Designing and developing a website for your business can be tricky enough, knowing that you want to include all of the relevant details you need along with creating a strong brand identity, great user experience, and killer content that really makes your business shine. On top of that, you might be thinking, how can I make my website stand out from my most fierce competitors? While there is no “one-size-fits-all” answer to that question, here are some strategies you can implement to differentiate yourself from your business’ competition and overall improve your website:

1. Create inviting video content

Videos, as opposed to images, are more rare on a typical website than you might imagine. Therefore, including meaningful, eye-catching and short videos is a great way to explain more about your business and what sets you apart. Investing in high quality animations and videography will serve your business well, as there is a shift in social media and advertising from traditional images to video content that is increasing clicks and engagement. As well, the use of hero images is a modern technique that a lot of websites use to strongly introduce their homepage. Consider using this space with a full-width video to distinguish your site.

2. Don’t use stock photos

While videos are certainly more noticeable on a page, that does not eliminate the need for telling and accurate images throughout all of your website’s content. Graphics are a terrific way to get rid of unnecessarily long paragraphs so that the user can glean information as quickly as possible. However, stay away from stock photos as they tend to be overused across multiple websites and that does not bode well for making your website stand out amongst your competitors. Not only can these photos feel inauthentic, but it can be a poor experience to see the same picture over and over again. Google, too, considers this in its search ranking. Rather, taking the time and money to put into photography for your business, your business’ practices, employees, products and possibly location, allows every user on your site to get a full and authentic picture of who you are.

3. Display examples

While writing in detail about your business and its success is what you should do when it comes to creating content for your website, taking the time to actually display examples of your product in use, or a portfolio of successful services you’ve provided, allows your website to stand out from much of your competition that may not do this for their own website. This can be done with galleries, descriptive imagery in product listings, and an in-depth review page. In fact, displaying examples of products, services and their stellar reviews from your customers gives your website users more information on their end to be able to decide to go with your business as opposed to someone else’s because your examples aren’t hidden behind a sales phone call or email message (that tends to turn many away because of the extra step). Let your potential customers have power in information because that leads to greater sales!

4. Write SEO-optimized blog content

Your landing page and subsequent “about” pages are the backbone of your website, and should be treated as such. But when it comes to search engine optimization, continually updated and fresh content is what allows your site to get crawled by bots more often, thus improving your ranking above your competitors. But you don’t want to be adjusting the essential parts of your website that don’t need it, so what is a simple solution to providing continual, unique content? Blog content is perfect for reiterating the keywords of your website in multiple posts in multiple ways. As well, it shows that your business is an expert in its field by providing resources, industry news, announcements of new products and services, along with any other information that will inevitably make your website stand out among your competition. The SEO-optimized part comes in when you consider what you write for each blog post: use your keywords in headings, use internal and external links and consider using a WordPress plug-in to analyze your SEO.

5. Maintain your Google Business profile (and maybe run Search Ads!)

If you’ve Googled a business recently, then you are well aware of the handy profile that usually gets brought up with location, phone number, reviews and updates. The Google Business profile is an immensely helpful tool for any business looking to help legitimize your search results. By creating a profile and having your essential information at the ready at the top of the search results page, you are likely to drive more traffic to your website through its link feature that inspires a lot of trust from Google searchers. In fact, your reviews on your Google Business profile mean a lot as 96% of customers read a business’ response to their reviews, so make sure to maintain and update your profile regularly. And while you are on your Google account, consider running some Google Search Ads to significantly improve your website’s ranking above your competitors. Locally target your audience and test out different keywords for your business, and if you would like ways to make sure your ads are as sharp as they should be, use this tool for a simple explanation and analysis.

Remember that more than anything else, to stand out from your competitors’ websites means that the core of your website still must be well-written, well-designed, with efficient web hosting. If you need help designing and hosting a website for your small business, reach out to HostGo today, who has been providing outstanding IT services to small businesses for over 20 years.