Refresh Your Website and Marketing Effectiveness

As a company’s main point of entry for customers, potential recruits and future business, a top-performing website is critical. An organization’s website is often its primary marketing, sales, recruitment, and communications tool. When a site isn’t operating optimally, however, those key functions can be at risk. Your organization may be missing an opportunity to rank higher in search engines, tell your brand story, showcase your services, sell your products, and attract new customers or talent.

For many businesses, the idea of revamping a website can be daunting. Updating content, improving search engine optimization, navigation, overall look, and the user experience can be time consuming. Too often, the important work of keeping a site current and highly functional gets placed on the backburner.

Refreshing a website can reap huge rewards.

At Strategic America (SA), our team of specialists frequently advises and assists clients on refreshing websites — with great results. But, like many organizations, we had neglected our own site for too long. Recognizing the importance of treating ourselves like we would a client, a multi-disciplinary team recently took on the challenge of refreshing SA’s website, starting with establishing goals and strategies.

“Our main goal was to simplify the site architecture and streamline how our services and work are presented,” said SA Digital Services Director Claire Schreurs. “The old site had become outdated over time, and it wasn’t doing a great job of showcasing the full range of our capabilities. This was an opportunity to clean things up and build something that better reflects who we are—both visually and functionally.”

Drive more traffic with SEO.

For competitive advantage, businesses need to rank higher in search engines to increase organic traffic to their websites. Known as search engine optimization (SEO), this process involves a variety of steps including optimizing website content through keyword research, technical SEO improvements and implementing a range of SEO best practices.

“For clients looking to rebuild their websites, a redesign provides a perfect opportunity for an SEO overhaul, giving the new website the best chance of long-term success,” said SEO Analyst Alex Kaminski. “Creating a stunning new site is more beneficial when you’re attracting more users from your target audience, which SEO helps to achieve.”

With SA’s web refresh, Kaminski said a goal was to make the new website as SEO-friendly as possible. “From a visual perspective, we wanted to create a more modern and engaging design that showcases our robust services and work portfolio. From an SEO perspective, we wanted to increase organic traffic to our service pages as a lot of our organic traffic before the redesign stemmed from blog posts,” said Kaminski.

Best practices guide web refresh process.

Creating the new SA website began, as it should for all businesses, with an in-depth SEO audit and collaborative analysis with the web team—diving into what elements of the old website worked and what could be improved. As SA was introducing a brand refresh as part of the web launch, “We partnered with the creative team to define the overall direction of the new design, working closely to ensure the visuals lined up with updated branding and were reflective of SA,” said Schreurs.

When refreshing a website, web and creative specialists must work closely together to ensure the design and messaging work seamlessly within the new site structure. The new design must support the content and enhance the website users’ experience. Content must also be closely reviewed by subject matter experts for accuracy and clarity.

Throughout the process, collaboration helps ensure the new design is seamlessly integrated with the SEO team’s more robust content recommendations. Following established processes ensures web sites are optimized for search results, making it easier for the search engines to index and rank the site—driving more organic traffic through enhanced visibility and user experience.

Developing the initial sitemap is an important step in the process—determining which pages are no longer needed and which new pages should be created. “Keyword research then guides the writing process for both brand-new content as well as the optimization of existing content,” said Kaminski. “Once the new website framework and content are in place, technical SEO optimizations can be made across the website.”

Showcase your brand and capabilities.

An optimally refreshed website allows an organization to showcase its capabilities, brand story, services, products, and career opportunities. Updated content improves credibility and captures attention with more engaging copy and visually stunning design elements. And a new site creates an opportunity to add exciting new elements. In SA’s case, this included showcasing the new brand with video and animation elements that highlight SA’s creatively driven, fully integrated approach. Check out SA’s new website.

Want to learn how an SEO-driven website redesign can benefit your business? Contact SA to start the conversation today.

Claire Schreurs is the digital services director and Alex Kaminski is an SEO analyst at Strategic America (SA), an integrated marketing and communications agency in West Des Moines, Iowa. Learn more about our SEO and web design and development services.