Construction Web Design to
Compete with Large Big Budget Companies
Johns website wasn't providing leads & sales
We started by assessing Johns Cladding & Facade construction company possible opportunities with our State of Industry Report by reviewing:
Service Offering + Google + Competitors
To identify the best opportunities for the business website to have a clear focus on consumer needs. Then we applied the following 11 steps to transform his website.
11 Actionable Steps we Use to Transform every
Construction Websites (that you can use too)
We have 11 actionable steps that any small business owner can take by themselves without any overpriced website agency. The case study focuses on the Cinderella Digital Transformation that helped John from Kilmore Fixing to filing their order book for the year by May!
Proven Time & Time Over Again
The 3 Stages of the Cinderella Transformation has been applied to a range of websites from irrigation to selling shower commodes.
Shane has been using the same steps but just refining the techniques over the past 7 years.
Firstly, we have two 2 major problems with the way website developers are building websites
Problem 1: Websites are NOT built for Google from day 1
Problem 2: Websites are NOT built to Convert Users into Leads
These two issues are related because before somebody arrives at your website, they need to find it on Google.
They can't find you on Google without good onsite SEO (problem 1).
Then if a visitor does pick your link in the Google listings, they are expecting you to fulfil their need
Any new website visitor with no prior knowledge of your brand will determine within the first 12 seconds if they can trust you to do a decent job or not (problem 2).
Some ideal customer journey mapped by zoho.com but how many new website visitors do this?
Every business owner would like to think that website visitors are going to read every page on the website, but it's simply not true....
53% of mobile website visitors will leave if a webpage doesn’t load within three seconds.
Then if the website does load in time before they leave. these are spilt second thoughts that will flash through their mind to determine if they click back or willing to give you a chance:
- Do they meet my need?
- Is it a brand I trust?
- Is the website easy to navigate?
- How can I contact them?
If they are comparing their options and on the fence, they will look for more information
- Is there real case studies?
- Do they have testimonials?
- Who are the people behind the brand?
- Are they active on social media?
- Do they follow-up with me?
We are going to go through the steps to build a website that helps you answer these questions for website visitors quickly and easily giving your brand the best possible chance to get a new lead or purchase
We are going to go through the steps using Kilmore Fixing as an example
>> You check out Kilmore Fixing website before we started here
They achieved fantastic results using our Cinderella Technique which you can replicate by following the process
During the steps outlined, we did not make decisions based on assumptions we ALWAYS were looking to get feedback from Kilmore, which was key for success.
Step 1: Create a List of Seed Keywords
Keywords are the backbone of any website. They represent a service offering and the more popular, the keyword the more demand for the service offering. We apply 80/20 rule to identify the best opportunity keywords.
To define the primary keywords, you firstly need to create a seed list of keywords which should be 100+ keywords and then zone in on the top keywords based on data analysis.
Every business should readily have the following information available:
- List of services and products
- Areas they serve
- Top 5 competitors
Here is my usual approach to building a list of seed keywords
Start Googling
Start Googling the key services and take notes of all companies URLs with PPC ads and top ranking on SEO websites
For Kilmore started Googling their services + location ie.architecural cladding Perth
You want to be taking notes on competitors websites with PPC Ads, Websites number 1 for SEO and recommended keywords to add to your seed list.
From list of competitors, start reviewing their data using SEMRush Domain Analytics Tool (my referral link)
If you don't have an account you can just sign-up to the free version where you can create 1 report a day but even just to sign-up to the free 7 day trial will be plenty of time to gather all information you need.
What I'm usually taking notes on...
> Top Organic Keywords and adding them to my seed list
> Number of backlinks
> Top competitors and then do the same with competitors
Some insights for Kimore Fixing competitors were...
> "alucobond installers perth" 75% of traffic for acinstallations.com.au
> "alpolic perth" 87.50% of traffic for pro.cosentino.com
Authors Note: Do Your Own Research to Get Ultimate Competitive Advantage
Doing your research is an excellent way of getting a perspective of the industry by reviewing competitors and reviewing Ads on Google.
As a business owner, you should know where people are spending money particularly on ads, and most importantly start seeing opportunities that you might have missed previously.
Step 2: Apply 80/20 to Find Primary Keywords
In total ended up with 95 keywords for Kilmore fixing and the next step was to get some data on these keywords
I uploaded them to SEMRush Keyword Difficulty Tool
(If you don't have an account you can just sign-up to the free version where you can create 1 report a day)
Sort by volume and start grouping them logically by service
What I usually do is export into excel and create different sheets per service and try to apply the 80/20 rule
I'm looking for the keywords with large search volumes to concentrate my efforts on!
I am always looking for niches too at the same time with the industry.
SEM Rush also has a keyword magic tool where you just insert keywords, and it gives you all keywords related to that they have information in their database. You will get a lot more keywords using this than the majority of techniques & get data such as search volume, trend, cost per click, keyword difficulty.
Insights for Kimore from keyword research on service offering:
- Fabrication and installation same service but different requests for cladding, facades and metalwork
- Engineering inspection and safety a secondary need
- Facade systems were the main keywords being targeted by keywords
- Targeting individual types of cladding material was not the customers they were looking for (actually realised this in combination with the customer persona)
If we just took the information from the service page without doing the research none of this wold of coming to light
After this research, you know precisely what people are searching and what your competitors are marketing
Authors Note: Use the Same Tools as the PRO's
Paying for tools gives you the same advantage as the online marketing gurus as it gives you access to a wealth of data.
If you are looking for a free option I would recommend using Google Adwords Keyword Planner tool which will give you range of expected searches on keywords. I also, have previously used Keywords Everywhere as a free tool to get search data ut that is now a paid option so you could Google alternatives.
Step 3: Defining Visitor Personas
It is critical to understand who will be the primary visitors to the website and, that is why you create personas. I like to try to keep it simple and focus on the primary users, but you can deep dive in to create multiple personas and journey maps
For Kilmore Fixing, there was no need to over complicate things...
We created a Contract Administrator persona which highlighted straight away they would have two goals of any website they visit
- See previous work
- Be able get a quote easily
(The persona below was created using a free tool called Xtensio)
Authors Note: Avoid Presumptions
Defining a persona can be extremely beneficial to base decisions on marketing especially for people who don't work in the industry. This will avoid presumptions being made without actually understanding the customer.
If you have more than one customer persona or different per service, craft out new personas for each. It will not take long to draft up a persona and it can always be refined in the future.
Step 4: Information architecture (IA) and Navigation design.
IA and navigation are not the same. Nathaniel Davis, in an article for UXmatters entitled “Framing the Practice of Information Architecture,” refers to web navigation as the tip of the iceberg that sits atop the information architecture of the site.
For Kilmore Fixing, they had a wealth of case studies that were essential to group together logically but also link to the service they were related. After we created an IA it was easier to make sure each service showcased the correct project and each project highlighted the service they provided.
Navigation is to help users find information and functionality and encourage them to take desirable actions. We created individual navigation menus for header & footer, sub-menus for about us & services and a filter with the project page
Blue nodes represent 1st-tier information objects, pink nodes are 2nd-tier objects, and green are 3rd-tier objects. The children of a node are all placed underneath it.
Authors Note: 3 Click Rule
The information that website visitor is looking for, should never be more than 3 clicks away. You do not want visitors have to read multiple pages to get the answer they are looking for.
The website visitors looking for in depth answers will navigate through your website to find it but the potential customer who are just looking to see if you provide a service won't be as patient.
Putting some thought into how people should be receiving your content sets the foundation your website. You can easily create menus and know which pages should be referencing which.
It helps visualise the customer journeys too and how a website visitor might flow through your website.
Step 5: Build a Website with a CMS
A CMS is a content management system, built to be user-friendly without needing to constantly rely on developers to make changes to the websites content. Shopify, BigCommerce, Wix, Magento, Joomla, Weebly, Drupal and WordPress are all CMS's.
WordPress powers 34 % of the Internet. Some of the most successful companies in the world prefer WordPress as their CMS, including: TED, NBC, CNN, TechCrunch, People magazine, the NFL, Best Buy, CBS Radio, and UPS. These are just a few of the Fortune 500 companies powered by WordPress.
Using a CMS like WordPress lets the business owner and staff make changes without always requiring to ask a developer, it requires no coding! It has a very user-friendly interface and countless YouTube videos with tutorials.
Authors Note: Use WordPress
After making websites with Shopify, BigCommerce, Wix, Magento, Joomla, Weebly, Drupal and my very first website was coded using HTML, Javascript & PHP without a doubt my preference is Word press and now I have come to a stage I refuse to use anything else.
WordPress makes things easy because it automates many tedious tasks involved in web publishing. The Famous 5 Minute Install allows just about anyone to launch a WordPress site with just a few clicks — to the dismay of underemployed developers everywhere.
Step 6: Adding Extra Functionality with Free Plugins
There Are 48,500+ Free Plugins for WordPress
Plugins extend the functionality of the WordPress core. You can find validated plugins in the official WordPress Plugin Directory.
They have been downloaded over 1.5 billion times. That’s more than enough downloads for every single human being in China.
Every single website we build we install the following free plugins:
- Page and Post Clone: Makes it possible to clone pages and post which is very useful (step 7)
- Contact Form 7: To meet all your contact form needs (step 8)
- SEO Yoast: Essential plugin for all your SEO needs (step 9)
- Real Simple SSL: Lets you install SSL cert very easily on your website. You can use a free SSL cert using Lets Encrypt (step 10)
- WP Super Cache: To help speed up your website (step 11)
- Compress JPEG & PNG images: Make images load faster as they will be smaller (step 11)
- AIO Webmaster: Lets you add tracking tags to header/footer (step 12)
- BackupDraft: You can backup your website for free to your Google Drive (step 13)
- Wordfence Security: The newest firewall rules, malware signatures and malicious IP addresses it needs to keep your website safe (step 13)
Some themes add their own plugins that the theme use too but if you have plugins you are not using you should delete them as they can be a security risk and slow down the website.
Step 7: Professional Website for $150
There Are 3,000+ Free GPL-licensed Themes for WordPress. You can find these free themes in the WordPress theme directory. There are also many themes available for purchase from 3rd party vendors.
One of the largest commercial theme repositories is Theme forest, which has 8,600+ themes for sale.
There were 679 options for construction when choosing one for Kilmore Fixing. We just picked 3 asked John who was his favourite and we went ahead and built it for him.
The process is simple, pick your favourite you download a zip file which you will need to unzip and then you upload the theme zip to WordPress website by going to Appearance/Themes/Add New
Make sure to install the demo content next as themes do not come with it installed from the start!
Theme Forest provides excellent documentation to take you through this and edit the theme.
The only downside is these themes are fantastic out of the box with the demo content but when you start cutting and changing it does take a few hours to understand how the theme is structured and how to edit it effectively.
A lot of the time you end up cutting and swapping to get a version that suits your needs finally.
The themes are professional looking but they require you to change them to make the website user-friendly, so I highly recommend the duplicator plugin so you don't have to re-upload the demo content and lose all your work
Authors Note: Don't Pick a Cheap Theme
There are cheap themes but they are generally slow and clunky with limited functionality. Review the list of functionality that comes with a theme and ensure its has a visual editor such as WP Bakery.
Using a theme is a fantastic start but you need to change it to suit your website visitors. You really need to focus on converting website visitors still by providing them relevant personalised content so don't leave the demo content in.
The last thing you want is a generic nice looking website, it needs to represent the brand and the people behind the brand.
Step 8: Essential Website Conversion MUST-HAVEs
The most important thing for any website is speed and security.
Having a secure website is actually pretty easy all you need to do is install an SSL cert which is actually free if you use LetsEncrypt.org
In some browsers people will get an error saying the website is insecure and they need to click "advanced".
To solve this you need to install an SSL cert on your domain which we discuss in step 11.
Mobile Optimized
Every website needs be accessible on mobile - nothing else is acceptable.
In 2018, 52.2 percent of all website traffic worldwide was generated through mobile phones, up from 50.3 percent in the previous year. Mobile currently accounts for half of all global web pages served.
Personalised Content brings Character
Business owners they need to look professional and that means no pictures of them unless its a professional photo which is okay if all your clients are corporate and that's the image you want to set for your brand
Nothing connects stronger with a reader than showing some real pictures of work completed and letting them see the people behind the brand.
People love pictures and videos so if you have them you shouldn't be hiding them.
This is exactly what you should be using social media - you can include your facebook stream on your website!
Call to Actions
Every web page should be designed with in mind "what do I want the visitor to do next?"
It will come down to two things
1. Get more information
2. Contact You
Ideally, the goal of every new visitor to your website should be to contact you so you can follow-up with them
We want to make the next step as easy and logical as possible.
For Kilmore Fixing we add contact us forms in every service and project page as that should be the next logical step. For the blog we had a an attention yellow button as the call to action in the sidebar.
In the blog we had an attention grabbing call to action
All service and project pages we had contact us options
We also added a Hotjar poll to ask people questions and try to engage with them, we went through a few iterations but asking did they want a quote got the most engagement
You can setup popups to appear after they been on a page after X seconds, % of how much they scroll down a page, or even when they attempt to leave the page.
Another effective method to get people to contact you is offering a lead magnet - something that they could find useful in exchange for their email address.
Examples would be a pricing book, catalogue, guidelines, checklist, exclusive video
You make the offer to them via a popup or even a link on your website and ask for their email address so you can send it to them
If you are interested in tracking user interactions on a website check out Hotjar which has a free heatmap tool that records users screens as they use your website. All you need to do to install hotjar is place a piece of code into AIO plugin similar to what you did for Facebook and Google Analytics.
The heatmap below was able to identify "projects" as the most popular action on the homepage so we were able to prioritise this page and ensure it was meeting the users expectations
Authors Note: Conversion Improvements Take Time
Setting an forgetting is the worst thing you can do to your website. That is why I get annoyed with people so worried about getting it perfect for "launch" its all about experimenting - learning and taking action.
Everybody has an opinion on what is good vs bad on a website based on their individual preferences but there is no arguing real data! Data takes time to collect.
Experiment and analyze results to determine your website visitors behaviour on your website.
Step 9: Onsite SEO - Keyword Related
Onsite SEO is what help Google interpret whats on a webpage and what a human will see when arrive at the page. Google always wants to give their users what they want so they serve them what their Google Algorithm thinks is the best website to meet the users needs.
There are two parts to onsite SEO (a) webpage keyword related (b) site settings/optimization also called technical SEO (we will discuss that in the next step)
>> You can run a SEO onsite audit on your current website here!!!
You need to know to get a website into top 3 you need start building backlinks BUT without good onsite SEO its not possible.
If you apply what I have outlined below to your website it will be more than enough to get a website ranking. If you want read more some quick googling on any of the topics will bring up plenty of content but start with https://moz.com/learn/seo/on-site-seo
We already have our list of keywords from steps 1 and 2 but don't make the mistake of thinking you are done.
Due to Google’s Hummingbird update search is driven more by intent than exact match keyword placements.
One primary keyword per page but multiple synonyms or keyword phrases should be included.
LSIgraph.com is a great place to find such terms/synonyms if you’re struggling.
9.1 Title Tag
A strong title that communicates the topic that is between around 60-70 characters that should include your primary keyword if it reads well.
9.2 Alt Tag
When inserting images into WordPress you should get into the habit of adding alt tags to the image as this is how Google knows whats in the image.
9.3 Headings
There are 3 types of heading you can have on a page Heading 1 (h1), Heading 2 (h2) and Heading 3 (h3). There should only be one h1 in any page.
Use the h2 headings wisely to break up the page naturally as if you were writing a college paper.
9.4 Content
- Engaging content - if the content is not written for the user, they will act accordingly and leave the page. Google rewards you for people interacting with your content such as reading till the end and sharing it.
- Introductory opening that lays out what the page is about
- Content organized into thematic subsections
- Exploration of multiple aspects of the topic and answers related questions
- Provision of additional resources and external citations
- All webpages you want to rank should be at least 750 words+ long (study of 1 million search results by Brian Dean related to content length)
- Try to link to external sources when writing your content to provide further information on your topic.
- Create content using natural language and variations, instead of dumping the same keywords into your content over and over again.
9.5 Meta Description
If you’re using WordPress, you can use the Yoast plugin.
This adds an additional area on the backend (on the individual page/post areas) where you can change meta tags:
9.6 URL
Keep the URLs as short and descriptive as your CMS but most importantltly update the permalinks on your website
Authors Note: SEO is Not Hard
Every page needs to have a title, description and some good user readable content divided up by headings to be 80% there with onsite SEO for each page on your website. This is made easy with WordPress plugin Yoast with lots tutorials online.
When you're looking at on-site optimization don't fall into the trap of ONLY focusing on exact match keywords. Look for patrtial match, synonyms and semantic keyword variations (more on this later).
Just remember the primary goal of the Google is provide the best experience for the reader do not try to trick it!
Step 10: Onsite SEO - Technical SEO
All you need is a gmail account and you get access to Google Search Console tools and reports help you measure your site's Search traffic and performance, fix issues, and make your site shine in Google Search results. It is am must to be using this.
10.1 Make sure your website is indexed
First check is to make sure the following is not checked in WordPress - I have worked on companies where the website agency built a website for $8k and had this set which basically means the website could not be indexed!!!!
10.2 Update the permalinks settings
This makes your page and blog posts URLs Google friendly
10.3 Create a Sitemap
With Yoast it will automatically create you a sitemap and it will appear at your domain.com/sitemap_index.xml for John at Kilmore it was at https://www.kilmorefixing.com.au/sitemap_index.xml
You just need to go to Yoast / Search Appearance / ... to select what appears in the sitemaps. You should not include anything you have not optimized with content such as tags, categories if you have written no content for them
You can also de-index individual pages with Yoast under same settings you edited the meta description.
Then go to Google Search Console and submit all of these sitemaps and it will send a Google bot to visit every URL in the sitemap and your website will get indexed.
10.4 JSON Data
I mentioned the semantic web earlier - it is when you add a snippet of code telling Google exactly what your web page is about. It is easy to generate and no excuse not to add it if you know about it.
JSON-LD is a way of making websites more easily indexable. It can be embedded in the script and can be placed in any position on the site. With other data forms, you have to put this information in the body of the page. You can create this for free here!!
Add the structured data to the footer via the widget section in wordpress using a html tag of every local website so it helps Google to know it is a local website.
Authors Note: Technical SEO isn't Even Technical
If you follow those 4 steps your website will be ranked on Google within a few weeks. The next thing to focus on is to build backlinks and every local business should first focus on citations ie.local and industry website listing websites like whitepages.com.au
Step 11: Website Speed
One of the single most important thing for both conversions and Google onsite technical expectations is how fast the website loads.
The average load time for sites is 19 seconds on a 3G connection and 14 seconds on a 4G connection but sites that loaded within 5 seconds boast 25% higher ad viewability, 70% longer average sessions, and a 35% lower bounce rate.
Page/site speed can be increased by optimizing a number of website elements, including:
11.1 Compressing Images
Using a wordpress plugin you can compress images as you upload them. The smaller size of the image (mb vs gb) the faster a webpage loads them.
11.2 Tracking Tags
In next section I will cover tracking tags which are essential but a webpage doesn't load till they load. At a minimum you should look at placing them in the footer vs the header.
Ideally you should use Google Tag Manager which loads tracking pixels asynchronously meaning they all start loading at the sane time vs load one at a time. https://tagmanager.google.com
11.3 Browser Caching
Caching enables webpages load quicker by keeping a copy of a previous loaded page on a browser so will load faster next time. I recommend checking out W3 total cache and setup according to the below video.
11.4 Reduce Plugin
Ironically after recommending a lot of plugins I'm suggesting reduce them but the more plugins used the slower a website will load so use them sparingly.
1.5 Hosting is the real game changer...
If you have poor hosting it doesn't matter what you do the website will load slowly.
I think if you are serious about your business you should be looking at Amazon Web Services because hosting a website is just the start of what you could do. Any IT jobs can be moved to the cloud saving money and time. Amazon brings security and reliability to the forefront of their service offering.
If only interested in good reliable affordable hosting I would recommend Siteground which I personally used for 5+ years hosting websites.
|
|
|  |
|---|---|---|---|
Sites | Unlimited | 1 | 1 |
Price (Starting at p/m) | $5.95 | $2.95 | $5 |
Traffiic | ~ 25,000 visits | unmetered | unlimited |
Support | 24/7 | 24/7 | Paid |
Data Centers (Closer DC to your website visitor the faster) | USA | North America | North America Europe Asia Australia South America |
Conclusion | Perfect for small business. The live chat feature is amazing. | Any small business with one website based in North America and wants manage their own hosting. | Companies who are interested in speed and security AWS is the perfect solution for them. |
Why I choose Siteground....
- The live support is actually awesome see my notes for more information to get the most out of it.I have never had an issue with speed and host all my websites on it.
- Free Add-ons the steps I mentioned in this section of compressing images, caching; Siteground has a free plugin that does this for you and even includes a Google speed test with recommendations on what to update. Previously I was paying $100 p/y for a plugin to minify javascript and css but siteground does it all for free.
- Free SSL Certs Instead of having to pay $100+ extra p/r for a domain SSL you can do it for free
- Free Cloudflare CDN integration so you can have a high-speed website for anybody in the world
For this website it loads in 4.6 using Siteground (test performed with https://gtmetrix.com)
Authors Note: Siteground Live Chat
The trick to Sitegrounds Live Chat feature is to use it for everything. In the support page, if you go to the bottom of the page and click proceed to chat here link - it will open up a variety of options which click wordpress assistance.
Briefly describe your problem and then you will be instantly connected to a live chat representative who will be able to help you with any issue you have or at very least point you in the right direction. I have asked them everything and anything and never been disappointed.
Step 12: Tagging & Tracking
Setting up tracking on your website is free and all it takes is to add a piece of code to the footer of your website.
Google/Facebook recommend the header as it loads faster and makes sure you track every visit but it also slows down a website as the header loads first, all it needs to be in the source code so doesn't matter if in header or not.
There are two tracking pieces of software you need to make sure you have installed especially as if you have a very popular website and want to advertise to previous visitors at a later date is Facebook Tracking Pixel and Google Analytics both are free.
Facebook Pixel
A piece of code for your website that lets you measure, optimise and build audiences for your advertising campaigns https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/facebook-ads-pixel
From an analytics point of view it gives a high level breakdown but I would use Google Analytics as it has a lot more detail. The Facebook pixel is really powerful for creating custom audiences for your advertizing campaigns on Facebook
When someone visits your website and takes an action (for example, buying something), the Facebook pixel is triggered and reports this action. This way, you'll know when a customer took an action after seeing your Facebook ad.
You'll also be able to reach this customer again by using a Custom Audience
Google Analytics
Facebook pixel is a nice to have, Google Analytics is MUST HAVE. All you need is gmail account to setup Google Analytics.
Signup https://analytics.google.com and follow the instructions which will take less than 2 minutes to complete
Next add the tracking code to the website using AIO in WordPress backend
Next is to go into admin /settings and link up to your Adwords account and Google Search Console both free tools
If you have a eCommerce website ensure to enable eCommerce tracking!
Setup Goals
- Go to your Google Analytics standard reports
- Click on the “Admin” button in the top right
- Click on “Goals”
- From one of the Goal sets, click “+ Goal” (goal sets are just a way for you to easily group goals)
You’ll first need to decide what kind of goal you want Google Analytics to track.
- URL Destination: Tracks a goal when people visit a specific URL.
- Visit Duration: Tick off a goal every time someone spends a certain amount of time on your site.
- Pages/Visit: Set a threshold for a number of page views that will set off a goal during a visit.
- Event: You’ll need to define an event by adding a snippet of code to your site. Once Google Analytics is tracking the event, then you can set it as a goal. See Google’s Event Guide for the lowdown.
To create funnel goals select URL destination, define the goal URL (the final URL that you want people to reach), check “Use funnel”, and punch in the preceding URLs of your funnel.
Filters & Views
Google Analytics can get even more powerful when you start creating filters but it can be a small bit too advanced for some people depending on the website team you have available.
ISP domain – allows you to filter based on the domain of your ISP (Internet Service Provider). This is only useful if you’re with a larger organization (think multinational corporation or university) that has its own dedicated internet.
IP addresses – when you connect to the internet you’ll be using an IP address. Most retail (domestic) internet providers give you a dynamic IP address which can change. So the best way to filter data using IP addresses is to ensure you have a static IP address which doesn’t change.
Sub-directories – you can use this template to only include (or exclude) traffic from one of your website’s sub-folders. For example, if you wanted a reporting view that only contained traffic to your https://www.kilmorefixing/blog/ sub-folder, then you can enter /blog/ into the template.
Hostname – allows you to include (or exclude) traffic based on domain name. For example, if you have your tracking code on https://www.kilmorefxing.com.au and https://www.kilmoregroup.com, then you add a filter with the hostname of kilmorfixing.com.au to only include traffic for your primary website.
Raw Data Profile
As you setup filters and different goals you are manipulating the data but if you set it up wrong and had tarnished your data set you could lose valuable information.
This is why you should setup one profile called Raw Data and don't ever touch it with filters, goals etc. You can also create a profile as test data to experiment and one profile for live data which you use to gather insights and make decisions.
Don't worry GA lets you setup up to 50 for free.
Filter out your internal traffic
You and your team will constantly be on your website checking things and making small changes. You don't want this to skew your ANanlytucs insights so you can exclude internal traffic by creating a filter to exclude IP addresses
Send Good Data
Google Analytics is as powerful as the data you send it and to ensure the data is as rich as possible you should use the Campaign URL Builder for every single link you use in social media or ads so you can track where the traffic is coming from:
Authors Note: Understand Your Own Data with Insights Reporting
Once the reports are created, you can get them sent out periodically to your email address. You can create free live interactive reports using the Google Analytics data with https://datastudio.google.com another free Google tool.
Here is a list of some of the best free templates you can use straight away https://blog.prototypr.io/the-6-best-free-google-data-studio-templates-9825c7f0fbd9
Step 11: Essential Security
Having a secure website is not very difficult or very expensive so there should be no excuse no to have at a minimum an SSL cert and Privacy Policy.
You can create free website privacy policy highlighting your security practices, cookie tracking, advertisements, personally identifying information and privacy policy changes with https://termsandconditionstemplate.com/privacy-policy-generator/
The next MUST HAVE security feature on your website is an SSL certificate. An SSL cert changes your website domain on httos instead of http. There are user experience and Google benefits of having the SSL cert installed on a website.
With Siteground you can easily install LetsEncrypt as shown below using the cpanel but if you use a different hosting provider you can check out if they support Lets ENcrytp here https://letsencrypt.org/Do be warned some companies will try charge you for the SSL cert so do your research!
Avoid Getting Hacked
Every wordpress website has the same login page domain.com/wp-login.php and before it was the default to make the username "admin" which makes it very easy for your website to be hacked so you need to change that ASAP! Also, use strong non-dictionary passwords.
Another good security practice is to setup a firewall and malware scanner so you can track malicious behaviour on the website and blacklist IPs if there is any. We use Wordfence a free plugin to do this.
Keep everything up-to-date — Always keep WordPress, plugins and themes up-to-date with the latest versions. Website getting hacked all the time because of of not updating a plugin or theme. Not updated plugins is one of the biggest possible securoty gaps in WordPress.org websites
If you apply all these changes you will have implemented some of the best practices that are even recommended to get PCI compliant
Authors Note: PCI compliance is required by all the major credit card companies and if your website is not PCI compliant, you risk penalties, lost revenue, the inability to accept credit card payments in the future and worst case, an increased risk of cardholder data exposure.
If security is a real priority for you AWS would be your best option for hosting your website and client information.
Next Steps
In this step by step guide we have went through everything you need to know to build an absolute awesome website made for the website visitor and Google at the same time.
Some parts went into more detail than others but there is a wealth of information online but be careful sometime there is just too much and you get lost in learning.I recommend take action and focus on the outcomes not to try know everything and get it perfect.
Free Consultation & $200+ Worth of Bonuses
30min call to ask me anything about your website, which includes:
- Google My Business Hack ($49)
- Custom Made Website Video ($69)
- The Cinderella Technique Workbook ($97)
Hurry Though Only 2 Accepted Per Week!!!