Online marketing is a moving target on every marketing VP’s internal to-do list. With all the external demands on your time, it’s easy to let the efficiency and quality of your own website slip from under your fingers. That’s why, even after a major website optimization overhaul, it’s important to regularly check in on your website to review your updates and see if any of your efforts have gotten off track.
Without getting too technical, here’s a quick-hit quarterly checklist for assessing your inbound marketing website optimization status. Make sure these to-dos get on your list:
Are your conversion paths organized?
How your customer approaches your offer is important. Make sure that the path to conversion has no obstacles -- slow load time, outdated information or forms, etc. -- to flawlessly execute your inbound marketing program.
Are your blog posts attracting new traffic?
Keep an eye on your blog topics and traffic levels. If you aren’t impressed, try to focus on customer questions. Providing transparent, friendly answers that will help your customer in his journey will attract customers in the research stage and establish credibility and trust.
Are you blogging using SEO best practices?
We review this concept more here, but always keep search engine optimization in mind when you’re adding to your website. Every blog update should be a strategic asset you can use to help your marketing efforts, whether that’s emailing a new prospect with a thoughtful suggestion from the post or making the most of a recent news clip.
Are you filling out title and meta information?
While this item is technical and might seem trivial, thoughtfully filling out title and meta information for each page on your website can give your optimization efforts a kick. For every blog post and landing page, include an optimized title and meta information to help both search engines and people alike.
Is content easy to share this content on a social network?
Go through the process yourself to make sure it is easy to share your content and link back to your website through social sharing plugins. Top networks include Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and LinkedIn, but be sure to include other networks that might speak to your specific audience like Pinterest or YouTube.
Are your premium content offers alluring?
Review your premium content landing pages and offers. Are your calls to action, landing pages, forms, thank-you pages, and confirmation emails error-free and alluring? Rewrite or edit as needed to make sure your standards stay high.
Can you optimize your website for speed?
Speed optimization tactics are more technical in nature, so ask your IT support team for help with this one. Is there anything you can do to further optimize for website loading speed? Can you host your images and assets separately? Can you reduce or remove redirects? Run through this checklist to make sure your site is loading as quickly as possible, which could help improve your website ease of use and search engine visibility.
The goal of every inbound marketing program is to achieve increased website traffic that leads to highly-qualified leads. Using this checklist, review your website each quarter to make sure it’s pulling in and converting those leads efficiently.
What would you add to this list?