Search Engine Marketing Consultants Edinburgh

Pretty much every business today has a website – from the local hairdressers through to multi million pound global enterprises. Whilst the amount spent and expected return may be significantly different the way of ensuring success is pretty much the same. Follow these 10 steps and you too could have a more effective website

Remove barriers for users and search engines
Make it as easy as possible for your target audience to use your website, to navigate from section to section and to discover what they are looking for.

Don’t use jargon in menu headings, unless this jargon is used and understood by your audience.

Avoid technical wizardry (flash home pages being the obvious example) that get in the way of the user finding what they are looking for. Flash is not only frustrating for the user it can also mean the search engines struggle to index your pages effectively – meaning you are less likely to be found by anyone searching for your services.

Make it easy for people to contact you
How many websites have you visited where you want to check out if the company is legitimate or even just where they are located – but they haven’t included an address or telephone number. I don’t know about you but this always rings alarm bells for me.

You should have nothing to hide – so include your details.

If you know the common questions people are likely to ask about your services and don’t have the time to deal with their individual calls include a frequently asked questions section – or better still answer the anticipated questions with well written copy.

Get rid of old content
Of course you need to make sure any product or service information is up to date – but you need to go beyond that. There’s nothing worse than visiting a ‘latest news’ section on a website to find the last posting was in April 2005. If you have a news section you need to put systems in place to get it updated regularly – and bear in mind news can be anything from a new product launched, a new member of staff, a significant client win, client events, comment on something in the national news – almost anything really. Just something that demonstrates a little about what your business is about and positions you in a positive light.

Update your site regularly
A news or blog section is a good way to keep a site refreshed. But you should in any event consider a regular update to your website to help with the search engines. One of the many things search engines consider when they are assessing a site’s ‘value’ is when and how frequently it is updated.

Review your landing pages
A quick word about landing pages first of all. These are the pages that visitors enter your site through. They would normally include your home page, but often include specific product pages or articles that are well ranked by the search engines. You can see which pages peop...