The New Year is here and no matter how you brought in 2015, if you’re a small business owner what matters is how you bring your business into the New Year. The best way to determine a course of action is to complete an online marketing review – sounds daunting but it’s quite simple. We’ve compiled a few pointers to assist you!

Is your website visible in Google?

Is your website ranking in Google for your core products and services in your service area? If you type just one of your services combined with your location into Google’s search, does your website come up? If the purpose of your website is to generate more business but your website isn’t highly visible, you have some work to do! If you need more convincing, read this article – No. 1 Position in Google Gets 33% of Search Traffic – which explains why your Google rankings matter:

“It’s anything but lonely at the top.”

Is your website mobile-friendly?

When doing a review of your online marketing plans for the New Year, your website should be your priority! Your website is your asset and you own it, you don’t own your social media pages! Google is also now displaying “mobile-friendly” or “not mobile-friendly” messages with websites in mobile search results. It was important before, but it’s becoming even more so and we don’t predict people will be putting down their mobile devices any time soon…

Is your website’s contact details and content up-to-date?

Are your business’s contact details up-to-date? An important aspect of online marketing is getting the basics right, like your contact details. Make sure people know where you are, what your phone number is and when you’re open! This starts on your website. Update your contact page whenever things change, for example if you move location, and also to notify clients of any closures or extended trading hours. If you have a Google MyBusiness listing for your location – not part of your website – you should also log into that and update your contact details there too, as these will appear with your Google map which is sometimes seen before your website!

Do you review your website’s Google Analytics data?

If you have a GOOP website, are you reviewing your Google Analytics data? Your Google Analytics data is an invaluable source of information about the overall performance of your website, the performance of specific pages and blog posts. It also tells you the percentage of Internet users viewing your site via mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets. There are two reasons you should check your Google Analytics data NOW:

  1. It will help you develop an online marketing plan for 2015, including blog topics and keywords
  2. It will help you determine if your website needs to be upgraded to a mobile friendly design to cater to your audience

Do you have an online marketing strategy for 2015?

If you haven’t already done so, do yourself a favour and determine the following:

  • which platforms you will use to market your business online and how often you will be active on them, i.e. blogs, Facebook, YouTube, etc.
  • which topics you will focus on each month
  • how much time and/or money you will allocate for the year
  • who will implement your strategy
  • how you will measure its effectiveness.

Need help completing an online marketing review? We create 12-month online marketing strategies for our clients which maps out all of the above, and more. Contact us for more information!

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