idealmike
Level X3
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Anyone that does any business online today with their own website, will know on some level how important it is to brand that website with unique branding. And it doesn't matter if you run a simple blog, a simple e-commerce site, or have a full on online store, or even if you're just looking to grow your social media followers or gain some positive reviews, personally branding your site so it stands out from the rest is very important in todays Internet based world.
And did you know that it all starts with your website? 
How To Brand a Personal Website to See Better Success?
Speak to any successful Internet entrepreneur today and you'll hear right off the bat that branding was pivotal to their success. Not only their immediate early success either but their ongoing success too. Take Sam Ovens for example, a 26 year old Internet success who says that "Each media hit, speaking opportunity or social media post has the potential to bring you a new customer. Personal branding is an essential tool for business success." And while it's true that social media will play a large role in it all, it's your website that will be the best place to start with and what you should give most priority to when branding yourself only. Although doing that often goes hand in hand with knowing how to do that. So to help with that, here's 5 tips on how to build and brand a successful website today!
1. Keep it Simple
These days, there are so many web technologies out there, it's very tempting to add all these elements to your site. It's tempting to do so to try and impress your sites visitors with them. But some people can go OTT on these and they quickly clutter up your site with elements that aren't really needed. Your website should be simple looking and simple to use. It shouldn't be cluttered with elements and flashy images. It should just say, this is my site and this is what I do. Trying to keep things simple and basic will help people to better understand and relate to your site. It should have those basic pages like About Us, Contact Us, Portfolio pages etc which can all be easily accessed from the homepage of your site. Keep it simple and make it simple for people to navigate around your site and that will be rewarding in the long run!
2. Navigation
How simple and easy, or how hard or complicated your site is to navigate and find you way around, will have a massive impact on your sites success. More so than any other factor. According to Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media Studios, your websites navigation "affects traffic and search engine rankings. It affects conversions and user-friendliness. Everything important about your website is connected to the navigation, from content to the URLs.". And when you take that into consideration, it's no wonder why there are so many Internet entrepreneurs that spend so much of their time trying to perfect navigation on their site. But quite simply, good navigation can mean people will spend a longer time on your site and be able to engage with it more. Are you placing enough emphasis on navigation? Is your sites navigation agile enough for all people on all devices to use?
3. Content
Although your product pages may be your main source of income on your site, and your static pages like the homepage, about us page etc can be your bread and butter and what influence peoples buying decisions, it would be your blog itself that helps to actually earn backlinks and traffic from other blogs who want to share it on their own blog or social media pages and is one of the best ways to establish yourself as an expert in your niche. Provided you are writing and publishing expert like articles to it. And it's not all about posting every single day, but posting regularly will keep the spiders, and people, coming back to your blog/site regularly and increase social sharing.
You can think of blogging like fishing. Your blog is the hook, and you need to bait the hook with something tasty to lure those fish (people) in with.
4. Squeeze Pages
Any website that sells any kind of product or service, would do well to take advantage of squeeze pages or landing pages. These can be SEO'd with on-page SEO and keyword targeting, but they are often worded in such a way as to first present a problem and then provide a solution to that problem at the end of it. Of which, you effectively funnel the traffic from that squeeze page to your actual product pages. But more than that, you can make use of squeeze pages to grow your social media profiles and pages as well as just promote your niche products and services.
5. Subscribe Forms
It's one thing to grow your traffic to your site and apply these tips to it to see better conversions. But one part of doing that brand building is to capture your visitors emails which are leads which you can then try to convert into customers through email marketing. Even if it only means sending out a regular newsletter once or twice a week or month. Or sending people actual offers as well. It's free to do and all it really takes is putting a subscription / opt in form on your site along with a message that entices people to subscribe. Such as why they might want to. It's just one of those things that's better to have and not need than it is to need and not have.
Email subscribe forms are important to have because many people want to subscribe to your sites newsletters if they are interested in what your site is about. Apparently, ExactTarget, a provider of digital marketing automation and analytics software and services founded in 2000, say that they've done some research that reveals that up to 77% percent of customers like receiving permission-based marketing communications through email. By putting up simple but appealing subscription forms on your site, you have a better chance of earning more money from your site!
Make Branding a Personal Journey
In today's hyper-connected world, it's easy to fall into the thinking that Social Media marketing is enough and is adequate to find success. And while Social Media can bring a lot of success, the personal branding of your site is as important if not more important. Once you have these elements and features in place on your site, you'll find that your Social Media marketing efforts will be much more fruitful!
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TommyCarey
I've branded a few of my own websites and helped numerous clients with branding and I still see clients coming in from posts that I've made years ago on random forums or websites in hopes to help brand my business name
One website that I did a lot of branding for has actually brought in clients daily and I haven't done anything for that website in roughly 6 months
Subscription forms are extremely awesome
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