How to Boost Your Search Rankings with Effective Branding

Once you have successfully accomplished driving traffic to your site, your next step is figuring out customer engagement. You need to engage your website visitors so that they will remain on your site longer, which improves time on site as well as bounce rates. This is very important, as you want to engage and convert your visitors. Plus, those statistics will make your website much more appealing to search engines. So, here are a few ways you can improve search metrics:

1. Speed Up Your Site Load Time.

When Google ranks search results, they look at the speed of websites. If yours takes an excessive amount of time to load, then it is going to take a dip in the search results. Not only that, but visitors won’t stay on your site if it takes too long to load. They’re not going to stick around to see if your site has the information that they are seeking. They’ll simply go see if they can find it on a site that loads faster so they can gain access to that information faster.

Now, don’t worry if you are not a tech-worthy individual, as there are still several things you can do with your site without technical knowledge. You simply need to make sure that you site has what it needs and not anything more.

What exactly does that mean, you ask? It is simple. If you have large media files, they are going to take far too long download. If you have an image that can be successfully displayed at 300 by 300 pixels, then upload it at that size. Otherwise, if you try to make it larger, say 2500 pixels wide, it’s going to take a while for browsers to use code to downsize that image to the necessary size (for the browser size). Make it easier on browsers by using smaller-sized media to begin with. If you need the larger images, then use quality optimizing and caching plug-ins.

The takeaway here is that you need to look at your site, delete what isn’t necessary, and keep what is necessary so that your site can perform better and faster overall.

2. Simplify Your Site.

Have you ever gone to a website and found it exceedingly difficult to find what you were looking for due to a menu that was overly complicated and a website that was simply cluttered? A simple website, well, makes things a lot simpler. This, in turn, creates less stress, and leads to a much more pleasurable experience for the web user. By simplifying your website, you can make things a lot easier for people and their mind and eyes.

So, take the time and put on your customer’s shoes. Develop a clear path for them to use, which should include the moment they land on your site, what they will see when they land, and where they should go from there.

Your menu needs to short and sweet. However, don’t strip away too much, as it is still needs to maintain its usability. If there is a page on your website that does not have a true purpose or value for a customer, remove it.

3. Provide a Story for Your Customers.

You probably hear it all the time, but tell your customers a story. Your website is essentially one big story of your company. Share some photos and videos and give your customers a story that they’ll want to hear. Present your brand to the entire world. Let customers know what your brand means and what it stands for.

However, you must be consistent as you do this. Consistency is how you gain the trust and loyalty of your customers. Consistency is how you will prevent any brand confusion and it is also how you brand will rise above the rest.

4. Make Clear Statements.

While it would be great to be one of those “Jack of all Trades,” the truth of the matter is that you probably aren’t, and your product or service is probably don’t going to be the solution to all of the world’s problems.

Your site is the first and the last impression for website visitors. Therefore, it is imperative that you make clear statements on what you have to offer and how it can help them. That is the most important thing that you drive home before you dive into any other topics.

Once you are able to grab the attention of your visitors, you should start going into details on your company. You need to make them feel like this product or service is exactly what they have been searching for. Then, once they read your pitch, they’ll be sold. Your website needs to first focus on the experience, and then it can focus on the product/service.

In order to really improve customer engagement, you must think like the customer. What type of information would you find most useful? What is least useful? Try to determine what would create a pleasant user experience for you and what simply is unnecessary and go from there.

Feel free to contact our team at WebDetail for more information or if you have any questions.