As a business, it is imperative that your website is as good as it can possibly be. The reason for this is simple – the internet takes up an increasingly large share of global consumerism, and eCommerce is only set to become more widespread going forward.

Your site is no longer somewhere to stick contact information and a few words about your company – it is the fulcrum from which your sales, marketing, and customer service function.

To ensure your business’s website is as good as it can be, you need to focus on a few key areas.

The first is performance. If your website takes an age to load, crashes constantly, or lacks proper functionality, it will be shunned by customers and punished by search engine algorithms.

Secondly, you need to make sure that your site is simple and easy to navigate. If your visitors are confused about which pages to visit, or can’t easily find what they are looking for, then they will click off and visit a competitor’s web page.

You should also endeavor to have the overall design reflect your brand identity. This will make it easier for potential customers to understand what to expect from your products, as well as the wider philosophy behind your company.

This is how to improve your business’s website:

Make sure your Web Vitals score is high

Arguably the most important aspect of a website that you need to get right is its performance.

You can have the best-looking site in the world, but if it can’t load a page quickly, crashes frequently, or has glaring SEO blind spots, then it will repel visitors like the plague.

Therefore, you need to check your core Google web vitals to ensure that you aren’t lacking in certain areas. These web vitals measure key performance metrics – such as website interactivity, web page loading speed, and more.

If you are unsure about how to raise your Google web vital score, then consider using a core web vitals optimization service, which can guide you through the process of improving your site.

Simplify the layout

Another great way to improve your business’s website is to make it simpler to use.

This problem can crop up if the web development team spends so long trying to be clever by cramming a huge amount of content and products onto a site without considering the end-user experience.

Unfortunately, if you don’t make it easy for visitors to navigate your site and find what they are looking for quickly, then they are likely to exit your website and click on a rival site instead.

Therefore, you need to simplify your web layout as much as possible. Put yourself in the shoes of your target market when designing the site. Is it obvious where each page or product is situated? Is it intuitive?

Once this has been improved, you will likely find it far easier to retain visitors for longer.

Build an aesthetic that suits your brand identity

The aesthetics of a site are often overlooked as a ‘nice to have’ detail, but they are crucial to the overall user experience.

You should make sure that the design of your website reflects your brand and the industry you are in.

An industrial tooling company is unlikely to have a chic, minimalist website better suited to an interior design brand, for example.

People turn to the web to find expert eye care. You must be present when your target patients are online. With search engine optimization (SEO) strategies, your optometry website will show up at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs) and attract more customers.

Optometry SEO is a collection of strategies that improve your site rankings. Let us talk about the five steps you need to create a winning SEO strategy.

1. Research the Most Relevant Optometry Keywords

Digital Authority Partners says that keyword research is essential for making an optimized website that ranks well in the SERP. Your customers use specific keywords to find businesses or practices like yours. So your first step is to identify these keywords.

Research keywords relevant to your industry or practice. For example, “pediatric optometry” if you serve young patients and “optometry services in San Diego” if you want to emphasize your location.

Industry-relevant keywords help you create compelling content. Find them using research tools like Google Keyword Planner or SEMrush. These tools provide keyword suggestions and ideas to improve your marketing strategies. Here are some tips to help you with keyword research.

• List down broad topics. Use your services or products as topics. You can also use specializations like vision checkups, refraction services, contact lenses, or medical eye exams. From these topics, list keywords that your target customers potential use.
• Look for related search terms. Your customers may be using other keywords to find your business, like “eye care,” “vision care,” or “eye doctor.” Include them in your list.
• Find negative keywords. At first glance, negative keywords may seem related to your practice, but they hardly help your business. You want to avoid ranking for these keywords. For instance, if you do not want to rank for “optometry jobs,” list it as a negative keyword.
• Utilize local keywords. People looking for eye care services your are will find you better if you use local keywords. Say you are in San Diego; add “San Diego optometry clinic” or “optometrist in San Diego” to your list.

2. Create Quality, Helpful Content

Create content that ranks your optometry website higher in the SERP. This should be high-quality, helpful, and updated content that your audience looks forward to. And we are not just talking about blogs.

Websites for optometrists that do well use different kinds of content, such as short-form videos, which are the most popular content type among digital marketers right now, according to the latest survey.

Create high-quality and valuable content with the following tips:

• Create content for your audience. Find out what optometry services your audience is looking for. What are their issues and their pain points? You can find these through surveys, social media comments, and reviews.
• Keep content up to date. The healthcare industry in general is constantly evolving, so you stay updated with the latest in optometry care. Update statistics, findings, studies, and approaches to eye care so your audience can make the most out of your content.
• Structure your content well. Ensure your text content, like your blog posts and landing pages, is well-structured with headings and subheadings. Use your keywords in headings to help search engines and site visitors better understand your content.

3. Develop an Effective Backlink Strategy

Develop an effective backlink strategy. Backlinks are links that lead to your optometry site’s pages. Your SERP ranking goes up when you have high-quality backlinks because they show that people trust and respect the optometry services you offer.

The following are ways to improve your backlink strategy:

• Be a source of reliable optometry information. Write ultimate guides, how-to videos, and helpful infographics your audience gladly links to.
• Improve link building by writing guest posts. Ask permission to write on blog sites and link back to your optometry site. Write about eye care, optometry services, and other helpful information and link to your service pages.
• Utilize Google Search Console Reports. This is a free tool for looking for backlink opportunities. Check websites that linked back to you in the past and reach out to these sites to build backlinks.

4. Take Advantage of Online Citations

Getting your optometry business listed in local citations or directories helps your ranking because citations show credibility. Citations are mentions of your business along with your name, address, and phone number (NAP).

Make sure your business is listed in local directories for optometrists like the American Board of Optometry, Optometrist Network, and American Optometric Association sites.

Also, update and claim your Google Business Profile (GBP), because this links to your Google Map page. Your well-optimized website appears in search results because people use your keywords to search for optometry services in their area. Here are strategies to optimize your citations and GBP.

• Ensure all information is consistent. Aside from your NAP, your business hours, website, logos, and description should be the same in all directory sites.
• Prioritize your citations. A lot of citation and directory sites exist but make sure you are in the most popular industry, local, and general directories. You may use software like Moz Local, SEMrush, and Bright Local to manage your citations simultaneously and avoid outdated information.
• Complete your business description. Ensure that your GBP description is updated and complete. Use your primary keywords to create an optimized description of your business.
• Describe your services and products. Introduce your optometry products and services briefly in your business description. This helps Google index and understand your website and show your pages during a search.

5. Establish a Search Engine-Friendly Website

Make an optometry website that is easy for search engine bots to index and crawl so it will rank high in SERPs. One of the many ways to optimize your website for search is by adapting a responsive format.

Mobile friendliness is one of the most important ranking factors for Google, so you need to make sure your website works well on all devices. Your content and site elements must be visible to and clickable by your users. Below are important SEO tips to help you rank your site better:

• Create unique meta titles and descriptions for all your pages. These appear in search results and are the first information your audience sees about your business. Use engaging and descriptive titles and descriptions.
• Follow best indexing practices. Clean your URL for easy search engine indexing. All permanent links should be descriptive, all in lowercase letters, and separated by dashes. Include keywords for easy visibility.
• Improve website loading speeds. This promotes user experience (UX). Use a better hosting service, optimize image sizes, reduce CSS and JavaScript, and avoid plugins to improve site speeds.
• Optimize videos, images, and infographics. Use your keywords to describe these assets. Doing so helps search engines understand what these assets are about and how they are related to your website.
• Promote internal linking. These are links in your content that lead to other website pages. Internal links establish the relationship of your web pages and improve search engine crawlability and indexing.

Summing Up

When you use the right keywords, make good content, and have a good backlink strategy, your optometry website will rank higher in the SERP. You can also guarantee a higher rank when your business is on trusted directory sites and when you follow the best SEO practices.

All these strategies help your business or practice stay visible and attract more patients. You also build authority and promote your optometry brand better with SEO.

Cloud-based networks help a business grow and expand. However, before deciding on the type of cloud computing you want to use in your business to cut costs, improve operating efficiencies and increase collaboration, you first need to understand how cloud computing itself works so that you can recognize what a vendor is offering.

What Is A Cloud Computing?

PC magazine has an excellent definition of a cloud:

“In the simplest terms, cloud computing means storing and accessing data and programs over the Internet instead of your computer’s hard drive. The cloud is just a metaphor for the Internet. It goes back to the days of flowcharts and presentations that would represent the gigantic server-farm infrastructure of the Internet as nothing but a puffy, white cumulonimbus cloud, accepting connections and doling out information as it floats.”

One way of simplifying the complexity of a cloud from a user’s perspective is to think of it as a combination of service and deployment models.

Services and Deployment Models

Every cloud is unique in its combination of services and deployment models.

Service Models

Services can be LaaS, PaaS, or SaaS.

LaaS, or Logging as a Service, gives users control of their software environment without having to invest in hardware. You won’t need to buy a server or invest in a climate-controlled room because you’ll be using the provider’s virtual machine.

PaaS, or Platform as a Service, gives users the tools they need to build their own applications. Users are free to develop games, websites, or social or mobile applications to suit their business needs. The provider gives the APIs and the environment to run them.

Saas, or Software as a Service, gives end-users everything they need when it comes to applications, including highly-sophisticated, industry-specific apps that would be prohibitively expensive to buy. All users have to do to use top of the line software is connect to the Internet with their favorite device and point their browser in the right direction. The provider not only takes care of the software, including performing upgrades, but also the technology on which it runs.

Deployment Models

Deployment models could be private clouds, public clouds, hybrid clouds, or community clouds.

Private clouds are run for an organization which either manages itself or managed by a third party, and these private clouds can exist on or off premise.

Public clouds are open to everyone and these are managed by an independent cloud service provider.

Hybrid clouds consist of two or more clouds, and these can be either private or public clouds.

Community clouds consist of two or more clouds, but rather than serving a private group or being open to the public, they serve organizations within a community.

Networks

While a cloud can be a combination of any assortment of services and deployment models, every cloud must have a network. In fact, without a network, there is no cloud. Networks provide clouds with the infrastructure needed for users to access applications and make use of data.

However clouds are now beginning to redefine legacy networks. The entire concept of networking will change with innovations in the infrastructure, applications, accessibility, and traffic. Overtime, clouds will make network architecture less rigid, network services less location dependent, and network resources more virtual.

Selecting Your Cloud

When choosing a cloud computing provider, you need to figure out what services and deployment models work best for your organization. You also have to decide whether or not you need accelerated cloud access, network security for your virtual machines, or virtual data centers for different customer bases. In addition, you’ll also need to decide whether or not you want to operate in a large single-tier network for a large number of virtual machines.

The alternative is to find a cloud where users are free to jump form one cloud to another seamlessly without the necessity of reentering all their credentials.

The Bottom Line

Cloud computing will help you meet the future challenges and opportunities of your business. It will improve your business by reducing costs, improving flexibility and scalability, and enhancing mobility and agility. When shifting your business from the legacy model it may be using now to the cloud, you will find upgrades and business continuity easier.

On the cloud, providers take care of business concerns like upgrades, business continuity, and IT security. Subscribers don’t have to worry about staying current on their software, employees can work from anywhere, and businesses don’t have to worry about disaster-proofing their IT.

Essentially, all the costs associated with maintaining and securing a network, applications, resources, and machines are handled by cloud computing providers whose reputations and business rely on providing excellent services to subscribers. They spend significant amounts investing in top-grade data centers, secure servers, and reliable connections. Subscribers benefit enormously from the economies of scale.

Twenty years ago, IT was an afterthought for most businesses. Technology had only been in the workplace for a few years. If a company had to hire an “IT guy”, it was rarely seen as an investment. It was a necessary evil to keep other parts of the business running.

The attitude today is completely the opposite. Computerworld reports that 43% of companies expect their IT budget to be larger in 2015 that it was the prior year. Companies now see IT spending as an investment in the future of their company. IT is no longer about making sure the server is up and the printer is plugged in. It’s about developing technology that makes the company better at what it does.

How Can Technology Help Your Business

Consider a small business with sales people or other employees in the field. How are they connecting with the home-office? Most small businesses with field employees operate through e-mail and text messages. What if you had a custom system that allowed sales people to enter orders while they were at the client’s office or allowed maintenance workers to update work tickets in real time? Would that be valuable?

What about if you had a system that monitored key metrics for your business and generated alerts when something was out of a normal range? How much time and money would that save?

Technology is about far more than technical support. A real technology expert can build systems and software that make your business more productive and profitable.

The Value in Real Experts

Hiring someone for an IT role isn’t just about finding someone that is tech savvy. For example, if you hire someone to build a piece of software to make your field-employees more productive, are you confident that this person can write secure code that won’t leak customer’s sensitive data?

The work that individuals within IT perform necessarily requires them to handle sensitive systems and data. You need to be confident that this person is a real expert in their field. The problem is, most business owners don’t have the technical expertise to identify the true experts from those that just use a lot of technical jargon. Herein lies the value of IT staffing services that pay attention to significant industry vertical trends and emerging technologies.

Working with a Small Budget

By definition, small businesses don’t have a lot of resources at their disposal. This is especially true for small businesses that are just getting started. It’s likely that there isn’t a budget to hire an experienced IT professional. Herein lies the beauty of using a staffing company.

A staffing company can usually provide temp and part-time labor. You are able to utilize an expert to complete your project without worrying about how you can justify a full-time salary. Likewise, once your business grows to the point where it makes sense to have a full-time position, the same staffing company can use their expertise to connect you with a highly skilled IT professional that will bring tremendous value to your organization.

Don’t let a limited budget keep you from the expertise that will make your business soar.