Usability studies have shown people regularly click the logo in the top left corner of websites. When they do, they expect to be taken back to the homepage. Help your visitors avoid frustration by ensuring they can click your logo on any page and return to your homepage.

Keep Your Navigation Consistent

In addition to linking your logo to your homepage, make sure your basic navigation is the same on each page. Whether your navigation is across the top of your site or in a column on the right, what’s important is it doesn’t constantly change as users visit different pages of your site.

While it’s fine to add more dynamic navigation elements like cookie crumbs, make sure the basics are always visible and accessible.

Stick to WWW

You don’t want to have a non-www and www version of your site. This can cause problems for your visitors and search engines like Google. Luckily, this issue is easy to fix. If you’re using WordPress, this means including a www before your WordPress address and Site address on the General Settings page. For non-WordPress users, you can use your .htaccess file to accomplish the same task.

Make Your “About” Page Interesting

Your About page should say more than “Welcome to My Website!” If you’re an individual, use this page to show visitors why they should spend their valuable time on your website. If you’re a business owner, your About page is a great place to build trust. You can show visitors that you’re a real business by including pictures of your office building, the inside of your office and your entire team.

Let People Know How to Get in Touch with You

If you’re a business with a toll-free number, include it at the top right of every page of your website. Although they’re currently surfing, many consumers still like picking up the phone and talking to someone before placing an order. Every website should also include a contact page that is easily accessible from the website’s main navigation menu.

Don’t Try to Be Cute

Specifically, don’t include automatically playing music or distracting animations on your site. While these elements may have seemed neat in 1997, that’s no longer the case.

Most people listen to music through iTunes while browsing online, so they don’t want their experience interrupted by these distractions. If you have a legitimate reason to include music on your website, make sure it’s silent until a visitor actually presses play.

Use an Analytics Program

There are so many free and/or simple analytics program that there’s no reason to be in the dark about how many people are actually visiting your website. If you use WordPress, consider the Jetpack plugin. If you already use GMail, consider Google Analytics. And if you prefer open source options, Piwik is a good choice.

Don’t Let Your Content Stagnate

You don’t have to be a writer to add content to your website. All you need is something interesting to say. Make it a goal to add one quality article a week to your website. Even if you don’t have a blog, adding a weekly article will keep visitors engaged and help bring in more search engine traffic.

Avoid Flash

Search engines have improved their ability to handle Flash. However, Flash can’t be viewed on devices like the iPhone. Since more people are using mobile devices to browse online, there’s no reason for missing out on them seeing your site. Additionally, you can still make your site look great without Flash by using HTML5.

Always Respond

If you have a blog, you gather comments on posts. If you have a website, people will use your contact page to email you. What’s important is you always respond. Even if you don’t see the point in responding to a specific comment or email, it will only take a few minutes to do. And while it may seem like a waste, you never know what benefits that response may bring you.

Although the last few years have been rough for many industries, your business may once again be doing fine. However, wouldn’t you like to have even more customers? There are very few businesses who don’t want to increase their existing customer base.

More of your potential customers are searching online for the products or services you offer. If you don’t have a quality website that can rank well for these searches, you are handing these potential customers over to your competitors who have invested in good websites.

Customers Who are Ready to Make a Purchase

What makes these searchers such ideal prospects for your business is they are specifically looking for what you can offer them. When someone types “XYZ widget (your city)” or “ABC service (your town),” they are very likely in a buying state of mind. This means that if you have a website that attracts them, your odds of converting them into a customer will be quite good.

This can’t be said for all forms of marketing. For example, many businesses still run ads in newspapers. While this seems like a great way to put your business in front of a wide audience, people aren’t in a buying mindset when they’re reading a newspaper. Instead, they want to enjoy seeing what’s new while they eat breakfast.

Another reason a website is superior to print advertising is you have full control over it. When you submit a print ad for publication, you’re out of luck if you decide you want to change it. But with your own website, it’s easy to make changes if an opportunity arises that you want to capture.

Your Website Will Work for You

A website gives you the ability to educate your customers. Because customers now have access to so much information, they want to know that they’re spending their money on a worthwhile product or service. With a website, you can provide a visitor with all the information they need to feel confident about their purchase.

Your business website can also help you provide customer service. Instead of you or your employees needing to spend valuable time answering the same questions over and over, most potential customers will no longer have these questions because they’ll be able to read the answers on your website.

What really seals the deal about a business website’s appeal is the ROI you can achieve. A website can provide more results than print or radio advertising for a significantly smaller investment.

Free domain and hosting services like Tumblr are fine for personal blogs. However, since you can register your own .COM domain name for less than $10 a year, there’s no excuse not to have one for your business. A memorable .COM will improve your branding and make it easier to rank well.

Use Descriptive Titles

You don’t want your business website’s homepage to simply have “Homepage” in its title tags. Instead, you want to be as descriptive as possible. You can use Google’s free AdWords Keyword Tool to find the type of keywords people are using to search for the products or services you offer.

Include Your Full Contact Details

Don’t simply put your email address on your site and call it good. You need to list your full contact information. This includes the full address of your business and phone number.

One thing many business owners forget is putting their area code in front of their number. Search engines can send people from all over to your site, so don’t make them guess about the best way to call you. All of this contact information should appear on each page of your website.

Use Your Existing Knowledge to Add Useful Content

Google made it clear with their recent Panda update that they want to rank sites and pages that provide value to visitors. While creating content may seem hard, you already know tons of information that visitors to your business website will find useful.

Even if it’s just 15 minutes a day, you’ll be amazed at how much useful information you can generate if you take what’s in your brain and type it into a text document on your computer.

Strengthen Your Pages with Internal Linking

You don’t want each new page you add to be in isolation. Instead, you want relevant pages to be linked together. In addition to the standard navigation at the top of your site, you should add internal links within your content. This practice is useful for your visitors and beneficial to your SEO.

Know What to Do Once You Get Visitors

Many businesses who are new to the online world make the mistake of focusing on SEO but forgetting about conversions. Once your website starts attracting search engine visitors, you want to be able to convert them into actual customers. One of the easiest ways to accomplish this is to make it dead simple for visitors to contact your business by phone or email so your sales staff can close the deal.

SEO is Just Part of the Bigger Picture

Search engines can send a lot of visitors to your website. However, SEO is just one of the many ways your website can benefit your business. From connecting it to Facebook to offline promotions, don’t limit yourself to just one strategy.