5 Tips For A Better Website

Is your website helping you get more customers or hurting you?

Hey guys, Chris Loomis here, owner of Autopilot Marketing. We are a digital marketing agency who helps local businesses get found online by magnifying their online presence.

I just wanted to shoot this quick video for you to help you optimize your website. If you are a small business owner and you want to get found online, and you think you're losing customers because you're not being found or if you want more customers then this video is for you. Because today I'm going to show you how to evaluate your website to see if you're losing traffic.

There are five key things you should be looking for.

1) First thing you should be looking at and the first thing you need for your website is to make sure your website is mobile friendly.

That might seem obvious nowadays, but it's not uncommon to see websites that are older, and not mobile friendly. Or maybe the text is off to the side or the menu can't be found.

Those things are very, very important as Google puts a high rating on this as something you need. There's around 900 metrics that Google uses to rank a website. So you want to make sure that your website is mobile friendly. It's really a key element. Over 50% of all traffic search results come from mobile phones! So that would be one of the reasons right there. To learn more benefits on why you need a mobile friendly website, CLICK HERE.

2) Tip number two is you want to make sure that your website loads fast.

How fast? I'd say three seconds or less. Two to three seconds is about where you want to be, with two being your goal. We live in a nanosecond culture. You've got about three seconds to capture someone's attention and if your website is still loading after three seconds they're gone, maybe never to be seen again.

Google puts a high rating on speed. So pay attention to your image sizes. This all correlates to the mobile phone. So if you now know that over 50% of traffic is coming from mobile phones, then you want to definitely make sure your website loads fast. Otherwise people are annoyed and they bounce. They're gone, and that's going to hurt your rankings.

3) Tip number three is you want to make sure your website is secure.

What is security? When you type a website domain in the little search window at the top ( apple.com for example ), there'll be a little lock to the left when the site loads. That lock symbol means that it's secure. It looks like a little padlock. Your website should have that. If you don't have it, then you're going to be penalized by Google for not having it. So make sure you take care of that. It’s called HTTPS.

4) Number four is to make sure that you are set up with a good host.

Not a host is something like, oh, everyone's pretty familiar with gall. I'll use GoDaddy cause that's, uh, people are familiar with go daddy, but you buy your domain from Godaddy and then they will offer to host it for you for, you know, a certain amount of money, usually a hundred bucks or 200 bucks a year. Okay. Um, the problem with those types of hosting is that they'll put you in a, on a server and that's where your website lives on this server. But with like 5,000 other domains, I just didn't he a eval for a client here in uh, uh, Franklin area and they were on a server with like 5,500 other websites. And the challenge is you don't know where the, you know, um, uh, that there are good websites or not. If you're on a website with one that maybe is taking up all the bandwidth, you're being peddled eyes or if you're out there sharing space with a bad neighbors, you know, you're a bad neighborhood, like a gambling sites, all sites, uh, big Pharma, those will penalize you.

Okay. So make sure you're with a good secure host and when it loads fast because the faster that it logs it better that'll be.

5) And then the final thing, you want to take care of is to make sure you have a website that converts.

This is one of the little hidden gems. You want to remember this, a website that converts.  Most websites you see talk mostly about themselves and why they are so good (often self proclaimed). A website that converts is set up to hit pain points of the customer and show them how working with you or buying from you will solve their problem. That’s why they are there to begin with, right? They have a problem and need some help with it. That's important, so just don't forget why they're there. They're there to find a solution and to see if you are the one to help. So you want to think about what your client's needs are and what they're searching for, what they want. And then you talk about that. Talk about how you're going to deliver that value that you're going to bring, how their life is going to be better because they're there and they get them.

And take action. You want your website to get them to take action on what you're selling. Get them to call you, get them to click a button and get them to sign up for your email campaign, whatever that may be. That's a website that converts.

And then you put in specific keywords in there. Sprinkle those in a strategically so that Google can index you and find you. Maybe you're probably wondering why I keep talking about Google. That's because Google accounts for 80% of all website traffic. And then number two, right behind Google is Youtube. And Google owns Youtube. So you know, if you’re one of those who uses Yahoo or Bing, you're in a very, very small minority. So focus on taking care of Google first and getting that fixed and the other stuff will come more easily. It follows the 80/20 rule. If 80% of search traffic goes through Google, you probably should focus on that before you worry too much about Yahoo or Bing or even social media.

These, these five things alone will really, really help your search results.

So if you are interested in testing or evaluating your website for speed and mobile friendliness, check out these resources:

www.gtmetrix.com for speed test

https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly for mobile friendlly test

https://nashvillewebpro.com/website-audit-report/ for a FREE website audit report

Or if you would like a full on website evaluation for FREE, that's something I can do for you. It’s absolutely, 100% totally free. I have access to some really super cool software that will tell you how your website compares to your competitors, what keywords you rank for, if there's any issues with your website, and how to fix those broken items. It's really pretty sweet.

So I just click the link to get the free audit report if you're interested in this or go to www.autopilotmarketing.io and to send me a message from there. I'm happy to help you. I really believe small businesses really are what makes this world go ‘round and drive our economy, so I’m pretty passionate about this.  If you live in the Franklin, Columbia, Spring Hill or Nashville area shoot me a message or leave me some comments below if you have any questions.  Let’s go be awesome.