EXECUTIVE REPORT
Spinning the web
Websites have gone from being an online shop window with contact details to an integral part of the sales process for hirers. Dan Jenkins considers one company’s new site and believes it has many examples of best practice.
Riwal is a powered access hire company based in the Netherlands. Its UK arm provides equipment hire, training and sales of pre-owned machines, as well as re-hiring. In the past 12 months, the company has seen a 100% increase in the number of visitors to its group website, and a similar rise in the number of web leads or enquiries.
Kris Desmedt, Riwal’s Group Manager for Marketing and Communications, told EHN: “The first step is to understand your target audience - in marketing terms we call these ‘buyer personas’. These are the types of customers who come to your website and the different types of decision-maker from those companies who visit. Once you define who they are and what they are looking for, you can start to create a website with a structure and content to meet their needs.”
Optimisation
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the term used for making a website more attractive to the likes of Google, and pushing it up the page rankings. This is achieved by identifying key words or phrases such as ‘tool hire’ or ‘excavator hire’ and incorporating them into the text on your site. You can then optimise further by spending money on Google Ads. These are the sponsored posts which appear at the top of any Google search engine results page (SERP). You pay per click, meaning you are charged only when someone visits your website via the Google Ad.
You can also improve your ranking for free searches, which are called organic searches. This can be achieved by adding fresh
content to your website on a regular basis, such as news stories or blogs, which must contain keywords relating to your business. Another great way to climb up the SERP ranks is through backlinks: this is the industry term for getting your website’s URL included on other sites.
Riwal’s website facilitates reciprocal business between its hire and training operations.
Furthermore, websites which are optimised for use on mobile phones gain higher Google rankings. The loading speed of the pages on your site also impacts your SEO. You can improve this by not over-using video or high-resolution images.
“SEO is a specialist function and it is beneficial to get external advice on that,” said Kris Desmedt. “These days you can find a good specialist for an affordable price to do it for you. And because it is all digital marketing, you can easily calculate your return on investment. If you get it right, the payback is definitely there.”
More people are using the internet to search for products and services. 43
If you do decide to keep your SEO in-house, Google Analytics is a free tool which helps you to track visitor numbers to specific web pages, how long visitors stay on your site, and your bounce rate - the number of people who leave your site almost immediately after arriving. You can also analyse how users found your website, such as through an ‘organic’ (free) search, a paid Google Ad, or from social media.
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