Don’t let your landing page fall by the wayside

Almost everyone has a website–I have two, though I’m not quite sure why.  If you’ve got a startup, chances are a website was one of your first priorities.  Understandably, it’s necessary when networking to have a ‘home base’ to send everyone back to, and a company email address looks way more legit than a gmail (not that I’ve got anything but love for gmail!). Whether a Wix, Squarespace, or WordPress, a streamlined, graphic-heavy website—with minimal content—usually appears to represent a startup quite quickly.   Then, when things get goin’, the website is forgotten as other things take precedence.   

But, there are a ton of problems that come along with neglecting your website, the largest being: the less content your website has, the less time your potential customers will be spending on your website.  This means you have less time to convince customers they need your product! 

The other major issue is that having little website content, and letting that content stagnate, destroys your organic Google ranking.  There’s nothing worse than realising your website only pops up on Google results when people search for your company name. What I’m talking about is the dreaded ‘SEO’; usually, at the mere mention of SEO, people tend to glaze over, shuddering at the thought of Analytics (numbers, formulas, and mysticism to the general layman). 

But, SEO is quite easy, really.  Search Engine Optimisation means—for the most part—having relevant information, stated in relevant ways, and content that updates fairly regularly on your website.  These are some of the things that best help your Google ranking.  Having optimised, keyword-rich copy, as well as dynamic content elements, such as a blog or an events calendar, tells Google you’re an active content creator, and it greatly improves your web ranking.  These same factors that improve your Google ranking also keep people on your website and have them coming back for more—so it’s basically a win-win situation.

With a few small SEO changes, you can see immediate improvement on your web traffic.   I started  volunteering at Launch22 in October.  In the first month, while looking over our Google Analytics, I realised our website bounce rate was high and our session duration was low.  After analysing the website, I realised there was large room for improvement in terms of our SEO and content.  Additionally, opportunities for dynamic content, such as our blog and our events calendar, were both taken offsite to Medium and Google Calendar—so instead of our website being updated regularly, these off-site locations were. 

It’s easy to see how the website wasn’t fully taken advantage of—Launch22 was little over a year old, there was a team of mentors to acquire, an events showcase to develop, members to find—not to mention a workspace—then two—to manage and maintain.  The flurry of running a successful co-working space kept everyone quite busy, and it was easy for the website to not be a top priority.  Especially when a redesign was planned around the corner (though possibly a year away).  And, to top it all off, SEO seemed daunting, and Medium and Google Calendar seemed like easier solutions than using WordPress’s options.

In my second week at Launch22, almost exactly a month ago, I made a small SEO report to express the importance of focusing on the website content.  Launch22 did not arise in organic results for the phrases ‘shared workspace London’ or ‘coworking London’ through the first seven or eight pages of Google results.  These, I imagined, were a couple of the most popular phrases our potential customers may search.

Through the next few weeks, I added these keywords, and others, to our website copy.  I created pages for each of our specialist mentors.  Additionally, I updated our on-site blog, adding many of the posts previously published on Medium.; I made sure to add the posts over the period of a week so that Google’s indexer would recognise changes to the site over time.  Finally, I added an on-site events calendar to replace the embedded Google Calendar.  This calendar creates a page with a full description for each event we offer—these descriptions are, again, rich with keywords. Now, I have ensured our website will be updated continually, and keyword-rich copy will continue to be improved.

Less than a month on, with simple updates to website copy and improvements to website content, Launch22 now appears on the fourth page for ‘shared workspace London’ and the fifth page for ‘coworking London’.  While we are still creeping our way up the ranks, the improvement is still great!  Additionally, revisiting our Google Analytics, our Session Duration has almost doubled, our Bounce Rate is shrinking, and Pages Per Session are rising, as well. The best part is, when I move on from volunteering here, these changes are all easily maintained. 

These are the same things that all startups should be doing—focusing on keyword-rich copy and creating content.  That is all you have to do to make your site Search Engine Optimized—no scary math, formulas, or coding.  Sure, the results are measurable; you can put them in spreadsheets and do math at them, but to get the results, all it takes is a few words.

This blog brought to you by Sara Hooshyar, Volunteer Content Marketer at Launch22.  Sara recently graduated from Queen Mary, University of London and has a background in internet marketing, IT, and film production.  Her experience at Launch22 has helped her secure a Marketing Executive position.  If you’re interested in volunteering at Launch22, contact London centre manager Tom.