Website templates are a great way to save time designing your website’s layout and create a professional site that enhances your online presence.
Once you’ve found your dream template, there’s still more work to be done. You’ll need to promote your website and keep adapting it to ensure that you meet the needs of your readers and that it reaches your target audience.
That’s all particularly important when you’re using your website to earn money, either for your business, a side-hustle, or a creative project.
To help you get started, we outline some of the techniques that you need to consider when you’re promoting and growing your new website.
Learn the Basics
If you’re new to the world of website management and don’t understand SEO and digital marketing, then you should learn about the basics before you begin. Check out online resources and read books to learn a little about the basics of SEO and what Google believes makes for a rankable website. With this information at your fingertips, you’ll be ready to start managing your website and making a success of it.
Make sure that you take your information from several sources, as many SEO techniques and tactics are opinions formed from experience rather than definite facts. So, you’ll want to explore a range of blogs and articles to create an informed opinion for yourself.
Identify Your Target Keywords
The first step in any digital marketing campaign is to identify your target keywords and phrases. Learn how to conduct keyword research to find the terms that your target readership is searching for online.
If you’re an expert in your niche or subject, then you might believe that you know the main terms that your readers are searching for, but you’d be surprised. Each keyword and phrase has a unique volume, which shows you how often it gets searched for, so you should aim to target high-volume keywords that get a lot of traffic.
Create Quality Content Regularly
Now you know your target keywords, you can start creating quality blog content that will help you to entice new readers, generate leads, showcase your expertise, and more. Blog posts and other online resources such as podcast episodes, instructional videos, whitepapers, and others can help you to improve your SEO and showcase your expertise.
All of this content takes a lot of time to create, so you could consider working with a professional writer, videographer, or content creator. These outsourced experts can help you to edit, proofread and even put together some of this media to save you time while still ensuring that your site always has enough resources and content to entice new readers and keep existing followers interested.
Improve Off-Page SEO
While on-page SEO is something that you can control, you still need to think about off-page optimisation. That means working with other websites to build quality links back to your website. Link building comes in many forms, including using the broken link method, creating high-quality content and promoting it, bespoke outreach, and more.
All of this work can take a lot of time, effort, and creativity. If you don’t have the time and skills to conduct regular, quality link building in-house, then consider using the services of a custom link building agency like UK Linkology. Their team can take on the hard work and ensure that your website gets a steady stream of quality backlinks.
Set Up Social Media Accounts on Relevant Platforms
Your website might be your main platform from which you can share your ideas and bolster your business online, but it’s not the only virtual space that you need to populate. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others are also vital for your online presence. By setting up accounts on these platforms, you can promote your website and content to a wide audience.
Most social media platforms offer free accounts, with the option to pay to boost your posts and advertise your services. Each of these platforms targets a different audience and offers a different type of content. For example, Tik Tok is a platform that focuses predominantly on a younger audience and offers them short-form video content. On the other hand, LinkedIn is a professional social media platform that aims to help a diverse range of users network with individuals in their corporate sector. So, you need to find relevant platforms that will help you to engage with your target audience.
Stay on Top of Your Online Reputation
As well as social media, there are also many online forums, review sites, and other communal platforms where individuals can rate, review and discuss websites and businesses. Many individuals trust comments written online, even if they don’t have any reputable source.
As such, your online reputation could be damaged by malicious individuals, your competitors, or someone whose opinions differ from the ones offered by your website.
That means that you need to learn how to trawl the internet for mentions of your website or company and deal with any negative comments that you might find. When you find negative comments, you can try to communicate with the site that hosts them to get them removed if they are slanderous or just plain inaccurate. Alternatively, you could consider responding to the comments and showcasing your professionalism. Being proactive and tackling negative comments about your website will help you to maintain a positive online reputation.
Keep Updating Your Website
A website is never really finished. Once you’ve got it looking just right, it’ll only be a few weeks before your style looks outdated, and if you don’t keep adding new content, then you’ll get overtaken by your competitors on your target search engine results pages.
Also, Google releases updates two or three times a year, meaning that SEO standards will change throughout each year. So, you’ll need to keep updating your site regularly and adding new external backlinks and blog posts. Adapting your site regularly will ensure that you stay ahead of your competitors and remain visible online.