Making your business website really work
Nowadays, the best ways to make your website effective in marketing who you are and what you sell are to:
- be original
- write clear, interesting content
- use key (SEO) words but not too often, and
- keep your website alive and well
1. Be original
Simply being original in style and content is enough to make you stand out from the marketplace.
Write based on personal experience, what you’re really good at, what you’re passionate about, and what your potential clients are interested in. All in relation to your business/what you sell, of course.
2. Write good content
Good content in a website leads to longer and more visits (or ‘hits’) to the site. Good content leads to people knowing who you are and what you do. Good content leads to them enjoying their visit to your website and taking the next step: contacting you.
Search engines deciding whether to place you higher or lower in their rankings are looking for websites that are visited often and for longer than a moment by visitors, because this indicates to that search engine that your website is interesting and informative. So, make it interesting and informative, and focused on who you are and what you sell.
3. SEO
Use SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) keywords throughout each website page but not too many that it puts your readers off. Write keywords into your title and subheadings and in appropriate places in the text. Focus each web page specifically on the topic (and key words) of that particular page. Edit each web page to make sure they are not overloaded with too many key words, to get the balance right.
4. Keep your website up-to-date
Websites are ‘live publications’ and need to be kept alive and updated. You should edit and update every page of your website regularly; I update most pages at least slightly every month or so. If you have a ‘news’ page, post a news item at least every couple of weeks. If you have a blog, write a new blog every week or two.
If you don’t keep your website up-to-date, you’ll start to be ignored by those all-important search engines, your lack of recent activity will be noticed by your potential customers, and your business will suffer.
Copyright Sally-Anne Watson Kane 2018
For more articles about writing business websites and blogs, go to: Blogging and writing websites.
Photograph: Pixabay (no attribution required)
Sally-Anne Watson Kane
Writer, editor, proofreader, owner/operator - On Time Typing, Editing and Proofreading
Sally-Anne Watson Kane owns and operates On Time Typing, Editing and Proofreading (established as 'On Time Typing' in 2002) and Peewee Press (since 2003). Sally-Anne is a professional editor and full member of Institute of Professional Editors (IPEd) Australia, based in Moe, Gippsland.
Our services: typing, scribing, report writing, minute-taking, transcription, copy writing, editing, proofreading, graphic design, and self-publishing.
Sally-Anne manages an Australian-based team of eleven typists, scribes, transcriptionists, writers and editors (all subcontractors) including typists in Gippsland as well as typists, editors and scribes in Melbourne, Central Victoria and interstate.
Sally-Anne is a professional member of Institute of Professional Editors and Editors Victoria, and a full member of Life Stories Australia.
Sally-Anne regularly writes articles about sole trader and small business management, writing and editing, self-publishing, and contemporary issues in Australia, across a variety of platforms.
Sally-Anne has 25 years' experience in:
- editing and proofreading publications, websites, policies and reports.
- audio transcription (dictation, transcripts of interviews, focus groups, investigations, hearings).
- recording, transcribing, compiling and self-publishing oral histories and anthologies.
- writing articles, websites, reports and publications
- scribing and writing selection, procurement and referee reports
- scribing, writing and editing self-published memoirs and life stories
- providing self-publishing services to authors, businesses and organisations from handwritten manuscript through to printed book stage, including: project planning, budget, typing, editing, proofreading, graphic design, printer quotes and liaison. We specialise in producing memoirs and life stories, local histories, and minority voices.