The Best Websites of 2015

Here we are in Q4 2014, approaching the new year, and so many marketers are ignoring the fork in the road. It’s time to commit to your marketing goals for the next twelve months, and if you’re anything like most companies your website is in dire need of attention.

So let’s start with the basics: what’s the most important page of your website? If you thought “the homepage” then you’ve been tricked. The answer is “the most visited page.”

Earning the best website of 2015 requires taking a look at the analytics and statistics of 2014. Any marketer or strategist who operates without looking at the data available to them is missing the point.

Know how people use your website first before you presuppose why people would find value in your business. That information may reveal the need to make big changes. For example, if visitors spend less than a minute on your news page you may consider updating it more often with blog posts or adding other engaging features.

With all we know about the need for search engine optimization (SEO), why is it so difficult to increase your traffic year over year? First of all, you may not be keeping pace with your competitors. Secondly, and more importantly, the algorithms and strategies for how to rank higher change more often than you think. Stay up to date or risk obsolescence. Consider these tips:

1. SEO experts agree that average content with super keyword integration is now trumped by more natural writing styles. Context and originality over coding.
2. You may be spinning your wheels if you’re employing the old tactic of link sharing and adding longer page text just for the sake of it. Due in part to social media networks, shareable and applicable images or video might do more for you than all that keyword-rich text.
3. Specificity and niche are key. Sought-after rankings for short keyword combinations are in high demand and come at a high cost, but ranking for a more specific keyword combination gives you a higher probability of converting to actual click-throughs. In other words, it would be great to rank highly for “website design”, but it may be more lucrative for Marketing Matters to be known as “South Florida’s best website designer.”

Have you taken notice of your website analytics, and if so, what have you noticed changing? Contact me at eric@marketingmatters.net for a free website analysis if you need some help turning it into one of the best websites of 2015 today.

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Eric Lachs is the Director of Client Relations at Marketing Matters (www.marketingmatters.net), a leading South Florida marketing and public relations firm specializing in technology and related industries.