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So, you’ve just launched your brand-new website. You’re anxious for new customers to start rolling in – and want to make sure your existing customers can still find you online. Web users need to be able to find you online before they become a customer. Since the very beginning, web users have favored websites that show up higher in search results, as they want to find the information they need fast. Showing up on the first page of search results has become even more difficult as search engines have adapted to increased browsing on mobile devices, more ad space, and tougher competition as more and more businesses are getting online. That being said, following SEO best practices is critical to building your online presence and attracting customers to your newly launched website. Below are six critical SEO actions to give your website the best chance to rank against the competition.

Action 1: Redirect Old URLs

If you have an existing website, don’t give up on all of that ranking power you’ve built up! A permanent 301 redirect will pass on the majority of your former page’s SEO value to your new site. The stronger the rankings for the older URL, the faster you can improve your search rankings on the new site by using these kinds of redirects. Web developers sometimes recommend other options, such as 404 errors or canonical tags, because 301 redirects can be difficult and require intensive testing. However, SpaceCraft’s simple Legacy URL Tool has simplified and streamlined the redirecting process, so you can give your new website a better chance of ranking from the start. See how to use our Legacy URL Tool here.

Action 2: Add Metadata

You wouldn’t buy a book without reading its title, and search algorithms feel the same way. Page titles and meta descriptions help search engines understand how relevant a page is for specific keywords, and also help searchers determine if a page will provide the information they’re looking for. People also tend to rely on pictures to relay a great deal of this information, but site crawlers can’t see images (yet). That’s why “ALT” tags for all of your images are necessary to help crawlers understand the content of your pages. With liveBooks, our SEO tools make it easy to add titles, meta descriptions, and image alt tags to your website’s pages, so users and search engines can quickly see what your website is all about. See step-by-step instructions on how to do this in our SEO support articles.

Action 3: Verify With Google Search Console

Google Search Console gives you the ability to see your website as Google does. When you sign up for Google Search Console, you’re telling Google that your site is legitimate and open for business. Once you establish your website ownership, it’s easier for you or your webmaster to maintain the health and wellness of your site for the long term. Keep tabs on broken links, missing pages, and larger errors or issues that can occur on your website such as DNS and Server Errors. Make sure you verify your site with Bing, Yahoo and Google to keep an extra set of eyes on your website’s health.

Action 4: Index Your Sitemap

Indexing your sitemap is another important way that Google Webmaster Tools helps search engines understand the structure of your site. Sitemaps have become even more important after changes to the Google algorithm, such as the Panda update, tried to eliminate a great deal of duplicate content on the Web. Submit your sitemap to Google through your new Search Console account so that Google is made aware of each and every page on your website. This helps establish yourself as the originator of your own content.

Action 5: Integrate Google Analytics

An important part of SEO is monitoring how your website traffic has changed over time. While it’s easy to get lost in the numbers, setting up Google Analytics will help you measure how visitors are interacting with your site, how long they spend there, how often they come back and how many end up converting into customers. Diving into your website’s user data can help you make changes to your website that increase conversions, provide valuable insight about what content users find useful, and what sections of the site aren’t performing well.

Action 6: Manage Your Local Profile

Ultimately, you want your website to convert visitors into customers. You want to raise awareness, answer their questions and bring them to the point of sale. For businesses that have a brick and mortar location, this means bringing visitors to the physical store, so having correct business information across the web is critically important. However, maintaining your local profiles can be a time-consuming task. We recommend using a location management platform such as Yext to ensure your local profiles have up to date information about your business at all times. This is especially important if you’re doing any traditional media such as radio or TV. What’s worse than a potential customer hearing your name only to search online and find incorrect business information? Having correct business information not only helps users contact and find your business, but can also increases your credibility in the eyes of search engines.

A landing page without a powerful Call to Action (CTA) is like a boat without water – it will get you nowhere. CTAs encourage consumer engagement and prompt your customers to take action. Not just any action, but the specific action you want them to take when they land on your website.

Without a clear call to action, your website visitors are left in limbo not knowing what step to take next. Ultimately, this is where many online sites lose their potential customers. Why spend time designing a wonderful, dynamic landing page, without putting the same effort into creating a CTA that will help you gain more customers?

At liveBooks, we not only want to help you create a beautiful online presence but also want to give you tools and tips to help you grow your brand. Read on to learn more about CTA best practices, and how you can create click-worthy CTAs on your liveBooks website.

What Are CTAs?

Marketers strategically place CTAs on a website’s landing pages with the specific purpose of inspiring consumer action. These CTAs may be in the form of a button, phone number, live chat box, or pop up box.

CTA Best Practices

While there’s not a magic formula for creating successful CTAs, there are some best practices you can follow. Here’s a look at the top CTA best practices for marketing your website.

• Colors – Your call to action must attract attention, and the proper use of color can help to accomplish this. You want to select contrasting colors while still ensuring the CTA looks great on your page. In addition, some colors can inspire certain emotions. For example, the best performing colors are green, which inspires growth, and orange, which is associated with confidence.
• Size and Shapes – The size and shape of your CTA button can be a tricky matter. You want the button to be large enough for the user to spot easily, but not so overpowering that it appears sales-y or takes away from the meat of your content. Play around with different shapes, sizes, and graphics until you find one that works well on your page.
• Language – CTAs should be short and to the point. Marketing experts recommend just two to five words so it’s important to make every word count. Always start with an action word like “try,” “download,” or “open.” Studies also suggest that using first-person language can increase your click-through rate (CTR) by as much as 90 percent. For example, instead of saying “Download Your Free E-Book,” say “Download My Free E-Book.”
• Placement – The placement of your CTAs must be purposeful and strategic. When creating a long landing page, one CTA always should go before the fold. Don’t be afraid to place multiple CTAs on longer pages. In fact, the user should never have to backtrack up the page to find the CTA.
• Mobilization – 77 percent of Americans now have smartphones, so it’s imperative to optimize your CTAs for mobile phones as more and more browsing is occurring on mobile devices. Specifically, it’s important to make sure any pop-ups on your website are user-friendly. 
• Value Proposition/Urgency – Consumers are always looking for great deals. Using value proposition language like “free,” “50 percent off” and “discount” can help the consumer see the value in what you are offering. You also want to encourage the user to act quickly. Words like “now,” “today” or “for a limited time” can help create a sense of urgency.
• A/B Testing – It’s crucial to test the effectiveness of your CTAs on a regular basis. A/B testing, with the help of Google Analytics, allows you to test variations of your CTAs to see which one performs better. This type of testing can help you perfect your call to action and improve your CTR rate.

Our user-friendly website building platform makes creating effective CTAs quick and easy. The combination of dozens of templates, hundreds of fonts, stunning photo galleries, easy editing features and enhanced mobile settings give you the power to customize your CTA buttons to meet your unique goals. Start your free website trial now, and see how simple it can be to create your online presence.

Your website content plays one of the most important roles in creating your online presence. It can tell the story of your unique brand, illustrate your service, and drive potential customers to purchase. Once you’ve chosen the perfect website template, the next step is to figure out what types of content your website needs most. From blog posts to logos, there are many kinds of content you’ll need to consider if you want your website to accurately communicate your product, services, and brand. Whether you’re redesigning your website or starting a new website from scratch, gathering and creating your website’s content can quickly become overwhelming. Save valuable time by reading these tips before you start building your website.

How Many Pages Do You Really Need?

Before you start typing, take a step back and think about what pages your website truly needs. Drilling down your sitemap should be the first step of the content creation process. Think about your current website, look at your competitor’s website, and brainstorm what the main goal of your website will be. Is it to sell your product, describe your services, or highlight what makes you special? Once you have the main points you want to get across to your potential customers, creating your website pages will be easier. Don’t waste your time creating content that you’ll never share with your audience.

Can You Utilize Freelance Writers?

More company-specific content such as your mission statement, service descriptions, and company overview should be written in-house. However, think about what content could potentially be outsourced. Maybe you’re writing a blog, or need more general pages on your website. If there’s an opportunity to outsource, identify it and take advantage of freelance writers. Ask your colleagues and friends if they have any suggestions of writers they’ve used in the past, or check out some of the many online tools available for content writing services.

What Kind of Images Should You Use?

Images can make or break your online presence, and are the backbone of nearly every website design. Having high-quality images is key to making your website look professional, trustworthy, and can help demonstrate your services effectively to your website visitors. On the other hand, low-quality, or poorly-sized images can negatively impact how visitors view your company, and can considerably lower your conversion rates by causing longer page loading times. Make sure you have enough high-quality images for your website by hiring a professional photographer, or by using stock images. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words!

Website Content Best Practices:

To make your website as user-friendly as possible, there are certain website content best practices to keep in mind. These tips will not only help your website load faster through optimal image sizing, but will also help you layout your content in the most appealing way for website visitors. To make your website as efficient as possible, make sure your content follows these guidelines.

Logo and Graphic, and Icons

Your logo represents your brand and is one of the first impressions you leave with your customers, while icons play a large role in how easily customers navigate your website and understand your services. Follow these guidelines to make sure your logo and icons look crisp and clean on your site, no matter what type of device users are viewing your website on.

• File Type: A PNG file is best for these types of images. It allows you to have your logo set on a transparent background and provides you with a high quality, professional looking graphic.

• Size: Size your logo and icons 3 times larger than what you’d like them to be on the site. This will ensure that they look crisp and clean on retina screens. For example, if your logo is going to be around 250 pixels in width on your site, you’d want to make the logo 750 pixels wide.

Images

As mentioned before, purposeful images can enhance a customer’s experience and help incorporate your branding throughout your site. Follow these best practices to make sure your images look great and don’t slow down your page load times.

• File Type: Always use JPG files for images. PNG files can be very large and don’t necessarily make your image look better. It’s always best to only use PNG files for graphics like logos, icons, or type.

• Size: A good rule of thumb is to keep your image file size under 300KB. For large, full screen images like headers stick between 1600px and 2000px in width. Smaller images like thumbnails don’t need to be any larger than 900px in width.

Content

Always write your website content for actual users, rather than for search engines. While you may be tempted to “keyword stuff” your website in hopes of improving your ranking in search engines, having low-quality content on your website will only hurt your web presence in the long run. As a best practice, make sure the content you’re writing for your website visitors is useful. As a starting point, think of common questions you get about your business and develop articles that answer those questions.

Ready to build your own website, but don’t know where to start? Start with a stylish website template! A template provides a foundation to work with when establishing your web presence and makes building and maintaining a site easier than starting from the ground up.

The complex task of building a website because easier once you pick out a goos starting point. Check out our tips for how to choose the best website template for your business.

1) Determine the Goal of Your Website

A business website can serve a variety of purposes:

• Growing your email list
• Gathering leads with free content
• Selling products and services
• Acting as a “virtual business card”
• Providing useful information to customers

Ask yourself what you want visitors to do when they arrive on your site. A good template combines a layout designed to fulfill this specific purpose with tools to make setup and maintenance as easy as possible.

The purpose of your site should be clear to your customers from the moment they click through from searches or ads. If your template doesn’t align with your goal, visitors are likely to be confused about what actions you want them to take.

2) Consider the Content

Your website content should guide you on your journey to picking out the right website layout. Look for templates with enough space to display a variety of content without crowding the screen or overwhelming customers with too much visual information per page.

Think about where and how you want to display:

• Text
• Images
• Blog posts
• Videos
• Calls-to-action
• Product descriptions, if applicable

Every page also must have room for the all-important business “NAP.” Short for name, address and phone number, this contact information should appear prominently in at least one universal spot so that visitors have no trouble getting in touch with you.

3) Look for Inspiration Everywhere

Think about the websites you enjoy visiting and those to which you keep going back. What aspects of the layout, colors, navigation and other elements attract you? What did the site designers do to make the experience so enjoyable?

Make a list of three to five websites with features you’d like to mirror on your own site. Write down why they appeal to you and which elements you want to see in a template. This gives you a starting point when looking for layouts and can help you weed out templates with too few or too many features.

If you can’t find a template with the right combination of design and usability, take your notes to a designer. Professionals have the skills to bring together all the elements you want in a realization of your vision for your site.

4) Check the Level of Customization

When thinking about how to choose a website template, the amount of customization you can perform is important. Consistent branding plays a key role in customer acquisition and retention, so a template must offer the ability to change theme colors and add images such as logos and product photos.

However, it can be a hassle if a template requires too many changes to meet your needs. Look for layouts with easy tools, including drag and drop editing, grid layouts and one-click adding of common page elements. These are important options if you’re unfamiliar with code but still want to design an attractive site.

5) Know How Your Audience Browses

Responsive design is a must in modern website templates. The world has gone mobile, and chances are good the majority of your audience is searching, browsing and making purchase decisions using a smartphone or tablet. To accommodate this, a template should:

• Adapt to all screen sizes without compromising layout
• Provide flexible navigation
• Include mobile-friendly form options

Compatibility across browsers is another important feature regardless of what type of device is being used. Make sure the template you choose looks good and functions properly in Chrome, Firefox, Safari and other major browsers.

6) Design for Growth

Where do you picture yourself going in the coming years? Make sure you choose a template designed to grow along with you. A simple template without too many bells and whistles is an attractive choice when you’re just starting out, but it will cost you time in the long run if you have to upgrade in a few months or a year to accommodate changes. From color and design to navigation and expansion options, look for a template with the capability to meet your needs both today and several years from now.

7) Seek a Good Support Team

Professional templates should come with an easily accessible support system. This may include:

• Telephone support
• Email support
• FAQs
• Instructional videos
• Access to detailed documentation
• Direct support from the designer
• An open forum in which to ask questions

The more comprehensive the support system, the better. Good support is most important when you plan to do a lot of custom work on your site. If you make a mistake you don’t know how to correct, it can set you back hours or even days unless support is available to guide you in fixing the problem.

Template designers should also include announcements of updates and how to apply changes to your site. Be wary of designs without any recent updates. An old template may have unresolved security issues or lack the support you need to create a robust layout.

A well-designed website template helps you build your own website with ease and produces a professional finished product to attract and impress your target audience. By making the most of the tools provided with your chosen template, you maximize the customer experience and increase the likelihood of conversions. Templates level out the learning curve involved in website building and give you the power to update and change your website whenever you wish. View liveBooks’ beautiful, responsive templates today, and give us a call to learn more about our design services.

Let’s get started!