Facebook profile and do the same for any other social networking sites.

5 Update it regularly

Did you know that the more often you update your website the more Google likes it? This is because by making regular updates you are proving to Google that it is an active site and therefore worth putting higher up in the search results. After all Google doesn't want to be directing people to a website that hasn't been touched for the past five years. So, keep your website up-to-date and add new content whenever you can. A blog or news page is a great tool for keeping your site updated, but if you do include a 'latest news' page please do keep it updated - there's nothing more offputting than the 'latest' news being a year old. See our tips on blog writing for more on that subject.

Come back soon for the remaining 5 tips...