1. Content
Content is one of the most important "ingredients" for a good website. It’s no coincidence that so many copywriters also specialize in SEO and blogging. After all, it’s the foundation of a website. If you have plenty of high-quality, clear, and compelling text on your website, this will ultimately lead to higher conversion rates and better rankings in search results.
In addition to the text on the website, it’s also important to regularly post new content on your website. Now, with a CMS like
WordPress Fortunately, it doesn’t require a huge time commitment. But the advantage of regularly publishing new content—such as blog posts and/or portfolio items—on your website is that you can share it on social media to generate more brand awareness and traffic. Google also “likes” this, because a website that stays “up-to-date” gains more authority and ranks higher in search engine results.
If you’re not sure how to get started with writing blogs, we wrote an article about it earlier this year. Read the article here on how you can
get started with blogging.
2. Design & User-Friendliness
In our opinion, design is the second most important aspect of a website. The website should be modern, reflect your company’s identity, and be very user-friendly. If your website looks outdated and doesn’t function properly on different devices, many visitors will likely skip over it and go to a competitor’s site.
So make sure that the web design agency developing your website (or if you were to do this yourself) makes it responsive and in line with your corporate identity and brand image.
3. Marketing
Don’t forget that a website is actually part of your company’s marketing strategy. A website alone isn’t enough, because if no one can visit it, it’s ultimately useless. That’s why it’s important to focus on your marketing efforts (including those outside your website). There are various ways to do this, for example:
- Social media: Post regularly on these platforms and include a link to your website in your posts. People are likely to visit your Facebook page. You can also use these platforms for content marketing (by promoting blogs and similar content), which can drive new traffic (and thus potential customers) to your website.
- In person: Tell your (professional) network about your social media channels and ask them to follow or like them. It doesn't cost a thing and it's done in a flash—simple, right?
- Emails: Include your social media channels in your email signature (using social media icons, for example). That way, all your contacts who receive emails from you can view your social media channels and start following or liking them.
Oh, and while we're on the subject of marketing, don't forget to follow us on social media!
4. Speed
A slow website. Can you ever recall signing up as a customer on a website where you had to wait a long time for it to load? Most likely not. After all, multiple studies have shown that you start losing visitors after about 2–3 seconds. And the longer it takes after that, the more visitors drop off.
A fast website is truly essential and is often underestimated. Soon, we may (if there’s interest) write an article about optimizing your (WordPress) website for speed.
Additionally, a slow website has a negative impact on your search engine rankings. And this is also one of the absolute don’ts of SEO as far as we’re concerned (oh, have you read our previous article ‘
Absolute No-Nos for SEO‘Have you read it? If not, be sure to check it out right away.)
There are many other optimizations you can make to perfect a website. But broadly speaking, content, design & usability, marketing, and speed are definitely among the most essential components of a perfect website.
If you have any suggestions or questions, feel free to leave a comment!
