With 82%* of consumers using a search engine as their first step in researching a product or service locally, developing a company website is critical to long term business success.
But what happens once the site is launched? Without a content strategy or goals for building and maintaining a web presence, your site will become a “tombstone,” as Lee Odden so aptly phrased it on his online marketing blog.
A tombstone website is one in which the content is static. In other words, DEAD.
Search engines don’t visit static websites often, which hinders your search visibility. Google likes sites with fresh, frequent, relevant content. They’re in business to serve up the best, most accurate and authoritative results. When you stop feeding their “bots,” you are invisible to them.
More importantly, your customer or prospect won’t stop by either, limiting your ability to engage, communicate and convert that visitor to a buyer.
Worse than dated content, however, is an out-of-date design. If you spend any time online, you may have noticed that websites today are less cluttered, easier to navigate, incorporate social aspects and take advantage of the wider computer screen widths and crisper resolutions.
If you think of your website Home page as your “front door,” ask yourself if you’d be embarrassed to invite your boss or coworker over for dinner. What would they encounter? Rusty tools leaning against the doorjamb?
Not having a website is no longer an option for businesses today. Having a website that works is crucial to your online health and longevity.
If you want your visitors to feel welcome and prolong their visit, make it easy for them to stay. Slow loading pages, poorly laid out navigation, flash intros, dated material, all point to a tombstone website.
And if you don’t want your visitors hitting the back button, please don’t have your brother-in-law’s mother’s cousin redesign your website.
*Source: LocalConnex
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