Website Management - It’s Not Do-It-Yourself If You’re Not Doing It! 

Anyone who runs their own business knows how hard it is to keep up with a myriad of day to day tasks that go along with business ownership.  When you’re juggling the responsibilities of being CEO, CMO and HR, chances are, your Internet presence is suffering.  Websites are no longer the simplistic online brochures that they were 15 years ago; they have evolved into full scale business solutions.  They are multi-functional tools that can be used to solve a variety of problems including those related to sales, marketing, logistics, customer service and public relations issues.  In the last decade, a number of free content management systems (CMS) developed to enable anyone to establish a marketing presence on the world wide web. The rising popularity of CMS such as WordPress®, Joomla® and Drupal® has led to a dramatic increase in the number of do-it-yourselfers -- especially small business owners who decide to take on the roles of web manager, search engine optimization expert and Internet marketer.   But, it’s not do-it-yourself if you’re not doing it. 

 

Forward-thinking entrepreneurs KNOW that a good web manager is worth their weight in gold, working with you to grow your Internet business presence while allowing you to focus on the other essential aspects of owning and running a business. Website managers open the door to success by maintaining your company image, directing sales traffic, managing consumer relations and promoting your virtual real estate.  The main focus of a website manager is to keep your website up-to-date and operating smoothly.  A well-maintained and marketed website will provide a steady stream of business.

Now that you know how a website manager can help you grow your business, it’s important to know what types of skills to look for in a website manager. An effective web manager will, at a minimum, offer the following website management services:

• Website maintenance & repair
• Internet marketing
• Search engine optimization
• Content management
• Email marketing campaign development & deployment
• Social media marketing & management
• Reputation Management

Not only should your website manager offer these services but they must know how to use them in the most effective ways to benefit your business RIGHT NOW.

Website Maintenance & Repair

One key aspect of locating the right website manager for your business is to ensure that they offer website maintenance services. This requires specialized skills, including in-depth knowledge of hypertext markup language (HTML), cascading style sheets (CSS) and Java to properly manage your website’s code and scripts.  All website browsers use HTML and CSS to render text and graphics and nearly all websites use some form of Java to program or control a websites’ functionality.  Today computers, mobile devices and smartphones use a multitude of Internet browsers.  Poorly written code or invalid programming can cause your site to fail to function on one or more browsers. As importantly, this issue can delay or prevent search engines from indexing your website. While research shows 76% of consumers use search engines to locate local goods and services, error riddled websites are rarely included in search results due to their poor quality.

Since website management is such a critical job, it’s important to be sure that your website manager has professional level skills.  There are two free tools that can help you evaluate the skills and expertise of a website manager or website management company.  You can use these tools to examine previous work samples and see firsthand how effectively they market their own website.
 
1.) Website Code Validation Tool – Click on the link and enter any URL address to check a web page for code errors. This tool will display the number of errors on the page. The goal of any website is to have 0 errors to ensure optimal functionality and search engine indexing.

 

2.) PageRank® checker – Enter a web address to see the ranking of any page. This rating is an indication of your online marketing reputation.  It’s also an indication of the online reputation of a potential web manager. You will want your website management provider to have a rank of 3 or above.   

 

Search Engine Optimization

Understanding the nuances of search engine algorithms and optimizing websites properly is a mandatory skill for any website manager.
9 out of 10 Internet users in the United States say that Google is their preferred search engine.  Imagine having your site banned by Google. This can be the result of working with an inexperienced or overzealous website manager.  And, just because your site is completely developed and optimized when it’s launched, the work of a web manager is not finished. Web maintenance is an ongoing process. Your web manager must stay abreast of the many regular updates and changes required to keep the site properly optimized. This is crucial because if your customers and prospects cannot find you by using popular search engines, your business will be lost on the over-populated Internet.

Effective website management will help your website content rank higher in search engine results. This is especially important since 75% percent of searchers don’t scroll past the first page of search engine results.  Consumers pay the most attention to results displayed at the top of the search engine results page.  If your business doesn’t rank well in organic (unpaid) search results, or if a search yields negative or unflattering reviews for example, you’re losing a lot of potential customers looking for trustworthy, quality businesses like yours. A good web manager can help by creating informative, useful, and interesting content that contains relevant keywords ensuring your business is positioned well in search engine results.

Social Media Marketing & Management

To maximize the results of your website marketing strategy, focus your resources on the avenues with the highest return on investment for your business including a social media campaign. Are you a beauty supply company wasting valuable hours a week focusing on Twitter posts?  Perhaps you heard the latest buzz about Pinterest or Instagram so you devote a few hours a week to posting information about your building supply company.  Without social media management (SMM), however, you may actually be wasting your valuable time trying to attract the wrong audience.  A social media manager can help you to focus efforts on the best media platforms to bring the fastest return on investment for your business.

Reputation management is another key component of your social media strategy. Reputation management is something to think about before your business is negatively impacted -when orders dry up or your phones stop ringing.  You need to know what people are saying about your company in real time.  Monitoring social media can alert you when someone mentions you or your employees on popular sites like Yelp, YellowPages or Twitter.  Staying abreast of what others are saying about your business puts you in the best position to respond in the most appropriate way to maintain your professional reputation. You may not always be able to recover the customer but you can absolutely prevent a reoccurrence.   

Businesses have a lot of options when it comes to website management.  Let IMC Website Management take care of  maintenance, repairs and promotion. We'll manage every aspect of your website including complicated upgrades, repairs and security. We don't stop there; we take care of getting the word out about your website by effectively marketing your site to search engines, directories and social media.

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