Didn’t make it to Digital Summit’s in-person conference this year? Don’t worry, we have a roundup of how you can continue to improve your website.
Your website is your number one salesperson. It promotes your brand 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and every single holiday. No matter how strong your sales team is, you’ll never have an employee that’s more dedicated to your brand than your website.
At Digital Summit 2021, we noticed a trend that many sessions revolved around website health. Whether it’s through SEO, analytics, or sales alignment, all signs pointed back to having a strong website.
After attending numerous sessions, we highlighted the top takeaways to help you improve your website — and the tools to get it done.
Strengthen Your SEO with Keyword Research
When it comes to SEO, keyword research is the foundation upon which you build your house. A strong keyword research process informs your content strategy and gives insight into your competition.
There are many keyword research tools out there, but here are a few we’re excited to put into practice:
- Semrush [paid] - One of our favorite tools here at Marsden, Semrush offers a full suite of keyword-related tools. From Keyword Manager to get the details on target keywords to Position Tracking to see how you rank, Semrush has something for every stage of the research journey.
- Keywords Everywhere [freemium] - This browser extension has become an invaluable part of research for the Marsden team. The free version automatically displays trend data, related and longtail keywords, and average monthly traffic every single time you run a Google search, right on the SERP. The paid version also allows you to scan a given webpage for the words it ranks for.
- SpyFu [paid] - Ever wanted a behind-the-scenes look at what your competitors are doing for SEO and SEM? SpyFu gives you just that. Unlock vital competitive insights, including organic rankings, over a decade’s worth of ad variations, and a list of paid keywords. SpyFu is the ultimate in competitor analysis.
Get to Know Your Audience
Before you can embark on your digital marketing/demand generation journey, you must first identify who you’re marketing to. Knowing your audience will make it easier to deliver powerful, relevant content to your ideal buyers.
- Quantcast [freemium] - Using AI and machine learning, Quantcast is at the forefront of knowing and growing your audience. Get access to browsing interests, purchasing behaviors, and more, to deliver stronger, more personalized ads to your prospects at every stage of the buyer’s journey.
- Alexa [paid] - Yes, that Alexa. Amazon knows everything about you, so it makes sense that they know your audience, too. This tool is great for compiling interest data on your audience – the sites and topics they’re interested in, plus top competition and your brand’s share of voice.
- Audiense [freemium] - This tool delivers data on your target audience’s demographics and interests, but it also provides interest into what they’re influenced by. What sites do they frequent? Where do they get their news? How do they discover new content? Know it all with Audiense.
Check In on Your Website Health
Knowing what’s going on with the backend of your website is just as important as measuring clicks and conversions. After all, the health of your website has a direct effect on those numbers as well. If a page is taking more than a few seconds to load, you will lose that visitor. Having a process for checking the health of your website will not only improve your SEO but also ensure there aren't any backend issues that could be hurting your digital marketing efforts.
- Google Web Vitals [free] - Google's tool to help measure your page performance based on real-world usage. Don’t know what your web vitals are? Check out this blog to understand how they affect your ranking.
- Screaming Frog [freemium] - Get days' worth of page checking done fast with the SEO Spider tool. Within minutes, you’ll have a report that measures onsite SEO and audits common issues.
Take a Deeper Look at Website Insights
Prove the value of your marketing and SEO efforts by evaluating insights and user data from your website. Whether you’re creating a pillar page to rank first for a specific keyword or running a PPC campaign, it’s important to understand all of the traffic coming to your site. There are many different ways to analyze your web traffic and a growing number of tools to help you do so. With so many tools out there, you’ll want to find the one that tracks best for your specific needs. Google Analytics 4 and Semrush are two great base tools to help you create benchmarks for your website.
- Google Analytics 4 [free] - Google has recently released a new version of their analytics to combine both web and mobile data. GA4 will replace Google’s Universal Analytics sometime in the next few years. Even if you don’t plan on using it anytime soon, it’s best to connect your domains to start collecting historical data today.
- Semrush [paid] - Understand the traffic that’s coming to your website and how it affects page rankings. Plus, take a look at where your competitors are thriving and/or struggling.
Optimize Every Image and Video
When using photos and videos on your website (as you should), it’s important that they are optimized as much as your written content. That means resizing or compressing large images and implementing proper schema markup on your page.
- Schema [free] - Schema is all about organization. Using an on-page markup tool, like Schema.org, provides search engines with more information about your website and its pages, allowing it to deliver your message in more searches.
- TinyPNG [free] - This free website allows you to upload up to 20 images (maximum of 5MB per image) at a time to instantly compress them without sacrificing image quality. Save on storage and load time by compressing your website images by up to 70%.
- Adobe Photoshop [paid] - Everybody knows Photoshop as the tool for image editing and retouching, but it can also be used for resizing and compressing images! Photoshop is another great way to reduce image size without losing quality or resolution once it’s on the web.
[Bonus Tip!]
Integrate Scheduling Apps into Your Website and Forms
Although we believe your website is your best salesperson, for a lot of products and services, talking to sales reps from the organization is necessary to complete the sale. When someone submits a contact us form, the likelihood of them scheduling time to meet and actually showing up goes down every second you wait to book the meeting.
Studies show that if you give a lead the opportunity to book their meeting time immediately after filling out a form, they are much more likely to show up for the meeting.
- Calendly [freemium] - A simple and easy-to-use tool to help reduce the back and forth of scheduling a meeting. Embed a code or share a link with your availability and let a prospect pick the time that works best for everyone.
- Chili Piper [paid] - Take your scheduling one step further with Chili Piper. If you have a high influx of leads, Chili Piper will save you time by automatically qualifying prospects and assigning them to the right rep.
- HubSpot Meetings Link [freemium] - All HubSpot users should incorporate this tool into their marketing ASAP. Not only does it allow adding custom HubSpot fields as questions to book a meeting, but it automatically connects to your CRM, tracking every meeting in real-time.
Returning to an in-person conference – safely! – was a welcome change after a year and a half of Zoom fatigue. Thanks to Digital Summit for keeping conference-goer health at the forefront of their event, and thanks to all of the amazing presenters for sharing their time and knowledge. See you next year!
Written by Shannon Greenberg & Kaleigh Blessard
