7 Things to Know When Setting Up Your Website

Key Elements That Impact Your Website Performance

There are a few key things you should understand about the web and how your website performs, which combine the service you choose, your content, and some of the other elements we’ve already learned about that are vital to your success.

There are a few key things you should understand about the web and how your website performs. These elements are listed in order of importance (as much as possible):

• The address of your site matters — as we discussed, the domain name you choose is important (and plays a role in hurting or helping you rank for various keywords), so too does the site name you choose for your website. For example, in some of the services above, your website may be what’s called a subdomain. Using our example of Steve’s Pizza and one of the services — WordPress.com — you may choose to select “bonitapizza.wordpress.com” in order to both use this free service for your website and help you rank for “Bonita Pizza.”
• The address of your content matters — This brings us back to a few elements we already discussed. The location within your website impacts how your content ranks. This is where both our keyword research and sitemap play a vital role in helping us determine not only what content we need to put on our website, but also how to organize it to help maximize your website’s long-term marketing benefit through proper search engine optimization.
• For example, continuing with WordPress, a page where you might feature details about your “cheese pizza” could be “bonitapizza.wordpress.com/cheese-pizza/.” This page would then feature details about cheese pizza and help your website rank for things like “Bonita Springs Cheese Pizza.”
• Title tags are important — Most of the services you’ll use (and to my knowledge all of the above services) will make the title tag of the page you create the same thing as the headline of the page on your website. This is one of the simplest ways to ensure your website communicates clearly to both users and search engines.
• Links are important (in and out) — A link is a connector between two documents, pages, or websites. From a code perspective, a link literally looks like this:
  <a href=”http://www.google.com”>Google</a>

This will appear to you in the browser as Google. We’re telling your browser to “go to” that other page or website when you click on the link. We’ll come back to links in the marketing section. For now, understand it’s very valuable to receive links – have other websites link to your website, especially as part of a broader digital marketing strategy

If the local newspaper has an article on their website with a link to you for “best pizza in Bonita,” that’s a good thing.

• Don’t forget imagery and non-writing content — Although copy comes first in terms of impact, imagery is also very important for any website. Most small businesses have poor imagery. Your cell phone’s camera is not acceptable for imagery on your website, especially if you want your business to stand out through strong responsive website design.
• For our example, Steve’s Pizza should create all of their pies, lay them out, and hire a professional photographer to capture them properly. On average, a professional photographer runs anywhere from $100–$1000/hour, but it is well worth it considering these images will represent your website and brand for years to come.
• Social — Social media is not always critical for every business, but there are exceptions. For example, if you’re a local restaurant like Steve’s Pizza, it may be advantageous to set up a Facebook account and use it to communicate offers, deals, and specials to loyal customers.
• The important thing here is to make it easy for your audience to participate, guide them in the direction you want them to go, and be consistent. Social is ineffective if you don’t use it and realize it takes real time and effort to manage, particularly when trying to support your website with consistent social media marketing.
• Analytics — Tracking is extremely important. Make sure the service you choose has a strong tool for tracking traffic to your website, or allows you to implement an outside service like Google Analytics easily. Understanding how users interact with your website is critical to improving performance and identifying opportunities for growth.

Beyond traffic, tracking should also connect to how leads are handled, which is where systems like lead management come into play — ensuring your website not only attracts visitors, but turns them into real business opportunities.

Your website plays a direct role in how your business is discovered, understood, and trusted. The way it’s structured, written, and maintained can influence whether a visitor takes the next step or moves on.

If you’re unsure what your website is doing well — or where it’s falling short — ATILUS can help you evaluate it and build a plan focused on visibility, leads, and long-term growth. Explore our services here.