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4 Ways to Optimize Your Website for Inbound Marketing

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Posted by Laura Amézquita on Sep 30, 2014 7:00:00 AM

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Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy that has quickly grown in popularity due to its cost effectiveness, making it a particularly popular marketing strategy for small to mid-sized businesses. While there are numerous strategies involved in inbound marketing, it all revolves around your website. To get the most out of your inbound marketing campaign, optimize your website in the following four ways.


Make your site easy for visitors to navigate

Because everything you do in terms of online marketing is eventually going to make its way back to your website, it’s important that it's easy to navigate. A site that is difficult to navigate is going to cause several problems. First of all, you’ll lose visitors that will never come back. Secondly, visitors that stay on your site won’t know what you want them to do.

Here are a few elements of your website that will make navigation easier:

  • Fast load times – Your website and all of your pages need to load at an acceptable rate. If a visitor can’t load your website page within five seconds, there’s a good chance she will hit the back button immediately. Waiting for pages to load hinders their ability to navigate your website.

  • Clear categories – Your website should have clearly marked categories on the homepage, such as a contact us section, an about us section, a blog section, all with lead generation elements embedded. You want your visitors to be able to find what they are looking for without having to look very hard.

  • Accurate navigation titles – Visitors should be able to know what your navigational links are taking them to before even clicking on them. Don’t’ use misleading navigation text as this will confuse and annoy visitors – to the point where they’ll leave your site.

  • A working search function – If visitors are looking for something specific on your website that isn’t broad enough to be labeled as a category, then they should be able to easily find it using your search function. Make sure your search function compensates for misspellings and shows related items as well.

  •  Minimal clutter – Your website needs to have a professional look to it. Adding too much to your homepage, from different links to pictures to flash animation and more, will clutter your page and make it difficult for visitors to find what they are looking for. Keep your website streamlined.


Build your site to generate leads

One of the main goals of your website should be to convert visitors into leads that you can nurture over the long-term in order to build loyalty and trust. This is what inbound marketing is, after all. The following are the elements that your website should have in order to ensure you are converting your leads:.

  • Calls to action – A call to action is a button or line of text that encourages visitors to find your offer.

  • Landing pages – The landing page is a separate page that you call to action should lead visitors to. It should advertise your offer as well as include the form that visitors can fill out to receive that offer.

  • Forms – The form that visitors fill out should be on your landing page. You can use this to obtain not only their names and email addresses but also basic information to help you create a more accurate customer profile.


Marketing automation tips

Marketing automation software allows you to take traditionally manual tasks and automate them, thereby saving you time and energy and making your website more efficient in the process. Here are a few things you can do with marketing automation software:

  • Email marketing – You can segment your email list and have your emails automatically sent to each segment on the dates you signify.

  • Schedule content – Releasing content on a regular basis is important but time consuming. Create your content at the beginning of the week and automate it to be released at designated times throughout the week.

  • Schedule shares – Schedule your content to be shared on your social media channels at different times during the week and the day.


Marketing analytics helps you optimize for customers

Website analytics are important if you want to be able to pinpoint what is and what isn’t working about your website design. Being able to do this allows you to adjust your website and improve your inbound marketing. The following are some of the most important metrics to pay attention to:

  • Total visits

  • New visits

  • Organic traffic

  • Referral traffic

  • Direct traffic

  • Conversions by source

  • Website bounce rate


Use these 4 tips to build a website that attracts potential buyers, converts them to leads and build a healthy sales pipeline.


 

Topics: Website Design

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