If you are looking to build an effective website for your business, here are key tips to help your business website compete effectively in the online marketplace.
Only by following certain rules of website creation can you create a good business website. The rules concern both the techniques for creating the actual structure and design of the website and for filling it with content.
Finding a domain name and reliable hosting
A domain name with a keyword is a good sign to users and search engines.
But at first, decide whether you want a beautiful domain for branding or a useful domain name for AI, which is easier for Google to find. If you focus on the keyword, it should be the most relevant.
As for domain name extensions, .com is preferred because it has more credibility. This is a moot point, though. If you are developing a business website for a local audience only, a domain name with the TLD (top-level domain) of your country may be more useful.
Plan for business growth by choosing the appropriate hosting. Serious projects with high traffic will require a dedicated server — don’t even consider shared hosting! Check how to choose a web hosting service.
If a small E-Commerce can still be adjacent to other sites on the same physical machine, the popular commercial website doesn’t accept such a neighborhood.
Structure of the website, thoughtful navigation
To be promoted to the top, your business website needs to have a clear and well-designed structure. The structure determines how easy it will be for users to find information on your site and how quickly and properly the search engine will be able to scan your pages — and therefore, it is a ranking factor.
A good structure:
- user-friendly: clear navigation and usefulness of the site directly affect its position in search engines;
- works properly for search engine crawlers: the more structured the layout, the faster its pages will be crawled and the less likely it is that a certain percentage of pages will not be found;
- covers semantics: a thoughtful distribution of keywords and pages helps to cover all the user intentions you need.
Different types of structures are suitable for different types of sites:
Linear structure: pages go one to the other in a logical chain (e.g., home page – services – leave a request). This structure works for small sites (best for brand presentations).
Block-based structure: (extremely rare): a user can jump from any page to any other page on the site. Obviously, this organization is suitable for sites with few pages, all logically linked to each other.
Hierarchical or tree-like site structure: (the most common and can be used for all types of sites): main and general sections are divided into a number of more specific pages.
Unique content
The best way to increase your site’s search engine visibility and make it useful to people is to fill it with unique and quality text and video content regularly. When you create a new page or section, prepare nice content with 2-5 keywords from your research and upload some videos. To get started, I suggest using multimedia software.
The most important keywords should be used inside the title of the page, in the description, subheadings (h2, h3), and in the text itself. It will be handy to gather the information first and then sequentially and systematically place the right keywords. In addition, using a grammar checker would be a great idea, as everyone makes mistakes from time to time.
How to estimate if your content is good?
Think about the questions your visitors may have. Am I in the right place? How long have you been in business? Can I afford it? How will I know that your product or service is useful? How can I find out more about your services and company? How can I contact you?
Try to answer the questions before they are asked. For example, if your visitors are coming to buy a particular product, so they know they are in the right place of the online marketplace and can access product descriptions immediately. Clear, short messages work well. Professional writers cope with this task easily, so spend some time and investments to recruit a good one.
The effective website design
Once you’ve decided on the topic, domain, hosting, and engine, you’re on your way to choosing an effective website design. The advantage of using a CMS is the wide choice of templates for each project. Just check these business website examples.
If you are not keen on template solutions — contact the web development studio, where professional designers will discuss every detail with you. As the result of this painstaking work, you get the site of your dreams with the functionality that best meets the needs of your business.
Web analytics on the website
Well, you are ready to start a website and meet your first visitors.
Now it’s important to find out who they are, where they come from, and how they behave on the pages.
You can do all this with web analytics and for free. By installing a Google Analytics counter on your website you can find out your bounce rate, how many pages are viewed, how people find you (search traffic or social media), and more.
By analyzing this data from the start, you can build an effective website and achieve your goals quickly. Setting up your counter is simple: create a GA profile and add your tracking code to every page of your website. Google Analytics is 100% free.
Promoting your site
There are different ways to attract new visitors to a website.
You can use on-site SEO, popping up above the top positions in relevant search results. You can pay popular bloggers and promote yourself through social media. You can organize a press release mailing list for partners.
The possibilities are endless. But please do not be tempted by the tricks of black SEO and other dubious proposals that may result in penalties and the collapse of the project.
Conclusion
Building a good website for a business, just like any other quality product, requires not only knowledge of certain rules but also experience in applying them in practice and the ability to find non-standard, ‘fresh’ solutions within the rules.
