What Should You Do to Keep Your Website Alive?

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What a relief! Your website is done, it’s gone live, and you can go back to business as usual.

Right?

Unfortunately, many people assume that you can just leave a website be and it’ll do exactly what you need it to — rank your business at the top of search and help prospects find their way to you. The truth is, it’s not that simple.

So, what should you do to keep your website alive after you’ve published it?

Think of your website like a storefront. You fill it with goods, pimp it out with branded decor, and put up a sign that lets people know you’re open for business. You might get some curious passersby to stop in and see what it’s all about, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg of what you can do to drum up business.

Your website is the exact same way.

We’re going to show you what you should do to ensure that your website not only stays alive but also actively works on your behalf long after launch.

What Do You Do with Your Website Now?

Infograpic - ways to drive traffic to your website
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Your live website will now serve as the central hub for your efforts to attract an audience and retain it. As such, you can’t afford to let it stagnate.

Both the search engines and your target audience want to see that your website is a living thing that’s well-cared for.

Here’s what you should do to keep your website alive and thriving: 

1. Watch Your Analytics

Think of your website’s analytics the way you would your body’s vital signs. You can tell something’s off when your pulse races, a fever spikes, or your blood pressure is out of control. The same is true for your website.

Are traffic levels too low?

Are conversions seemingly erratic and unpredictable?

Does the homepage crash the second you try to interact with it?

Google Analytics will be your first line of defense to know if something’s gone wrong or if things are going very well.

Google Search Console is another tool to keep your eye on. This one tracks more technical details of your website performance, like:

  • How many pages on your website have been indexed by search.
  • How many errors have been detected.
  • If there are any mobile usability issues present.
  • Whether or not security vulnerabilities exist.

It’s also useful for monitoring links on your site (internal links) as well as to your site (backlinks).

2. Feed It with Content

According to research by Demand Metric:

“Blogs are responsible for 434 percent more indexed pages and 97 percent more indexed links.”

As you can imagine, by adding more pages to your site, it’ll have more opportunities to rank in search.

A well-fed blog isn’t just good for expanding the size of your site for the purposes of SEO either. Demand Metric reports that companies that have blogs get, on average, 67 percent more leads each month than those that don’t.

Just remember to make the content relevant, timely, and useful so that it demonstrates authority and proves your value.

3. Stay in Touch with Email

One of the keys to any long-lasting relationship is keeping in touch. That way, it doesn’t matter where you move to, what new job you take, or how busy you get as life throws curve balls your way. By maintaining regular check-ins with one another, the connection remains strong.

That’s a lot like how email marketing works for your website.

You see the traffic coming into your website. You know that visitors are engaged with the content you publish. By including a simple “Subscribe” option on your website, email marketing becomes the way in which you can connect once a week to say:

“Hey, how’s it going? We were thinking of you when we wrote this post/created this product/started this promotion!”

According to a 2018 report from Emma, 59 percent of marketers say that email has the greatest response of all their marketing channels.

If you want to build long-term relationships with website visitors and foster them to conversion, you have to make sure you can connect. Email will be the vehicle through which you do it.

4. Make Friends Over Social

It’s good to get out there and make friends. With billions of people on social media, it’s the perfect place for that to happen.

One thing you can do to make and maintain friendships is to utilize social media as a place for customer care.

That might seem like an odd suggestion, but data from Sprout Social suggests that that’s exactly what consumers want you to do:

  • 57 percent want you to answer their questions.
  • 45 percent want to tell you about problems with a product or service.

Be there for them in this regard and you’ll find that they’re more than willing to reward you:

  • 34 percent will publicly or privately thank you for the product or service you offer.
  • 21 percent will be more likely to make a purchase if you respond to them on social.

So, make sure you provide just as good of an experience on social as you do through your website to reap the benefits of these friendly exchanges.

5. Put Your Money Towards a Good Cause

You’re in business to improve the lives of your customers. But you can’t do that if they don’t know you exist.

That’s not to say that having a website will do nothing to help. It will… it’s just that it’s going to take some time for your SEO and marketing work to really kick in. For some websites, that could be between six and twelve months before Google puts it on the first page of search results.

If you want to start making an impact on the lives of your customers now, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising will help.

In fact, Google estimates that a combined SEO (organic) and PPC (paid) strategy increases the value of the results you get from search traffic:

“We conservatively estimate that for every $1 a business spends on Google Ads, they receive $8 in profit through Google Search and Ads.”

Just keep in mind that PPC is only a short-term strategy to get you to the top of search. All of the other stuff you do to market your business and optimize your site will help you sustain the life of your website over the long run.

Are You Prepared to Keep Your Website Alive?

There’s a clear correlation between how much you do to keep your website alive and what sort of response you get from customers and Google alike. The only problem is:

Where do you find the time to do all of this?

In truth, this can be difficult to do when you have a business to run. If you know that your website needs this level of after-care, but don’t have the capacity for it, get in touch with us today. We’d be happy to discuss your needs and formulate a plan that’s best for you.

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