Toyin's top tips
1) First impressions count
- Improve messaging on your front page and make it clear what you do.
- Show shoppable products and inform customers of your price range.
- Promote different areas of the website with links.
- Make sure you have a clear navigation bar to help visitors travel around the site.
- Include high-quality visuals.
- Keep a clean background and reduce decoration.
- Use a sans serif font to improve online accessibility.
- Present your accolades - where have you been featured? Who have you worked with? Where are you stocked?
2) Optimise written content
- Ensure each page has a consistent tone of voice, clear formatting and grammar.
- Aim for a minimum of 500 words to support SEO.
- Do not duplicate content - every page should have a unique purpose.
3) Research keywords
- Find out your target user's intent. What is your customer typing into search engines?
- Build search phrases into your page content and meta-data.
4) Optimise your product pages
- Regularly review your images and product descriptions to appeal to users at key moments (e.g seasons, celebrations, trends, sales).
- Consider any related content you could add to enhance the user experience? For example, details on your materials and sourcing, process, sustainability commitments...
5) Optimise your images
- Compress and format images for web (75 - 150 dpi, jpeg or png, exported in RGB colourspace).
- Create image file names with keywords prior to uploading to your website.
- Product images should be less than 100kb in size.
6) Use SEO tools
7) Test your search ranking
- Every web page needs its own unique title and meta description. This tells search engines whether your page is relevant to an enquiry.
- Check your SEO ranking by searching for related keywords, and short-tail vs long-tail queries. For instance 'ceramic pots' or 'where can I buy ceramic pots in the UK?'.
8) Set up a 'My Business' account on Google
- This is a great way to improve exposure online.
- A public profile adds credibility to your business (even if you're using a residential address).
- Increase your visibility on Google search and Google maps.
9) Build backlinks
- The more backlinks you secure from credible authorities the better.
- Always try and secure backlinks for your website homepage.
- Check on a regular basis for broken or lost backlinks.
10) Have patience!
Remember, your website is a constant work in progress and building traffic takes time and patience. Bear in mind that change won't happen overnight. It can take around 3-6 months to see the fruits of your labour. Follow each step and make sure to regularly refresh your content for success online.