There are many marketing paths, but the main road always leads back to your website, whether that is email, newsletters, search-engine marketing, banner ads, press releases, blogs, RSS, social networking, videos; sooner or later, they all point to your home page, a landing page, your blog, some sort of web page.

A website that is fulfilling its potential and performing well is one that not only attracts a lot of the right sort of visitors who like what is on offer, but that once they arrive they

1. Buy

2. Return

3. Recommend

So how do you do boost your website's performance to it's highest potential so you get all three conversions happening?

1.Take control and fine tune
At many companies, IT is still something that is a mystery, outsourced to the IT departments or third-party webmasters for site updates, forcing you to go through someone else every time you need to change a comma or optimize your site.

A web content management system (CMS) gives you the ability to take control of creating and updating site content yourself. Many Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products are now available for a reasonable monthly fee, putting web CMS functionality within reach for even the smallest businesses. Alternatively you can start a blog on one of the many platforms available - they do vary as to their accessibility, howwever, so you do need to to be a little web savvy to get the most out them.

2. The customer is king (or queen)
Your site is your brand's best and most important shop window and it should be an easy and satisfying experience. At the very least it must be easy to use, easy to navigate, relevant to the target audience and pleasing to the eye.

Start by doing your research into what websites in your niche have the highest ranking and which you particularly like using. Make notes about what you like and why, and ask your colleagues and people in your niche to tell you what they like and dislike.

3. Put your site on the map
The first step to creating a site that search engines can find is your basic site infrastructure – what is sometimes called the back end. This encompasses a wide range of search engine optimization techniques, from creating alt tags to publishing XML site maps to naming URLs.

The second step is to add relevant, strategic and effective keyword phrases throughout your site. Search engines prioritize web pages based on many factors, including whether a particular search term appears in the page title or headline and how many times the keyword is used on a page.

Winning the keywords' race is not a one-off effort – like housework or painting the Forth Bridge it has to be done again and again and again because it involves figuring out which keywords and phrases are currently most effective for your brand and products, placing these keywords on your site, creating hyperlink strategies, optimizing individual pages for specific keyword phrases, and continually monitoring performance and making adjustments.

And if you haven’t got the time or the energy to do this then there are many companies out there who will promise to do just that. However, many of these promise more than they deliver so be careful that you don’t hand your money over for less than fabulous results – it’s a long and hard slog and the best companies will tell you it’s an ongoing job.

4. Connect, connect, connect
Keywords aren’t the only thing search engines look at to determine your ranking. Their algorithms also attempt to determine how popular and interconnected your site is, and they do that by tracking the number and quality of both inbound and outbound links to your site.

Using social media technology, such as blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, videos, podcasting, interactive surveys, and discussion boards, is one way to increase your site’s visibility by increasing the inbound links.

Your website’s CMS should make it easy and painless to implement blogs and RSS feeds that help generate those important inbound links from other sites and blogs. More interactive Web 2.0 commodities are often available as widgets that you can embed directly into your site, with minimal technical difficulty.

5. Be consistent
If visitors are confused they won’t hang around to explain to you why or ask you questions, they’ll simply click away. Content reuse and consistency distinguishes a well-managed brand from a scattered one. Your website, landing pages, emails, banner ads and flash video should look, feel and sound like parts of a whole.

How do we do that? Through design that uses the same logos, images, style, fonts, and colours, and through copywriting that gives the same key messages in the appropriate way for each individual section. And if you would like us to give you a free analysis of the brand message your website issending out contact us at theteam@thefunkyangency.co.uk.

6. Make good use of web analytics
There is simply no better way to measure and improve the effectiveness of your site than web analytics, which tell you how visitors are finding your site.

Web analysis illustrates which keywords are driving traffic to your site, and more importantly, conversions and sales. They show which pages are working and which ones are not. And from this information you can work out when and how to turn to reach your ROI destination faster. It also advises you to back up or take a U-turn if you have get lost along the way. Because websites are not inert pictures, to be created and then ignored. They are dynamic, evolving organisms and the best constantly adjust to meet their customer’s requirements. You can do this yourself by employing web analytics such as ClickTracks, WebTrends or Google Analytics. In addition, the best web CMS systems now integrate with the web analytics you choose – ask them for details before you sign up.

There is no secret to raising your website’s performance, it just takes a consistent approach and lots of hard work!

© Claire Burdett. No content to be reproduced without written approval of the author.

Claire Burdett is a Writer, Journalist, and Editor, Marketing Expert, Home Business Coach, and Director of Funky Angel.
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The opinions expressed here are those of the individual writers and are not necessarily representative of Funky Angel.

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