061: Why Your Website is the Heart of Your Marketing Strategy

In this episode, Jules dives into why your website is the cornerstone of your marketing strategy and why it should be prioritised over social media. Many businesses neglect their websites due to tech overwhelm or misconceptions about marketing, but Jules breaks down why focusing on your online "storefront" is essential for building authority and creating a lasting digital presence.

Key Takeaways:

• The Power of Ownership: Your website is one of the few things in your business that you truly own—no algorithm can take it away.
• Optimisation Essentials: Learn why you should optimise your website for search, usability, calls to action, and content organisation to drive traffic and conversions.
• Clarity in Calls to Action: Discover why clear and actionable steps on your website are crucial for guiding visitors to take the next step with your business.
• Content as Your Hub: Understand how all your content efforts should lead back to your website to establish you as an authority in your field.

If you've been focusing solely on social media and neglecting your website, this episode will help you shift your priorities and start building a more sustainable online presence.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Episode 035: The Pathway to Website Success: Discover the foundational elements for creating a successful website.
• Episode 057: Why Your Website Should Be the Foundation of Your Content Plan: Learn how to align your content strategy with your website.
• Episode 051: How to Use AI to Improve Your Website: Explore how AI can simplify website optimisation and save you time.
  
  
• Book a Free Discovery Call: Get personalised advice on how to optimise your website and increase traffic and sales.

Freebie:

• Beginner's QuickStart Guide to SEO: A step-by-step guide to help you optimise your website for search engines and get more organic traffic.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:37 The Importance of Website Optimisation
• 1:07 Overcoming Tech Overwhelm
• 2:16 Website as a Marketing Priority
• 3:01 Central Role of Your Website
• 7:34 Optimising for Search
• 9:20 Optimising for Usability
• 9:57 Optimising for Calls to Action
• 11:28 Organising Your Content
• 13:25 Review and Next Steps

Transcript

AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT - MAY CONTAIN ERRORS

Introduction

Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Happy Friday. Hope you're all well.

The Importance of Website Optimisation

Today I want to talk about optimising your website and why you should make it a priority in your marketing effort. It's something that often gets neglected in our business, and there are many, many reasons why people tend to neglect their website a little bit.

Or a lot even. Often it's because of tech overwhelm. I think that's a big thing that I see where people haven't spent a little bit of time learning about their website and learning about how it can help them in their business. And even just the thought of getting started with that feels really overwhelming.

Overcoming Tech Overwhelm

This is something I do with clients where I actually help them. We work together, and we, I help them and hold their hand along the way, basically.

And help them to understand how it doesn't have to be so difficult. Understanding your website platform doesn't have to be so difficult. Making changes yourself or somebody in your team making those changes for you doesn't have to be something that is difficult.

A real struggle, and even sometimes just spending a little bit of time learning the basics about how your website builder works and having somebody there to help you along the way in terms of understanding what to put on your website can make a real difference.

I've got a really croaky voice this morning. I was at an event yesterday, which was really good. It was an event at Cranfield University, an entrepreneur, entrepreneur, that. Entrepreneur event, and it was a really good workshop day. I really, really enjoyed it. Made some great connections and met some wonderful people.

But anyway, that's why I've got a croaky voice this morning because my, uh, it was a lot of not, I was going to say it was a lot of talking. It was a bit of talking. It was mostly listening, but yeah, it was really good anyway. So, I digress.

Website as a Marketing Priority

So, that's often what happens. People, people either get the tech overwhelm, or they just don't realise that it should be a priority myth that social media is the only way to promote our business. And if we're not doing everything that we can do on social media, then everything else just isn't worth the effort, really.

Whereas actually, I like to flip that on its head. And my, it's my firm belief that we should focus on our own content and the content that we own first and foremost. 

I talked about this way back in a really early episode of the podcast, episode two, about why you don't need to keep feeding the algorithm and how you can use your existing content to show up in search anyway, and show up in search first.

But I think there is this feeling that, yeah, if I'm doing social media, that's it, that's my marketing box ticked.

Central Role of Your Website

And actually your website is more part of your overall business structure. I believe it should be the central place. It should be your central hub for your digital presence. So wherever else you're promoting your business, any other marketing that you're doing leads back to your website.

And that is the place that builds your authority online. And the reason I feel this is so important is because your website is the thing that you own. It's the thing that no algorithm can take away that and relationships. I also talk about this a lot about the fact that relationships are really important, and again, that's something else that no algorithm can take away.

But by focusing first and foremost on the content that you own, so your website, your podcast episodes, your podcast player app platform, I use Buzzsprout. If that goes, I can take all of those episodes and put them somewhere else.

So it is content that I own, but everything comes back to my website because that is truly something that I, I fully own. So if you had a physical location, if you were opening, opening a physical business, you wouldn't open the store and then never do anything again to maintain it, you wouldn't, wouldn't never ever.

Paint the signs again or clean the windows or sweep the floor or move the displays around to see what works better and what you know what does what's working what doesn't work in what doesn't working what isn't working or what doesn't work you wouldn't do that with a physical location.

And I think we tend to forget about our website because actually that is our online store. So it's the place where people can go and either find out more about us. Ideally, we need to have it doing something, some kind of call to action. If your website doesn't have a call to action, you there's not anything that you want people to do.

Whether it is joining your email list, making a purchase, finding out where you are, like booking an appointment, or driving people into your store, then that's definitely a priority to think about that. Think about what do you want your website to do. It shouldn't just be a digital brochure.

It should be a place that you can connect with your customers. You can actually get them into your world and get them to take the action that you want them to. And as I say, if you'd opened a physical store, you wouldn't then neglect that.

You wouldn't open the store and then never ever think about what kind of journey and what kind of experience people have when they come through your store. So that's why I feel like it's so important. It's literally, it is your online presence.

It can be the hub of your online presence. And the benefit of having that is then be working in the background, it can be working while you're off doing the things that you love doing, whether that's in your business or outside your business when you're not working. It can be out there, showcasing your business, attracting clients, getting people to book your services or buy your products.

Or book appointments or join your email list where you can then keep nurturing them and selling to them there. And just also building trust as well. So it's a real representation of your business online, and building that trust with those potential customers is so, so important.

If you're an e-commerce business and you're selling stuff regardless of whether e-commerce is your primary business or you're doing treatments in a salon or a spa, or you've got a physical location, but people can also buy online, then that is literally the place where you can take money.

So it's, it's where you can educate people around your products, get them to take that action of actually buying from you. And those sales could be happening in the background and engage your customers in the background while you're actually off doing something else, which is, it's literally the place where you can take money.

In the last episode of the, of the podcast, I talked about what I wish I'd known when I was back in the salon about websites. And there's so much potential there that a lot of people just don't even realise, hey, this could make a big difference in my business, really.

When you're thinking about where to start with this, I would recommend checking out episode 35 of the podcast. I've got loads of, like this episode feels like there's loads of other episodes I can link to because it all ties back into that subject of your website is your, is your most important place online.

But episode 35, I talk about the pathway to website success. And this focuses on all the foundational elements that you need to have in place to have a successful website. So the pathway to website success is definitely a process. It's something that takes time, and it's something that I like to break down into bite-sized pieces.

And it's the step-by-step pieces, basically, of how you can, you can make your website successful. So check out that episode. That was episode 35.

But what I would say is there's sort of four main areas to focus on, on your website.

Optimising for Search

So firstly, optimising for search. This is a big area passion of mine, regardless of where people are searching, because search is changing, regardless of whether they are searching on Google, which people still are.

We need to not neglect Google. Google hasn't gone away and isn't going away overnight. And the things that we do to optimise our website for Google will make a difference in all of the other places that people are searching as well. 

So if you're trying to show up in AI searches, if you want to show up in searches on chatGPT, when people are looking for what you or Google Gemini or Plerplexity or all of the other places that people could be searching.

If you haven't optimised your website for the basics that Google looks for, then you're unlikely to be those results that are showing up in AI searches. So getting the foundations in place, like making sure your site is easy to navigate by robots and by people.

Making sure the information is clear and structured and the back end of your website is structured in a way that makes it clear what you do, what page you should be showing up for the particular search term you're thinking about, and that you are talking about those relevant topics that are important for your business.

And I think that's often somewhere, something that does get neglected is where people will create amazing content for social media and then not talk about those topics, the important things that they do and the problems that they solve in a business. They then forget to talk about that on the website.

And we kind of almost assume that we've done that, like that, you know, maybe we put a website together and then forget about it or aren't doing too much, or we we're creating blog posts that we think are really niche. And that might then be able to get people to find us online.

But we forget about those core, things, those core topics that we need to talk about as well.

Optimising for Usability

The second thing is optimising for usability. So making sure that your site is very easy to navigate, and it provides a good user experience or a great user experience, really. So making sure that we're not making, not making people have to burn mental calories to work out how to do business with you.

This is something that's a really foundational thing, but it's something I see often and see time and time again with clients if I'm doing website audits where it's just not quite clear, it's to me without too much what you actually do and how you're going to make my life better, how you, what problems you're going to solve for me.

Optimising for Calls to Action

And also what the next third point would be optimised for call to action. And making sure what you're doing is actually encouraging people to take the action that you want them to take and to really not make it difficult for them, not make them have to think twice about what they've got to do or not giving them too many options.

And you might be thinking about your website and you're thinking, okay, I want to, I want them to book an appointment with me. I want them to buy a product. I want them to join my email list. I want them to read my other blogs. You know, all of these different things that you want them to do on one page of your website.

And if you've got all of those things to do, then people aren't then sure what action you want them to take. So we talk about transactional call to actions and transitional call to actions. And a transactional call to action would be if it's on a product page to buy a product buy it now that would be a transactional call to action.

If it was buying on course or something like that, then that that's a transactional call to action. A transitional call to action might be something where people would maybe join your email list, or they would fill in a contact form or something like that where they, they need to find out more information.

So it is something that's not gonna lead directly to a purchase, but it will help them to get a little bit further along that, that user journey and understand a bit more about what you do.

If somebody's not quite ready to take that step and buy from you, then adding something in like book a call to find out more or join my email list for, uh, to get more tips or something like that where you that you'd want sort of the maximum of two, really.

Organising Your Content

So we've got optimising the search, optimising for usability, optimising for calls to action, and then the fourth is organising your content. So this helps to make sure that all of your efforts, wherever you're creating content online, all leads back to that hub of a well-organised and informative website.

And, um, I talked about this in episode 57 about website should be the foundation of your content plan. 

So if you are thinking about planning content and whether that's creating content for, which is blog posts or email newsletters or creating content for social media, actually taking some time and thinking about how your website fits into that and having your website as the starting point for that.

So what, think about the topics that you need to talk about. Think about how I actually talked about that on my website, which page of my website is the most relevant and have I talked about it, have I optimised that page with the page titles descriptions throughout the body content of that page throughout your image alt text.

All the different places in the paper you can optimise for search. Make sure that that is actually tied in and everything then ties back to your website. 

You are also, if you are creating content for social media or any different places that you are, then creating links that come back to your website or just try helps to drive that traffic back to your website.

So check out that one that was episode 57 about why your website should be the foundation. Your content plan and all of this, all of everything you're doing with it, where you're creating content around your website is all about making you the authority on the topic that you talk about. 

So it helps Google and help users to understand why you know what you're talking about, why you should be a trusted guide and why you should be the person that Google understands your website is the place to send people to learn more about that topic or to find the thing that is solving their problem, find the thing that can help them with their problem, basically.

Review and Next Steps

So I would love you to take a few moments this week and just review your website and just think a bit about whether it's optimised for search, for usability, for calls to action, and how your content is all coming together in your website as the hub of your online business.

And if you need any help getting started with this, then visit my website, and you can book a free discovery call so we can have a chat about how I could help you with one-to-one advice audits and power hours, anything that can just help you to get started on that next step of understanding how to make your website better and how to get more traffic and sales through it.

Really. You can also check out episode 51, which is all about AI for websites and how you can use it, use AI to make it more simple to get traffic, to save you time in your business, to save you time working out how to make your website better. And so check that episode out as well.

So I hope you have a lovely weekend. I hope you found this helpful. There's a storm coming. It looks beautiful out there today, and it seems like suddenly the wind has dropped, and it's got really calm, but there is a storm coming apparently.

So I'm hoping I'm going to be able to swim tomorrow, but we'll see. Last weekend I swam at my coldest ever. It was 3.9 degrees, and I've never swum below four degrees before. 

So, uh, yeah, that was, I mean, it doesn't actually feel that much difference between four degrees and seven degrees, but it was certainly cold, and I wanted to cry when I got in the water, but I felt so amazing afterwards, and I was so glad I did. So, have a lovely weekend, and I'll see you soon. Bye.