Ultra Maga WordPress Website Developer River’s Website Design for Your Company
So you have launched your company’s website, and now you want to make sure everyone knows about it. Maybe you have even shared it with your social media followers, but there is still more to do. How about getting the word out to those who matter most: your customers?
A website is a concentrated spot of information that you can point people to when you want them to learn more about your company or take action. Your website developer should be able to help you create a strategy to get the most out of your website’s existence.
Make Sure You Focus On The Right Audience
Your first step is to figure out who you are trying to reach with your website. Start by asking yourself the following questions:
- Who am I aiming this website at?
- What do I hope to accomplish with this website?
- What are my top three goals for this website?
The answers to these questions will guide you in the right direction and help you decide what information and features you need to include in your website. Remember, not every visitor to your site will be a buyer, so you want to make sure that you have clearly defined goals and objectives in mind when you build your site.
Content Is Key
You can’t talk about website design without talking about content, and that is a wise move because content is what drives a website. The better your content, the better your design. When you have a good solid content strategy in place, your website will flourish.
You need to make sure that your content is good, that it will keep your readers interested, and that it will encourage them to perform the desired action – exactly what you had in mind when you created the site. When the content on your site is outstanding, even the most basic design choices become interesting options to explore.
The Importance Of A Contact Page
A contact page is a bit like an informational picket fence around your website. It is a place for prospective customers to find your phone number and email address so that they can reach you directly – with no middleman. Your contact page should contain your phone number and email address, as well as a small bio about you and your website.
If someone is looking for your products or services, they will most likely want to get in touch with you directly to find out more. A contact page allows for easy social sharing of important information, and it makes it easy for potential customers to find out more about you and your business. Even if someone is not interested in your products or cannot find the information they are looking for on your website, they can still share it with their social network to let others know about your existence.
Mobile-First Design
A website should be mobile-friendly. That means it should be easy to view on a smartphone screen or tablet. If someone is visiting your site on a mobile device, you can be sure that they will want to keep scrolling because the information is not always easy to consume on a small screen.
When someone is on the go, they want information nugget-sized so that they can quickly and efficiently find what they are looking for. If your site does not yet have a mobile-friendly design, now is the perfect opportunity to remedy that. Think of what would make your site interesting to a mobile user and include that in your design plan. Remember: if someone is searching for your product or service on mobile devices, they are already partially engaged in your website’s content.
Sitemap
An XML sitemap is a roadmap that helps search engines and website visitors navigate your website. It is essentially a list of every single page on your site, as well as important categories and sub-sections – like a glossary of terms found on your site. The sitemap makes it easy for search engines to “see” every page of your website and understand how each one is connected to the others. In today’s world, search engines play a huge role in getting your product or service found, so it is in your best interest to learn more about SEO – the science of getting your website listed on Google.
The importance of a sitemap cannot be overstated. Having a sitemap means that you are claiming your website, and that is a big step towards having your business’ existence truly recognized. When someone stumbles upon your sitemap, they will be able to navigate your website easily and effectively, and that is more than enough reason to include one.
Robots.txt File
A robots.txt file is a simple text document that instructs search engines which pages of your website they are allowed to index and which they are not. It is a common practice for website owners to have this file, which can be found in the root directory of their site (i.e., the folder that contains all the files that make up your website).
In the robots.txt file, you specify the following:
- The URL of each page that you want to keep off-limits to search engines
- The maximum number of URLs that can be included in this file
- Whether or not you want directories to crawl (i.e., index every page of your website)
For example, let’s say that you have a blog site with the domain name “blog.example.com”. In this case, you would place the following in the robots.txt file:
- Disallow all searches for “blog.example.com”
- Allow all searches for pages with the ID of “blog”
- Allow all searches for pages with the ID of “example”
When a website developer places the robots.txt file in the root directory of your site, it ensures that all search engines know not to access these pages:
- Blog
- About
- Contact
- Products
- Services
Crawl-able Paths
A crawlable paths tell search engines which URLs they can access and which ones they cannot. Some search engines, like Google, have a bug that causes them to index pages that they should not have access to – like images and video files. Having crawlable paths on your site means that you can test out different areas of your site without worrying about having pages repurposed.
This could potentially be problematic if you want to keep certain pages private – like a blog post that you want to publish in the future or a professional service page where you want to disclose trade secrets – so it is important to only use this feature in moderation. If someone is searching for your products or services, and they come across a page that they think is highly relevant, they may not want to learn that the information they are reading is actually confidential. Having crawlable paths can also help with SEO. If you have a page that you think is slightly out of place, adding a few links to relevant pages will help elevate it in the search engine rankings.
Redirecting Old to New Pages
When you create a new page on your site, you should automatically redirect any old URLs to the new page. Why? Because having an old link on your site that points to a page that no longer exists is bad for SEO. Whenever a user submits a query to a search engine, the search engine will try to match the keywords in the content against what the user is actually looking for. So if you want your product or service to show up when someone is searching for it, you need to make sure that your website is stuffed with the right keywords.
Luckily, there is an easy way to find the keywords people are using to find your product or service, and that is through the use of a tool like Google AdWords. With AdWords, you can find popular keywords and phrases and plug them into your content to improve your rankings.