How to Manage and Maintain Your Website Understand What You Need to Do to Grow and Maintain Your Website Alisha Lee, AEE Solar Marketing Mgr.
Agenda Website Health Google Search Console Google Analytics Mobile Friendly Check Website Maintenance Website Updates Domain and Hosting Renewals SSL Certificates (if you sell products online) Website Growth Publish new content regularly Have a lead capture form on your site Systematically follow up on leads
Your Website Health If you want search engines (Ex. Google) to list your website in their SERP (Search Engine Results Page) listings, you must have a healthy website What does healthy mean? You need to make sure that your site doesn t have any indexing issues so that you can optimize visibility of your site in search engines Google provides a free tool called Google Search Console (formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools) to do this To use Google Search Console, you ll need to add and verify your site Multiple ways to verify your site Adding an HTML tag, uploading an HTML file, verifying via domain name provider, adding Google Analytics code, Using Tag Manager
Google Search Console- Home
Google Search Console Dashboard
Google Search Console Setup A few things you may want to do when setting up GSC: Add a sitemap in Search Console Gives search engines info about how your site is organized and the content available Makes it easier for search engines to do their job more efficiently Add your site map by going into the Crawl section and go to Sitemaps. Click Add/Test sitemap. Enter system/feeds/sitemap in the box. If you ve already added a sitemap, you have the opportunity to resubmit if there are sitemap warnings Check robots.txt Tester Robots.txt can be used to prevent reputable crawlers from indexing pages that you don t want indexed Not necessary unless you want certain pages on your site to not be indexed Best practice to have one (? Wording??)
Search Console Setup con t Fetch as Google If you ve made a lot of changes to your website, this is a fast way to get updates indexed manually for a specific URL Go to Crawl and then Fetch as Google. Then, select your site or page and click Fetch and Render
Your Google Search Console Basic Review Every month, you should check the following: Messages from Google Site Crawl Errors Go to Crawl and select Crawl Errors This tells you if you have any site or URL errors found during indexing If you have errors, click on them for a description At least quarterly, check your site map to look for errors. Or, if you ve made big changes to your website update your site map
Google Analytics (GA) Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic Gives you insight into how users find and use your website Gives you information on where you should be advertising and the types of content you should be doing You ll need to set this up for your website (if you haven t already)
Your Monthly Basic GA Review Look at the sources of your website traffic Go to Acquisition, Sources/Medium Use this to see where your website traffic comes from This can help you know where to advertise or better partner with sites that refer traffic to you Look at the behavior of your visitors (ex. Pageviews, time on page, bounce rate, etc) Go to Behavior, Overview What pages do they visit? How long do they stay? Use this to look for problems or expand your content
Your Quarterly Basic GA Review Look at your Average Page Load Time by Browser Go to Behavior, Site Speed, Page Timings Make sure the browser with the highest page views has a green average page load time (not red) Look at your PageSpeed Score and PageSpeed Suggestions Go to Site Speed, Speed Suggestions Click on the link for suggestions by page Google will provide a list of optimization suggestions
Your Quarterly Basic GA Review (con t) Take any site speed suggestions to your website developer to help address. Make sure to do both mobile & desktop
Mobile Friendly Check Check to make sure your website is mobile friendly anytime you ve made big changes to your website Go to Google s Mobile-Friendly Test URL: https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly Enter in your URL and click test Will tell you if it s mobile friendly or not and why Also will tell you if there are any issues that need to be addressed
Website Maintenance - Updates Keep your website updates current Keeping your website platform current on its updates is important to keeping your site safe from hackers Using WordPress as an example In the Dashboard, it lists WordPress updates as well as theme updates if you have one You can also go to Updates and see a list of updates for any plugins that you may have installed Either have your website developer to the updates or you can do them yourself (just always make sure you back up your site before doing an update)
Keeping Renewals Current Make sure your domain is renewed on time or you have it set to automatically renew every year Forgetting to renew your domain can be a costly mistake and create lots of headaches If you re not sure where you renew your domain, use whois.icann.org to find the Registrar Ex. GoDaddy, NameCheap, Hostgator, etc Always make sure your website hosting company is paid monthly or annually This is the company that hosts your website on a server so that your site can be accessed on the web Make sure you have the service you need and they re a reputable company Some web developers will pay for your hosting on your behalf if you re in a monthly or annual contract For online resellers, make sure your SSL certificate is renewed
Website Growth- Content If you re serious about getting business from your website you need to continually add new content to your website Better to do a little content each week than a lot of content all at once only a few times a year Google likes sites that provide new content that their users like and rewards those sites with increased visibility Be able to add new content to your page that your prospect/customer wants to read and is searching for Make sure you re adding quality content that is helpful to your prospect/customer and isn t stuffed with search terms/keywords Focus on committing to a weekly blog post or create one new page per week Start simple and be consistent
Content Suggestions You can add new pages to your site by addressing commonly asked questions you receive from prospects Ex: you could do a section called Customer Resources and have pages on topics like: How to choose a solar installer Buying vs leasing Benefits of solar Top 10 questions to ask Solar maintenance Add new pages for every customer job Ex: have a section called Customer Stories and have a page for each customer project Have customer job photos, some info about the project and customer quotes (don t forget to get your customer s permission in advance) Ex: do a blog post highlighting different types of projects Highlight different types of jobs (tile roof, steep roof pitch, res vs com) with photos showing samples of your work w/ a customer testimonial
Capturing Leads Make sure that your site has a clear call to action for prospects who visit your site What s your call to action? Is it clearly visible? EX s: Call and get a free quote, download your Solar Buyers Guidebook, signup for an energy efficiency newsletter, get a free coupon/savings offer Your site should have a way to capture prospect contact info and be able to follow up Whether it s a web form to get a free download, or a signup form to get a newsletter, you need to have a way to follow up with your prospects and stay engaged Ideally, the follow up is systematically generated and gives you a way to get your prospect into some kind of lead funnel
Lead Follow Up Most webforms are automatically generated by your website and often emailed to you with the lead information This can work just fine to start however the risk is forgetting to follow up with them in the future You can also use other tools that will collect the lead information and then allow you to follow up in a systematic approach Can do this with Email Marketing software like: Aweber, icontact, MailChimp, ConstantContact, etc Can also do this with sales and marketing software that combines email and CRM functionality like: Infusionsoft, Salesforce, etc Although this software is more expensive will provide a lot more functionality than email marketing software
Key Takeaways 1. Check Google Search Console for messages & crawl errors 2. Review Google Analytics to stay informed of traffic sources, user behavior and site speed 3. Make sure your site is mobile friendly using Google s mobile test 4. Keep your website platform updated 5. Make sure you renew your domain annually, renew your SSL certificate (if you sell online), and hosting is paid regularly 6. Add quality content to your site consistently 7. Have a clear call to action with follow up 8. Have a way to capture your leads and systematically follow up