Name: Smart Cow Digital Marketing and Website Designer
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How to generate more leads from your website

12/22/202402/14/2022 by scmarketing

You want your business to grow but you need more leads to nurture. So, we’ve gathered our tips to help you generate more leads from your website.

1. Have you identified your target market?

The first thing to do is make sure that the people who are visiting your website are coming back to it intentionally, rather than by accident or through a referral from an online search engine. The more targeted the visitors are, the more leads you will generate. The easiest way to achieve this for local businesses is to use Google Analytics.

Start by analysing your traffic using the website analytics tool built into Google Analytics. You can extract all kinds of useful information about your visitors, including their demographics and the types of pages they are spending time on most. This will help you to identify your target market, both in terms of who they are and what kind of information they are interested in.

Depending on the industry you are operating in, this might be highly specific or more general.

2. Get your message across in the headline

The headline on any page of content is very important, but it’s even more important when you are trying to encourage people to complete a form or download an asset from your website. The headline needs to be engaging and, most importantly, it needs to give people a reason to take action and part with their contact details.

3. Optimise your website for Google's search engine

Once you have identified your target market and created some content that is targeted towards your audience, you will want this information to appear as high up in the search results as possible, giving more opportunity that your website will be clicked through from the search engine.

In order for this to happen, your website needs to be search engine optimised. This is a process whereby you change the coding on certain parts of your website so that it meets Google’s criteria for including in its index and returning in results when people search for information related to your industry.

Some things you can do include:

Completing H1 and H2 titles on pages
Completing the meta title and description
Adding Alt descriptions to images
Naming URLs with keywords so it’s really clear for a search engine to know what’s on the webpage

Add internal links throughout your website to ease navigation.

4. Integrate your website with social media

Once you have created the content on your website, you are going to need people to see it. A great way of achieving this is by integrating different social media platforms into your website design. This includes links to Facebook pages or YouTube videos that allow customers to get more information on a particular subject, or to share a piece of content with their friends and followers.

5. Make it easy for customers to find what they need

Your website should be an information resource for your target market, not just a place where people sign up to download assets from you. In order for this to happen, you need to make sure that your website is easy to navigate.

Your homepage should have a clear hierarchy that makes it easy for people to find the information they want – even if they don’t use search engines to navigate from page to page, instead clicking from one part of the website to another.

6. Use imagery to bring your website to life

Finally – we’ve made sure that our content is targeted towards the right people. We now need to make it engaging and interesting. A great way of achieving this is by adding eye-catching imagery to the design of your website, creating a holistic look and feel enhances your brand identity. Your website should make people feel excited about engaging with you, which is why high quality imagery is so important.

Web design Croydon

We create professionally designed websites that offer visitors a simple way of finding out more about your business and how you can help them.

Find out more about our web design services in Croydon.

New Year, New Website!

12/22/202401/04/2022 by scmarketing

It’s the new year and a time for resolutions. For small business owners now is the time to set your goals for your business growth plans. As part of your new year’s resolutions perhaps it’s time to refresh your website?

At the centre of your digital world is your website, but so often we hear that website’s are difficult to navigate and visitors leave all too quickly before a lead capture form is completed. So, is it time for a website refresh? Here’s our top tips for a review of your current site to understand what you need to consider for creating a quality website that will be found in search engine results pages.

1. Build your website with a good CMS

You need a good framework to build your website on. These days that means using Content Management Systems (CMS). Once the website is designed and developed, it enables easy upload of information so that content updates can be managed inhouse.

2. Simple and engaging content

Review all your marketing collateral and decide what you’ll use on the website and what needs to be cut out. For an accountancy firm, think about the services you offer and provide clear, precise information about each. If you think of who your target client is, then write content that speaks to them.

3. Easy website navigation

When you design the menu and site map, think about the layout and whether it’s relevant and easy to navigate. You want visitors to find things quickly to help reduce the bounce rate and to keep them looking through your website for longer.

4. Call to action

It’s not just about a clear menu, but it’s also about adding clear call to action buttons. These are often used for inbound marketing campaigns to drive visitors to take action such as download a form or ebook or sign up to a newsletter while collecting an contact email address to build your database.

5. Imagery

This forms part of your content too. It makes the website more engaging and easier on the eye. But don’t forget to use the right size as too large and this could impact on the speed of your website loading. Does your current website have good imagery that reflects your brand well?

6. Blog

Does your website have a blog? A blog is vital for a business website to be seen in organic google search. Why? Because it provides a dedicated space for uploading fresh content regularly. This keeps the website up to date and engaging for prospects, current clients and also the search engines.

7. Website optimisation

When it comes to digital marketing, Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is probably something you often hear about, but why is it so important for your website? Optimising your site can help your website be found in search engine results pages (SERPs) such as Google or Bing. Any agency you work with will tell you about Meta Descriptions, Alt Tags and H1/H2 headings. A web designer can provide you with simple training on this once your website has been developed. Or you can engage a digital marketing agency to manage this for you moving forward. You can read more about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) here.

8. Back up your website!

If you’ve not already been regularly backing up your website, add this to your new year’s resolutions. If you’ve worked thorugh this list of considerations for your website and feel that you need to create a new site then make sure that your web designer incorporates regular back ups as part of their process and ongoing management fee.

Is it time you had a new website?

If you can get all this working yourself, then you will be off to a great start. However, if you need help with your website design and development book a consultation with us.

Content – the foundation of search

12/22/202409/14/2021 by scmarketing

Just like a bricks and mortar shop you need to build a website on good foundations. There are numerous frameworks that allow website owners to maintain and add content. These are called Content Management Systems (CMS) such as WordPress. The beauty of a CMS website is that it allows the user to easily update content especially blogs.

Hubspot says that: “Text will always be the foundation of search so making sure the text around your website’s assets is descriptive will help them rank well in search.”

In a nutshell, this means that the content you add to your website is a key element in generating leads via search engines. This is because if you have relevant content in relation to what someone types into search to find you’re making the search engines job in finding your business and returning you in the results page a lot easier. With this in mind, here’s some tips to consider to help improve the content on your website for search engine optimisation (SEO).

Great content

To get your message across to your target audience, and Google, keep content relevant and to the point. This is essential to help you be found in search engine results pages and it helps to position you as a thought leader in your field of expertise.

Potential clients and search engines need to see you as an expert. This is where a blog helps as you can add fresh content regularly. Your blog should have tips and advice that answer your target audience’s pain points and issues.

If you are writing the blog posts yourself and struggle to think of new content every week it’s worth noting that 51% of companies say that updating their old content has proven a great tactic for creating blogs (Source: SEMrush, 2019 via Hubspot).

There are more tips about writing engaging content in our recent blog which covers creating offers, developing case studies and topics of interest.

Keywords

When you embark on writing a blog or creating a new website it’s worth thinking about what you want to be found for in search. This will help define what is on your list of keywords or phrases to include in your content moving forward.

Working with a digital marketing agency or using a tool such as Semrush can help you identify the volume of searches associated with a particular keyword as well as its difficulty to get ranked for. This can help you hone the list of keywords further so that you have a good balance of words and phrases.

Understanding that 49% of users say they use Google to discover or find a new item or product, being found in search engine results pages should be a key part of your SEO strategy. (Source: Think with Google, 2019 via Hubspot )

A picture tells a great story

Don’t just think of content as the written word. Sometimes less on a webpage is more and breaking a page up with relevant images will help make the page easier to read, builds your brand and helps visitors get a feel for who you are.

Make sure your images are optimised for use on websites. You may need to resize them before you upload as large images can impact site speed. The first five seconds of page-load time is crucial as it can impact on conversion rates. Website conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42% with each additional second of load time (Source: Portent, 2019). Also remember to complete your image alt tag on the backend. This is good for SEO.

Can website visitors easily move from webpage to webpage?

Make sure your website menu is easy to read and navigate. Ideally a webpage should be no more than 2 clicks – preferably 1 click – from the homepage.

Create bold and clear call to actions with directional text so visitors know what to do. Make it easy for them. Add a call to action near the top of a blog as well as the end to help with engagement. Phrases to encourage action include:

Download our ebook
Book a meeting
Contact us for more information, email us on…
Get involved by registering at….
If you want to attend the networking session, contact…
Free website review

Internal links throughout content especially in blogs also helps guide visitors back to services and products where you mention them on the site.

Digital marketing Croydon

We are a Croydon based digital marketing agency offering SEO services including blog writing, keyword research, local SEO, Google Ad campaigns to help improve your online presence and visibility online as your SEO experts.

5 tips for your website

12/22/202407/12/2021 by scmarketing

Your website should be the focus of your digital marketing strategy. It is where links from your social media channels, email campaigns, and Pay per Click (PPC) advertising should lead to. Therefore, it is critical that your web design is easy to navigate, engaging, informative and attractive. Here, Smart Cow Marketing offers some tips for your website.

1. Relevant content

Be creative in what you have to say yet keep it simple. Work out the main message on each page and focus on the best way to get this across to your target audience. Keep it clear, concise, and interesting.

2. Keep in mind your target audience

You should design your website with a target audience in mind. Are you building a business for young professionals? Or experts in a specific industry? We recommend creating an online persona, an example of your stereotypical customer. This will help you create content for your website so that you have the right tone of voice for your audience and keywords that will help with search engine optimisation (SEO).

3. Ease of use and navigation

Before making your website public make sure it is easy to navigate and works across different devices. Perhaps get friends and colleagues to test it out and get their feedback. It’s also a great exercise to do if you’ve had a website for a number of years. You might be familiar with it, but overtime perhaps things aren’t as slick as they once were. So always keep an eye on webpage navigation and get those bold call-to-action buttons in a prominent place.

4. Use images

Images help tell a story across your website, it is often the first thing the visitor will notice. Images and the overall visual design can be the difference between someone reading your webpage or your visitor quickly moving away from your website. Images can also help to boost SEO so make sure things like your alt descriptions are completed on the backend.

5. Website backup

The most important thing is to keep a backup. Hackers and robots scour the internet for websites with weaknesses.

Web design Croydon

At Smart Cow Marketing we offer a free website review. We can analyse your website’s performance and develop a plan to boost your website’s potential. We also focus on other aspect of digital marketing such as social media, SEO, PPC, and email marketing.

We are a marketing agency based in South London and work with small businesses, as well as those in accountancy and the construction sector. Drop us an email at Saymoo@smart-cow.com or give us a call on 020 3137 1826.