Website Resolutions for 2008

With new year around the corner, we've put together a list of 10 resolutions you should make to ensure 2008 is the best year yet for your website!

1. Make a plan of action
Before you start on any campaigns next year, make sure you write a plan of action. What do you want to achieve from your website? Is it new leads & enquiries, sign ups to a newsletter, sales of a specific item, brand awareness? Once you know what you’re aiming for, making a plan will be much easier.

2. Update your website
Websites often get neglected but keeping the content on your website fresh and up to date not only gives a more positive visitor experience but keeps the search engines happy too as they like to see sites that are proactively promoted. You don’t have to write new content all the time, even changing images can keep a website looking fresh.

3. Optimise your website
Many businesses have websites built and neglect to optimize them, or don’t optimize them properly – just sticking a few title and meta tags across the site isn’t enough. Plan your optimization and do it properly. You may not see the benefits from the work overnight, but it will be worth it after a few months when you see your website ranking highly for your target keywords.

4. Check out your competitors
Do you know what your competitors are up to? Are you checking up on them regularly? You’re lucky if you’re in an industry where very few competitors are bothering to promote their website. Most businesses are now seeing the benefits of online marketing so you need to make sure you know who your competitors are online and what they’re doing to promote their websites so that you can stay one step ahead.

5. Find linking opportunities
If your website is quite new and not very well established, finding sites to obtain quality links from will help with rankings and drive traffic. However, it can be very time consuming, so make sure you use any opportunities to gain links – sites you come across whose target audience complements your own site, posting on industry forums, blogs or social networking, writing articles, and submitting to any relevant directories.

6. Start a blog
If you haven’t delved into the blogosphere, it can be a great way to add value to your website. Blogs are free and easy to set up, it’s the posting that takes the most time. But don’t let that put you off – you can write about anything you want, and search engines love blogs as they’re updated regularly with fresh content.

7. Email your customers & prospects
If you’re in business, then you should have a list of clients and prospects that you want to keep in touch with. One of the best ways of doing this is by using email as it’s cheap, easy and emails can be sent out quickly. Don’t just rely on the database that you already have, but start to grow your list by encouraging sign ups on your website (use a free report as an incentive), and asking people when you meet them if they’d like to receive your newsletter. Send out a newsletter regularly and make sure your business is kept in mind with your prospects.

8. Participate
Blogging and social networking is all about participation, and it’s getting very big on the net. If meeting people and networking online is your thing, then try out the free social networks and build up your contacts. Again, it’s time that’s needed rather than cash. You don’t need to target all the networks as there are hundreds of them but find a few that you like and stick to them.

9. Advertise online
This does require a budget, but search advertising (or pay per click advertising) can complement an existing search engine optimization campaign or help you get visitors to your site if your site is new. If you go down this route, then make sure you manage it properly – don’t just set it up and leave it, but make sure you check how the campaign is performing, and most importantly, what return you’re getting from it.

10. Measure returns
Whatever online marketing or advertising you do, as with search advertising, you need to measure your return. Where's your time and money best spent? It’s likely you’ll need to try out a few things before you know what works best, but once you know where your best customers are coming from, concentrate your efforts on those areas.

By trying out and sticking to a mixture of the above resolutions, or all of them if you can, your website will fly next year!

Category: General Online Marketing