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In order to gain the visibility you desire you need interesting and relevant content. Things like high quality landing pages, a regularly updated blog, and a comprehensive event calendar are great ways to keep you website interesting and useful!
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Overview
When it comes to succeeding online and keeping people interested in what your site has to offer, content is king. This phrase has been a general rule of thumb in online interactions involving eCommerce for a long time, and for good reason! The main reason behind this is that Google has generated complex algorithms specifically designed to encourage webmasters and anyone involved in maintaining a website to create content for the users, not Google itself. As a result, in order to gain the visibility you desire you need interesting and relevant content.
Landing Pages
What is a Landing Page?
Simply put, a landing page is a single web page that appears in response to clicking on an advertisement. The landing page will usually display directed sales copy that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link. Landing pages are often linked to from social media, email campaigns or search engine marketing campaigns in order to supplement the effectiveness of the advertisements. The general goal of a landing page is to convert site visitors into sales leads, or for a lead generation site- to get the visitor to make contact.
Two types of Landing Pages
- Reference: A reference landing page presents information that is relevant to the visitor. These can display text, images, dynamic compilations of relevant links, or other elements. Reference landing pages are effective if they meet the objectives of their publishers, which may be associations, organizations or public service entities. A special type of 'reference landing page' is the 'webvert', the marketing goal focuses on lead generation and interaction with the visitor. A webvert is not 'transactional' in nature.
- Transactional: A transactional landing page seeks to persuade a visitor to complete a transaction such as filling out a form or interacting with advertisements or other objects on the landing page, with the goal being the immediate or eventual sale of a product or service. If information is to be captured, the page will usually withhold information until some minimal amount of visitor information is provided, typically an email address and perhaps a name and telephone number as well– enough to "capture the lead" and add the prospect to a mailing list. A visitor taking the desired action on a transactional landing page is referred to as a conversion. The efficiency or quality of the landing page can be measured by its conversion rate, the percentage of visitors who complete the desired action.
News/Blog
There are numerous reasons why it is important to keep a blog or news section that is regularly updated with fresh content. It's not something in which the importance is easily tracked, so it is easy to neglect it once ideas for new posts don't come so easily. Don't fall into this pattern! Here are a few reasons why it is important:
- Establish yourself as an expert. There is no better way to show visitors on your site that you have a wealth of knowledge in your specific industry. Creating blog posts with topics relevant to your business is a great way to create repeat visitors as well. You know your business, you know the hot topics and you know what your clients and customers need to know. Why not announce it to the world and use your website as the platform?
- Search engines love blogs! Search engines (specifically Google) deem blogs important. And if the search engine juggernaut says to jump, your response should be "how high?" Websites that depend on generating sales live and die by the ways in which search engines operate, so if a regularly updated blog is seen as valuable, that alone should be enough to convince you! The reason they look to blogs as an important asset in a website is because they want to see fresh content. A static website that never changes is never going to place high in the results.
- It's an easy place to include keywords and links. Maintaining a blog means that you have the opportunity to write about anything you want. Strategically choosing topics that are sure to include keywords and interlinks that will be valuable to your SEO efforts can easily generate more traffic to your site.
Events Calendar
An event calendar is always a good thing to add to your website. There are a couple big uses for the event module that comes standard with WSM:
- Keep visitors updated on noteworthy events within your company. The obvious use here would be if your company regularly holds events that are relevant to your industry, and would like to encourage site visitors to attend. For example, a lot of skateboarding or action sports companies will have signings or mini competitions that are open to the public.
- The event calendar is a great way to broaden your reach and create a bigger user base. Even if you don't hold events of that nature, sales are just as worthy of being logged in the calendar. If you have regular sales on products on your site, then mark them in the event calendar ahead of time. Often times, a visitor that is about to leave your site and be a lost sale will see this and mark it down in THEIR calendar to come back later. This effectively turns a lost conversion into a generated conversion down the road.
- Be a source of information for relevant events in your area. Even if you don't hold any events that can be attended by the general public, there may be events that are relevant to your industry in your immediate area. Marking these events on your calendar is a great way to keep people updated, and chances are if they are on your site they may be interested in these events.
- And doing this does more than just provide a service to your users. It also gives you a chance to show up in the search results for the events you are listing on your event calendar. Someone in your area that conducts a search for the event may find your site that way, and could be another possible conversion opportunity.