According to Daily Mail, in just one minute on the internet 216,000 new photos are posted, 278,000 Tweets appear on Twitter, and 1.8m new posts or pages are liked on Facebook. That’s a lot of noise to cut through. How can you get noticed in such a busy world? We don’t pretend to have all the answers, but here are three simple things you can do right now that will help your website out.
1. Optimize Your Page Load Speed
Site speed is a ranking factor in Google and has been for some time now, but it’s not the only reason page load time is important. Consider these facts:
- 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less*
- 40% abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load*
There are 3 main areas that you can focus on to increase page speed:
- Images
- CSS
- JavaScript
Images usually take up the most room, so let’s start there. Using a tool such as JPEGmini (http://www.jpegmini.com) or TinyPNG (https://tinypng.com) can reduce your photos by up to 60%. That’s huge space and bandwidth savings; plus, these tools can shrink your images without any visual loss.
Another easy way to save on space with images is to convert all the icons on your website into a CSS sprite. One bigger image can replace multiple smaller images which can be retrieved in a single HTTP request. The less requests made to the server, the faster a page can load.
CSS and JavaScript can be a bit trickier, but the best way to make a quick impact is minification. Using tools such as CSS Minifier (http://cssminifier.com/) and JS Compress (http://jscompress.com/) you can drastically reduce the size of your files. Make sure to keep an unminified version so you can easily make changes down the road.
* Source: Akamai.com
2. Blog
Content is more important than ever for a successful website and the quickest way to create new content is through a blog. Blogging has been shown to increase website traffic by 55% on average and if that’s not enough to convince you, check out these 55 other facts on blogging.
You don’t need to write a novella for each new post. A simple two to three paragraphs around 500 words will do. You’re not looking to create a sales brochure with your blog, so it’s OK to use a more casual tone. Talk about industry news, new technology, or other companies doing something interesting. Contributing regularly will allow you to establish yourself as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) where others will seek your opinion on related matters. The key is to get started and be consistent.
3. Social Media
It turns out this social media thing isn’t just a fad. You have many options for a social presence and it’s easy to get lost. Start small. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them. If you’re more business focused, LinkedIn is a great platform. If you’re making crafts, Pinterest can showcase your wares better than the others. YouTube is the best if you have some demonstrations videos while Facebook and Twitter serve a multitude of interests. Instagram is a great tool because you can share your photos; plus, you have the option to also share them on Twitter and Facebook.
Don’t be overwhelmed by the options – just pick one and get started. Post once a day if possible, more if you can. One major rule to follow is don’t always talk about yourself; comment on things you’ve read about or other businesses that are doing something interesting. Social Media can be a huge traffic referrer. You never know who’s reading, sometimes what may seem like a simple comment can create a dialog that becomes a game changing relationship for you or your site, so get going!
Conclusion
There’s lots of things you can do to help your website, but it’s not always easy to know the best place to start. We discussed three simple things you can start doing right now, but there are many others. Let us know what you’re doing to get noticed in the comments below!