Turning Your Website into a Marketing Machine

Outbound marketing tactics are so last decade. Today, the most successful businesses know that their websites need to be designed for inbound marketing. With the vast majority of consumers utilizing the internet to make decisions about the purchase of goods and services, there’s really no better way to connect with your target audience.

So how does your business website stack up? If you’re not adhering to the following five website marketing tips, you’re missing out!

1. Use On-Page SEO

Because so many consumers rely on search engines, it’s extremely important that each of your pages are optimized for search engine web crawlers. This means providing on-page clues as to what your website is all about and what types of people may be able to benefit from your content. Use keywords in your page title, your URL, and in headings and subheadings. Search engines recognize H1, H2, H3, and HTML tags as being more important than any other text on the site. Finally, make sure that all of the page’s content is consistent with the keywords used.

In addition to what can be seen, you need to focus on the unseen. These are the parts of your page that can be optimized for search engines but that can’t be seen, including your page’s descriptions and meta keywords or meta tags.

2. Use Off-Page SEO

Each time someone links to your website, it acts as an indication to search engines that your site is important and should be given preferential treatment. As a result, it’s important that links are created off of your main site to link back to your pages. You shouldn’t be happy with just any links, though. Instead, you must take care to ensure that all links back to your site come from trustworthy sources so that they help, rather than hinder, your efforts. The easiest ways to get links back to your website is to submit your site to web directories, ask others in the industry to mention your link (and you can scratch their back, too, on your own site), and create compelling content that will entice people to link to your website.

3. Maintain a Blog

If you haven’t already created a blog for your business, you’re missing out! Maintaining a blog on a regular basis is essential to modern inbound marketing. This is true for a few different reasons. First, consider the fact that search engines are constantly looking for fresh, new content. The more new, quality content your blog is turning out, the more love it will receive from the search engines. Secondly, consumers are much more likely to click on links that will take them to an interesting blog article rather than a corporate website. Because each blog exists on its own web page, you’ll enjoy even more unique SEO opportunities. Finally, blogs provide you with the opportunity to create a distinct voice and personality for your brand, which encourages customer loyalty and engagement.

4. Use Lead Forms

Drawing a lot of traffic to your blog won’t do you much good if you don’t have a way of capturing leads. It’s wise, then, to create streamlined forms that will cater to your target audience. Play around with what works best. You might need to alter the length of your forms, adjust its location on the page, add images and customer testimonials, etc.

5. Analyze Your Efforts

Don’t forget to go back and analyze your marketing efforts on a regular basis. Take advantage of powerful marketing tools that will enable you to view real, measurable results so that you can determine what is and isn’t working for you, the level of success that each tactic is enjoying, and where you can make improvements to your page content.