The internet is full of fresh, exciting content being published every single day. Unfortunately, a lot of the good stuff is drowned out by companies, bot networks, or simply subpar creators, who pump out low-quality, low-effort blogs, and websites and make the gems really difficult to find through shady SEO practices that let them position themselves higher on search engine results pages.
Does that sound like something you struggle with? You’re not alone. The fact is that many web designers and content creators don’t get the attention they deserve because their websites aren’t good enough to attract people. For example, something as simple as using the right WordPress photo gallery plugin can generate more attention around your photography portfolio. Optimizing your website for search engine crawlers is important, but you should also remember to make the user experience as pleasant and flawless as you can.
If you’re at a loss when it comes to how you can improve your website even more, don’t worry! In this article, you’ll find some valuable tips that will help you captivate your audience and create more buzz around your art, business, or whatever else you’re using your website for!
Don’t Overlook Social Media
When it comes to marketing a website, or any type of online presence, for that matter, social media is the most powerful tool you can use to achieve your desired results. Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter can help popularize your website if used correctly, but you should be careful if you don’t want to get burnt.
What Works on Social Media?
You probably already know that networking online is important for your business, and that is only true if you have the right strategy for it. You need to know how to promote your website in a way that not only reaches your fans, followers, and customers but also brings them back to you again and again! How can you do that?
Social Media Is About Relationships
The most crucial thing you need to understand about social media is relationship building. You can try as hard as you want when it comes to promotions on these platforms, but it will get you nowhere unless you know how to build meaningful relationships with other users. In fact, you should set up your account so that your posts are largely made up of pure content meant for others! If you can focus on having genuine interactions with your followers instead of promoting yourself all the time, then you will see results far greater than simple PPC campaigns or paid ads could ever give you.
SEO Matters
Many web creators overlook search engine optimization, deeming it redundant and unnecessary. In fact, not knowing the right SEO practices can cost your websites more visits than you can imagine. Implementing them will help your websites to shine above the clutter and rank higher in search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
The main focus for any web designer should be to ensure that the website caters to the needs of its visitors. The designer must consider the usability of the website and its content, navigation, mobile-friendly features, relevance, etc. while designing it. The right way to go about it is by conducting user testing. This process ensures that you are designing a website that’s easy and intuitive to navigate.
When it comes to some of the more technical aspects of SEO, designing your website in WordPress will give you the advantage of having access to many SEO plugins that will make the whole process a lot easier.
Review Your Content Strategy
Publishing content is about much more than just having quality texts, videos, or photographs to share with your audience. You need to know how to publish them, and more importantly, when to publish them. It might also be a good idea to stay up to date with the latest trends within your niche, to make sure your publications are relevant. Revising your content plan to make it more appealing to users will give your numbers a boost.
Reconsider Your Design Choices
All the optimization in the world will do you no good if your website is considered plain ugly by its visitors. Gather some user feedback and get to work on improving the design and overall look of your site. Having a website that is visually appealing to users is crucial because no one is going to stick around if the site is a nightmare to look at, even if they would normally keep them on the page for many hours.
The Bottom Line
There are plenty of things you can do to make your website more interesting and appealing to users. You should start with the basics, such as making sure that it works on mobile devices and that your hosting services are good enough. If your site is slow to load and difficult to navigate, even the most interesting content in the world won’t save it from disappearing into the internet. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you need to stay up to date with your users’ interests and expectations. Use all social media platforms to your advantage and interact with your followers often. This will help you stay relevant and keep pushing out high-quality content that people will want to click on.