You Launched Your Website — Now What?
Your website’s up and running. It’s looking picture-perfect and polished, it’s functioning smoothly, and it’s ready to welcome visitors.
So...where are all the visitors?
The work that goes into creating a website and getting it ready to launch is tough — getting consistent (and increasing) views and visitors? Even more difficult. But your work is worth it. You have something to offer, and it’s time to get it in front of the right eyes. Here’s how to do it.
Disclaimer: There’s not one, easy and simple way to get more visitors to your website. But when you combine each of these elements, you’ll set yourself up for guaranteed improvement and long-term success.
A sitemap is basically (you guessed it) a map of your website. Seems pretty simple, right? An XML sitemap allows you to tell search engines, like Google, about all the pages that exist on your website. While this won’t automatically boost your search engine ranking, it will allow search engines to better crawl, or scan, your website — which is a necessary first step in boosting your rankings. The more easily search engines can find the content from your website, the more likely they are to show it in search results. Search engine optimization (SEO) is an essential element of boosting brand awareness and your website’s reach — but we’ll go into that more later. First things first, get your sitemap out there.
If you’re not sure where to start, try this how-to guide for uploading your sitemap here.
Note, Squarespace makes it really easy to find your site map. Just add /sitemap.xml to the end of your URL and upload to Google!
You know how when you search for a business or organization on Google, one of the first results is a handy profile that includes their address, phone number, hours, etc.? You can thank Google My Business (GMB) for that. Even if you don’t have a physical location, GMB can still be helpful because it makes you more visible to potential customers and clients and offers them legitimate information, straight from the source about your company. In other words, you can control how Google displays your business and can ensure that the information is correct, up-to-date, and easy for potential customers and clients to find.
Here’s how to get your business set up with GMB.
Pro tip: To optimize your profile, be sure to fill out the whole profile (or as much is relevant), and don’t forget to update it when necessary!
Chances are you’re on social media. But is your business? If yes, you’re ahead of the game (but keep reading — we have some tips for optimization that could be helpful).
For artistic niches and e-commerce especially, Instagram is one of the best platforms for boosting brand awareness. It’s an optimal tool for showcasing your work as well as engaging with your audience. Creating an Instagram Business account, specifically, is important because not only does it lead your audience to take you more seriously, but you also get access to analytics — which is huge for understanding your audience better. You can create your IG Business profile the same way you would create a normal account — just be sure it’s switched to Business. If you have an existing IG account that you want to switch over to business, just go to your profile, click “Edit profile,” and select “Switch to Professional Account.” It’s that easy! Find more info on Instagram Business Profiles here.
Marketing trends on Instagram are expanding rapidly while also becoming uniquely specific. As a brand be ready to act as an influencer. Through microblogging, uploading short video reels, or creating brand-influenced Instagram carousels full of informative content, these trends are key to standing out on this platform.
If you have the capacity, don’t stop at Instagram. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube and even TikTok (👈great for short-form video content targeting GenZers) each provide additional opportunities for exposure and engagement. Knowing which platforms best suit your audience will help prioritize where you spend your time.
Pro tip: Check out 2021 Marketing Trends for each platform through some of the articles listed here — Brand Design, User Experience, Look and Feel
There’s nothing like a good marketing campaign to hit the refresh button on a stagnant site. If you’ve never done one before, it can be a little intimidating to get going. Needing direction? Ask me how we can align your brand goals with a strategic campaign to target your ideal market, drive more traffic to your website, improve brand awareness, and build your audience. It can be fun, I promise!
If you’ve addressed your concerns and laid out your campaign goals already, consider these three mediums to capture leads.
Email funneling involves composing a series of emails that start by (1) nurturing your relationship with your subscribers, (2) educating them on the benefits of your product or service, and (3) nudging them to make a purchase decision. To do this, you need a well-established email provider. Things like newsletter opt-in forms or lead magnets can be helpful with this, but there are ultimately to strategically build your email network.
Pro Tip: Try starting with Flodesk or ConvertKit for email funneling.
Social media marketing can (and should) also play a big role in your digital campaign. While you can certainly use paid advertising to boost your content across social media channels, there’s a lot you can do to organically grow your accounts as well. As we discussed above, it all starts with knowing your audience and making a plan as to how you’ll use each platform. Intention is everything!
Lastly, don’t doubt the effectiveness of old-school snail mail. Direct mail advertising not only signals the extra mile your business is willing to go, but it also builds trust and adds legitimacy to your brand. With so many brands filling up the digital space, there’s a lot more to compete with — and as a result, the response rate to emails is a lot lower than it is for mail (not to mention most emails have a click-through rate of less than 1%). Think of the dozens of emails you see every day versus the few pieces of mail you get — which are you more likely to read through? While it’s important to solidify your presence in the digital space, your brand can benefit from showing current and potential customers and clients that you exist outside of that space as well.
By sending your targeted audience something as simple as a magnet, postcard, or brochure, you’re giving them something tangible and personal — and nudging them to associate that sentiment with your brand.
Ultimately, your site won’t get anywhere if you’re not devoting time to making it search engine optimized. Search engine optimization (SEO) is basically the process of making your website attractive to search engines like Google. While paid advertising, social media, and other online platforms can generate traffic to websites, the reality remains that the majority of online traffic is driven by search engines. So it’s worth the work to get your site as search engine-friendly as possible.
Keywords are essential to this process, which means it’s time to do some keyword research if you haven’t already. As you research, you’ll put together a list of keywords that you’ll want to include in your website copy — blog posts or articles are a great place to place these. SEO and good content go hand-in-hand. There’s no use going to the trouble of spending hours on keyword research if you’re not going to also devote time to producing content that correlates. The more quality content pieces on your website, the higher search engines will rank you.
Pro tip: When it comes to keywords, it can be just as detrimental to use ones that are too popular as it is to use obscure ones. Don’t be afraid to use long-tail keywords that are specific to what you’re offering. If you’re not sure where to start with keyword research, free online tools like this one from Moz can help.
When it comes to getting free feedback about how your site is doing, you can’t do much better than Google Analytics. Google Analytics provides you with in-depth details about your site visitors. You can learn more about who they are with demographic data and better understand their online behavior — what pages they’re lingering on, which have high bounce rates, etc. Analyzing your website traffic is essential to understanding what is and isn’t working. And getting started is easy — just follow these set-up steps.
Remember: Your work is worth the extra effort.
When it comes down to it, no matter how beautiful or user-friendly, or jam-packed with quality content your website is, you have to play by the rules to get it seen. And following through on each of these elements will get you there. Running a thriving, successful website is all about upkeep.
Are visitors bouncing as soon as they hit your home page? Maybe it’s time to freshen up the home page photos or copy. Dive into your Google Analytics for answers. Struggling to gain followers on social? Try building out a social strategy, complete with a posting schedule, to get really intentional about how you use the platform. Engage with the audience you have there, even if it’s small, with interactive stories and conversation-starting captions. Not getting any eyes on your blog posts? Expand your keyword research, gathering diverse words and phrases specific to your niche.
There are a lot of moving parts. If you need to tackle one at a time, that’s fine. Just stick with it! Working through these elements will allow you to optimize the awesome content and services you have to offer. You put a lot of work in to get here — it’s time to give your brand the spotlight it deserves.