Effective website management for small business owners
I see a lot of small business owners who don’t know what to do next after their website has launched. Getting your site live is really just the beginning of your digital journey. The guide below will help you understand the steps you should take to manage your website so that it helps you grow your business by capturing new customers.
1. Keep your website up to date
Think of your website is a living thing. You need to look after it, check how it’s doing, and make improvements and additions to keep it fresh and interesting.
As your business evolves – maybe you add a new service, or run an offer – make sure to update the relevant site pages with any new information you want to share
If your pricing or contact details change – update the website to make sure everything is accurate and current.
Check links from time to time to make sure there are no broken links or dead-ends, including to other pages on your site and links to external sites.
If you do find broken links or outdated content, fix them as soon as you can to avoid a poor user experience. You don't want visitors getting frustrated trying to find information on your site that doesn't exist anymore because someone forgot to update that page five months ago.
2. Create new content regularly
Creating rich, unique and useful content that meets the needs of searchers is one of the best ways to get more traffic to your website, and is something you should try to do AT LEAST once a month (ideally once a week). And content doesn’t have to just mean text – it can also be video, images, infographics - anything that’s relevant, useful and shareable. It demonstrates to users that you are an expert, and expands your reach and brand awareness through recommendations (links, tweets, likes, shares etc.).
If you have a blog, write posts that address particular search queries (how to xxx).
Enable comments on your blog posts to encourage user-generated content, which can be a rich source of SEO-friendly copy.
Generally for a blog - you want to add a new post at minimum once/month, but ideally once/week.
Make sure your content is optimised for your target keywords
3. Measure your website’s performance
An important aspect of managing your website is measuring its performance. This is where your website analytics come in. Squarespace provides built-in analytics which allow you to monitor traffic and engagement – they tell you how many people are visiting your website and what they do when they get there.
You should look at this on a weekly basis to see how much traffic you have, how visitors are finding your website, and what content they are engaging with the most – so you can replicate what works, and do less of what doesn’t work.
Your analytics can help you identify areas that need attention and opportunities for improvement. Among other things, your analytics can help you understand:
Which of your marketing channels are working and which ones you need to improve.
Which pages users visit and how long they spend on each page - you can use this to identify content to emulate OR poor content that needs attention. For low-performing pages for example, you might decide to edit and update them, or delete them from the site if they no longer serve your customers
What visitors are looking for on the site (if you have a built-in site search) - you can use this to make specific content more prominent on your key pages and in your navigation if necessary
Each data point helps you understand how well your site is working and what areas you might want to tweak or improve. And if you want a more advanced analytics package, you can also set up a Google Analytics account for your site.
4. Get help and leverage partnerships
Don’t have time to write a new blog post every week or even every month? Get other people to help you produce content. Whether it’s finding experts in your industry to guest post, or outsourcing - there are ways to automate, and save yourself time and effort.
Guest posters will save you time and effort, while offering fresh insight and value to your audience.
The key is finding non-competing and mutually beneficial opportunities. If you are a nutritional therapist helping people who want to lose weight, why not get a personal trainer to write a guest post that helps with fitness tips to increase weight loss
And don’t forget, it works both ways - you guest post on their site, they guest post on yours – you both reach a new audience, and get to demonstrate your expertise and knowledge to each other’s visitors.
