Websites - The Cornerstone of Communication

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Welcome to Z • Connections: The Website Edition

Websites - The Cornerstone of Communication

Did you know that there are over one trillion websites in the world and this number is growing every day?

How do you get yours to stand out from the very crowded web landscape?

With websites now often being at the core of a communications strategy, two really important issues appear; first, what your site is for/what you want people to do and second, how you are going to get people to your site.

In this edition we look at the second challenge – how to drive traffic to your whiz-bang website.
Driving traffic is a process that takes time to master and is specific to your site, industry and offering; however we’ve collected some of the best tips and tricks here to start you on your way.

If you would like to talk specifically about your website drop us a line.

How to Increase Web Traffic

There are some good basic strategies you can implement to increase your web traffic – even before you engage a Search Engine Optimisation expert.

A regular e-newsletter – Link your e-newsletter back to your website and you’ll notice a spike in traffic – assuming people are reading your e-newsletter, that is! Make the content relevant and people will follow through to your site to read more. See e-zine examples.

Social media – Make sure your social media pages link to your website. If people want to know more about your services or products, you need to redirect them to the most appropriate page on your website. Visit our facebook page to see what it is all about.

Rework your content - Updating content in a “latest news” or “media” section or regularly updating your homepage can be of benefit as Google likes to find new content and will rank your website higher.

Blog - A regularly updated blog is search engine-friendly and can lead to a higher number of visitors. By communicating with your audience, your company can position itself as a thought leader in the industry.

SEO - SEO isn’t an exact science – and it can be very confusing to get your head around. There are over 500 factors that influence Google’s rankings. However using keywords, labelling images, giving images descriptions and following basic housekeeping rules can make a tremendous difference to how Google ranks your site.

Adwords - Pay per click campaigns can boost your visitors by more accurately targeting your audience and by providing a more stable stream of visitors than natural, unpaid searches. Read more about Google AdWords.

Do you have any questions? Email us.

It’s important to have a domain name that reflects your business. However, with most businesses now having websites, domain names are getting snapped up faster than ever. Click here.

If you can’t get the domain name of your choice, it’s possible to try to buy the domain name from the current owner if they don’t have a website already hosted there. Follow these 5 tips to come up with a suitable domain name:

1. Choose a unique domain: Never choose a domain that is the plural or misspelled version of a popular domain - you don’t want your website confused with a site already owned by someone else. Similarly, avoid trademarked or copyrighted names.

2. Make it easy: Short names are recognisable, easy to type and easy to remember. They also allow for more characters in the URL in the search engine results page and are a better fit on business cards and other collateral.

3. Choose your extensions wisely: You can register as many extensions of your chosen domain name as you like, as they can all point to the one website. In Australia the '.com.au' and ‘.com’ extensions are popular, but you could also register ‘.net.au’ and “.info’. It’s a good. . .

Traditional print design techniques are being used more and more in today’s web design.
Some trends include:

The latest trend is the single page websites. More attention is paid to the background of the website, with photographic and illustrative elements.

Zadro Communications has recently launched two websites on behalf of our clients – check them out! Darryl Lovegrove and IMC Communications.