Your website has a greater potential value if you are willing to tap into it. With a plethora of other sites out there, it may seem a bit intimidating if you’re unsure where to start. Relax; there are simple steps you can take to make your website stand out above the rest. The following tips are five ways you can maximize the value of your website.

While beautiful designing can help the overall look of your site, it will only get the user so far. Your website must also hold sustenance and be easily found.

Email Lists

This is a similar method used by retailers and distributors to keep in contact with customers. Visitors to your website can be viewed as customers who are looking for a solution to a problem. Whether it’s weight loss or building wealth, email lists are a great way to build up subscribers. The conversion rates of email lists are often better than social media. And the best part is you own the list, whereas social media sites can ban your account and nullify your contacts at any time.

Free Content and Downloads

Regardless of who your target audience is, most people tend to like free stuff. Offering free items has the possibility of converting some visitors into customers who would like to do business with your company at a future date. Though this is not an inclusive list, free items can be:

• an eBook
• an online course
• a webinar
• a small discount
• an entry into a larger prize giveaway

While you’re giving away something for free, it is ideal to require the visitor’s email address for newsletter subscriptions and retrieval of their free gift.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

A website, even if it’s beautiful designed and hosts great content, is practically worthless if no one is visiting the site. In addition, your website needs to stand out from others of similar content on the web so visitors click on your site. The purpose of SEO is to get your website ranked as high as possible, ideally on the first page of search results, for certain search terms.

A big factor of SEO is keywords, which are the queries people type when searching online. A nonchalant approach to placing keywords into page titles, header tags, body copy, and alternative photo text, while avoiding keyword stuffing, can help improve rankings. Keyword stuffing is when there is an abundance of target words in page titles, body copy, and elsewhere that it no longer makes sense. Search engines may also reduce rankings if a site is caught doing this.

You can help with this process by designing your site mobile friendly, meaning the site and all of its text and images adjust to look professional regardless of what device or size screen a visitor might be using. Some search engines demote a site in rankings if it is hard to read on a mobile device.

If you’re not sure how to perform these SEO tasks, there are many easy to find professionals on the web who offer these services for a range of fees.

Link Building

The practice of link building is about getting other websites to link back to yours. This can become a valuable relationship that can prove to search engines that your site is the authoritative expert on a subject. Trustworthiness and authority go hand-in-hand for search engine ranking. Though the algorithms used for page rankings might change with time, this feeds back into SEO. When other sites link back to yours, then it may stand an even better chance of showing up first when someone searches for that term. And thankfully, there are plenty of resources for you to learn all you need to know about link building.

Premium Content

This is what separates your dedicated subscribers from your visitors. Premium content is that which cannot be accessed without a purchase or a subscription. Webinars and online courses are popular choices for making sales. Depending upon the nature of your website, you can also sell premium eBooks, plans, source code, or nearly anything else you could imagine selling.

The web is ever evolving, so keep looking for other ways to maximize your website’s value. What worked 10 years ago may or may not be as effective today. While a website can provide you an income, it is much like any other virtual or physical location for a business. Those who innovate, stay relevant, and keep up with the times will be the ones who survive while the others become stale and fall to the wayside.