What do you do when you want to find a business? Do you search the house for your copy of Yellow Pages, dust it off, and begin your search? Or do you simply reach for your tablet or laptop, log onto Google, and type your search query? In the majority of cases it is the latter, and forms an extremely important reason why all businesses should have their own website. Not only is a professional looking website essential today, but a site built around good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) practices and keywords is a necessity.

A successful site should therefore contain at least some of the following:

1. Your Marketing Strategy

Yellow Pages is already a thing of the past. Their ads were small and contained very little information. Your website however, will contain all the information about your business, it will present a professional appearance to your customer base, and it will be very easy for your customers to find out more about you. It also forms the basis for your branding, which extends throughout your marketing campaign and aims to identify you.

Your branding should be an important consideration to your SEO too. Your keyword focus should include your business name at the very least.

2. Communication

A website will likely be the first contact you have with a potential customer. Your site therefore needs to present a good first impression, and then draw customers in, where you can make your first communication with them through the pages on your site. Your site may also contain great advice, information and serve as a knowledge base for the products or services you offer. Great content will also have these customers returning for more updates and information.

Quality SEO focused on keywords that people are searching for solutions to, should exist on all your pages, and act as other doorways to your site. Long tail keywords such as “advice on how to unblock a sink”, is an excellent example of providing such a doorway to your site.

3. Desktop and Mobile Ready

Your site not only needs to be read well on regular desktop or laptop computers, but must also have a mobile version for people on the move to read on their tablets or smartphones. More and more people are accessing the net via these mobile devices, and a properly optimized mobile website will gain you more visitors and potential customers. Nobody likes to zoom in on their phone browsers.

Again, SEO focused towards the mobile searches is an essential consideration, particularly bearing in mind that most people will access the net this way in the near future.

4. Functionality, Ergonomics and Aesthetics

Your site needs to operate well. It needs to load quickly, present your content, images and video without error. It also needs to be easy to navigate and use. The easier it is to use, the more people will use it. No one likes awkward sites. And thirdly, it has to look good, colors need to complement each other, text should be easy to read, and the whole thing needs to be very professional to look at.

5. SEO

Your site also needs to be seen by your customers. Therefore, it will require many SEO campaigns applied to it. These can be hard to do and maintain, especially if you’re busy. Therefore, this essential work will also need to be done to gain indexing and high rankings in the search engines.

There are many other facets to website design, but if these five points are met well, then you will have success with your site. Being able to be found in a variety of different manners, presenting your information in a professional manner, giving your customers the information they need no matter what device they are using, and being able to effectively communicate to them and provide solutions will bring success to you.

This is why it is essential for your business to have a proper professional website. If you don’t have one and your competitor does, then you can expect your own business to suffer while his increases. Good website design and SEO marketing is essential to your business success.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Johan Hedin is the Managing Director of Marketing Ignite, one of the major SEO Companies in Bangkok.