Give Your Website Some TLC

Does your business website need a little tender loving care from time to time?

When running a company, your website is the heart and soul of your ability to promote your brand. From describing what your company does to selling online products and/or services, your place on the Internet should never be taken for granted.

That said how many times have you as a consumer visited a business website and left unimpressed and/or disappointed?

Unfortunately, the answer is probably more times than not.

Reviews Are Necessary, Not an Option

If you want to make your website the rock star of all sites in your particular niche, file away these tips:

• Appearance – Start off by reviewing how your website looks to the outside world. Sure, you may think nothing beats it, but get some unbiased views on just how it appears. Is it colorful with many images or too blah looking with an inordinate amount of copy to it? While you certainly want relative and authoritative copy on it (see more below), most no one is going to sit there and read post after post if there are no images and/or charts or graphs to balance out the copy;
  
  
• Operation – Even with great looking content, your website can be a potential land mine for visitors if you continuously have broken links and/or your site takes forever and a day to load or crashes routinely. Periodical reviews are critical to make sure your site loads quickly, has links that work without problems, and has easy to find contact information. Whether you are a small, mid-size or large company, make it easy for visitors to find pertinent contact details. Upper management names/titles/email addresses and those of department heads need to be available. Also make sure your site has simple but important features such as your company’s mission statement and what products/services you offer.
  
  
• Substance – When it comes to website content, how would your site rate? Do you have content serving the readers or are you mainly trying to attract Google and other search engines? Your goal is to have relevant and authoritative content, content which by in and of itself will get you a better overall Google ranking. If you have content that is irrelevant and/or duplicative, you are setting your site up for possible Google penalties. Another problem is you will see less traffic coming to your site. From press releases to blog posts (including those from authoritative guests in your niche), make sure the copy serves a good purpose

While these three areas of a business website sound simple to compile and update, you’d be surprised how many sites are missing one, two or all three of these important items.

Take the time to give your website some attention and consumers will likely do so in return.