As the new year marches on, you might be thinking that now is the perfect time to look at your digital assets and take stock or reshape. In fact, it’s always the perfect time to do an informal inventory to see how your website and social media channels measure up. The truth is that the digital landscape is constantly changing. Not always by leaps and bounds, but small changes in algorithms or best practices crop up on the scene and adjustments are needed. With consistent monitoring, website updates can become routine tweaks, more like tidying up than a deep clean.
Whether you’re overhauling an existing strategy or starting one that’s entirely new, it’s always best to start with a strong architecture as the foundation of your digital strategy. If you’re questioning whether your foundation is sturdy, or you’re starting from scratch, here are 3 key elements for a successful audiology website.
Don’t underestimate good design:
Think of your website as a customer’s first entry point to your business. It only makes sense to invest time and capital into a professional, well-designed site. 38% of users leave a website if it’s unattractive, so if visual esthetics aren’t your forte, hire a designer or enlist a talented friend. Begin with a pleasing color palette, smart use of white space, clean and professional layout design, and a readable yet slick font choice. Pulling those elements into your brick and mortar space, or using your existing print or physical collateral is step one in consistent branding.
Beyond an appealing and professional site design, you must also prioritize mobile viewing of your website. Back in 2016, more than 50% of google searches were performed on mobile devices. Today, that number is even higher, so your site needs to be mobile friendly. The best way to do this is with responsive design that can automatically accommodate being viewed on all kinds of screen sizes.
Design also informs the ‘path’ your website encourages users to take. Smart design has a clear, concise message and conducts folks from your homepage to a definitive call to action. This could be signing up for your mailing list, scheduling a free hearing test, or any number of action-oriented destinations.
One last thought on design is to make social media channels clearly apparent and easy to get to. It is, after all, still the golden age of social media, and having customers interact with your social presence is highly valuable.
Be found by Google – SEO:
Having a site sitting out there on the Internet without a good SEO strategy is the very definition of a lost opportunity. It’s like forgetting to hang out your sign in front of your shop, or even worse, it’s like burying your sign in the backyard. You’ve invested in great design and the effort it takes to put it in front of people — namely your future customers — is absolutely worth it.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and there’s enough thought and content surrounding SEO for it’s own blog post. The short of it is that search engines, like Google, have a lengthy and somewhat secretive algorithm that determines how your website appears in search results. That’s known as your ranking. Rankings can be influenced by a number of factors, such as keywords. You can use target keywords that are relevant to your business in your page titles, meta tags, headings and in your website’s content so that your potential customers click on your website as a result of a Google search. A large and robust SEO strategy can propel your website and your business to the next level.
Include a blog:
Ten years ago, blogging meant long form writing which took a lot of time and investment on the part of the person running the blog. However, these days blogs are more nimble and concise, often incorporating images, infographics and video to visually engage and educate your customers.
A well-maintained blog can help position you as an industry leader. When you post topics which resonate with your audience and show your knowledge, you are marketing your skills and know-how for your business, service, and products.
If you want to drive even more traffic to your website, a blog is a great place to strategically place keywords on your site to increase your SEO ranking. Your master list of keywords can be expanded beyond the headers and tags on your site to reach for even more nuanced searches or your core keywords can be reinforced here.
Blogs are fantastic real estate to place those really share-able items you create and then post on your social media channels. That’s an added incentive to keep a consistent content calendar for your blog. The fresh content is also highly attractive to web crawlers and will boost your search engine ranking.
Choose AuDSEO
If you want a successful website, leave the digital strategy to AuDSEO. Here at AuDSEO, we’re constantly keeping every aspect of SEO in mind so that you don’t have to. Let us take care of all your SEO marketing needs while you attend to the important work of providing the best hearing health care.