Establishing the value of your website is one of the most important things a business can do before selling its website. This task brings in a lot of conflicting options and tricks that can be done. There are countless website value calculations that some use, telling the sellers how much their website could be worth. Forget all of that. How can any website tell you how much another website is worth anyways?
It’s really no surprise that so many website owners have no idea of their website’s value, or have skewed views of the value. No matter if you are looking into selling your website, or if your business will keep their website forever, there is tons of information out there to help you in building and updating your website. Have no fear, these 21 ways will be the smartest and easiest ways to increase the value of your website.
Its Best to Start With the End in Mind
Starting with the end in mind is a simple strategy that has been introduced by countless people and a saying that has circulated from the beginning of time. This easy strategy really does make all the difference when it comes to building and adding to the value of your website. But, unfortunately, this ideal is often overlooked.
The truth is, you will never be able to truly build your website’s values and worth without first deeming it a goal. This is why starting with your exit plan is ideal. Think about this, if you decided to sell your website tomorrow, or three years down the road, who would buy your website business? And, if they decide to buy it, why will they buy it?
It’s always been said, the biggest mistake a small business can make is thinking like a small business. The bottom line is that it’s imperative to know who your buyers are. Even if selling your website will take place years in the future, it’s smart to think ahead and make good connections with them now. By creating a position relationship and networks in the present, selling in the future will be a breeze. Knowing who the largest market players are and understanding their values and investments will pay off. By starting with the end in mind, you will be able to do all the hard work now and watch it pay off later.
Using Multiple Website Traffic Sources
Many bloggers will brag about receiving large amounts of business from SEO, Facebook, Instagram, or whatever else the latest method is. But, what if one day google no longer likes your site? What if the advertising that you were getting from Facebook doubles in cost? Things change constantly and only getting traffic from one source is highly detrimental in the long run.
Experienced buyers of different websites and online investors will always downplay the value of your website if this is the case. As a seller, you don’t want this to be the case. If your website is generating traffic from only one source, it could be left vulnerable to changes in the future. Search engine algorithms or increased competition can change overnight, and if your website relies on this then it will, in turn, hurt your website.
Website traffic diversity is being thought of more and more for most search engines, and getting traffic from a multitude of sources is best. For example, google, bing, and yahoo are all great, but also working with social media sites, partner websites, industry-specific blogs, and PPC ads can all benefit your website.
Creating Evergreen Content that is also Unique
In the past few years, online marketing has really shifted. From outbound to inbound marketing, selling the customer is the bare minimum, and educating them must also be done. Unique content is hands down the best way to provide educational and helpful information to the industry in which the website is targeting. This way, the content can inform and assist customers, and clients will be of the utmost importance.
In addition to this, with your website’s unique content in mind, you can position yourself in higher ranking places throughout your targeted industry. Creating a blog and utilizing it would be the best way to present your own unique content. When doing so, the content must be “evergreen” content. This term means that this content should be about things that are unlikely to change in the future. This type of content will attract all kinds of visitors long term and can have the possibility of generating new clients.
In order to get this kind of content, your business can hire freelance content writers. Some websites such as Fiverr, Freelancer.com, and Twine can be of some help for this case.
Securing Major Domain Variations and some Major Social Media Extensions
With the number of domain extensions that are available today, difficulties arise. Because of the countless options, it’s almost impossible to secure every available domain extension. The best advice that one can give is to at least secure a .com domain and then any local domain extension that is available. If you are very serious about your brand and wish for more security, then securing .net and even .org will be options as well.
When a buyer is looking to purchase your website, it will bring them the security to know that you also own all the other major extensions and competitions of the brand they are looking at. This is the case with social media channels as well and of course, appearing on every social media channel isn’t practical, but having some links to your brand will be ideal. The fact is that social media can be automated which can do wonders for your business, and in turn, increase your website’s value.
Receiving Star Ratings and Reviews
It’s no secret that having social proof is imperative in any business. It can create trust between your business and your customers, making it highly likely that purchases will be made. Furthermore, it will make sure that the information they are getting is very reliable and trusted. What better way to prove to your customers that your website and business are legitimate than customer reviews and outstanding testimonials.
If your business has gotten testimonials or reviews, then putting them on your website will be a great added bonus. Something as simple as this could increase your website’s value significantly. Customers will be able to closely relate to the brand more when they see that other people like them are purchasing the same products or services and enjoying them.
Point blank, websites, and companies today are delivering not only a product but also a service. This difference will make or break your company in the long term. Nowadays, a brand is no longer what businesses say it is, but what the customers say it is. This is why adding these reviews and testimonials to your website will increase its value tremendously.
To get these testimonials a business can do many things. For starters, a customer satisfaction survey can go a long way. By offering your customers a place to state their thoughts can pay off. From there, you can add these comments and rankings to your website through links, pictures, or text boxes. Another way to get testimonials and reviews is to automatically add a system to your website. This way, customers can make purchases from your website and then directly review it after their experience. Reviews, good or bad, will be posted to your website.
Paying a Bit More for a Premium Domain
These domains are usually short, easy to spell, and memorable, stemming from the most popular extensions, such as .com. These premium domains will cost much more than normal but will ensure to drive the website’s traffic up. Additionally, when it comes to branding your website, these domains will help immensely. By using a special domain name with a popular extension, your website will be complemented by outstanding professionalism and a solid reputation.
Link Building Through Inbound Links and Backlinks
Adding backlinks from well-known and reputable sites can be a great way to build the value of your website. Doing this can help your site achieve two things. For starters, getting backlinks from quality websites will, in turn, make your own domain’s authority higher. With a higher authority, your site will rank higher in search engine results, which will bring in more website traffic and higher revenue.
Second, adding in backlinks can also allow your website to diversify its everyday traffic. If one referral link will bring in a different type of traffic, imagine what multiple links could do for your revenue. By starting to link build, you will be able to join together with different industry similar websites, provide quality content to those interested, and even partner with other websites that offer similar information.
Turning your Website into a Hub, Therefore Increasing the Maximum Value
The word hub means a center of activity, and when using it to describe your website, is a great thing. You want your website to be a hub, and by doing so, your traffic and revenue will increase immensely, making it an asset to sell in the future. If your website becomes a hub for the industry you are in, then it is an absolute asset. This can be vital because your customers can then be educated on all you are offering.
Another way to add value to your website is to create some IP courses or systems that are also related to your website. If you are able to show a potential buyer that you are doing so successfully, then it might bump the price of your website up by a lot.
Keeping Quality Records
If your business has a quality website that will be sold in the future, preparing for the potential buyers’ due diligence, is key. Keeping the proper financial records, for many, is very straightforward and something that must be done. Being able to have a palace that all website income is tracked in will be beneficial in the future sale of your website.
Additionally, keeping a detailed track of website traffic and traffic sources is needed. This can be done easily with google analytics. If there are secrets about your website that your business is hiding, any future purchases will be in jeopardy.
Does your business have unhappy customers or disagreements with former business partners? The due diligence process will discover these issues and could put your company and website at risk. Keep in mind that if there are things that are being hidden, no buyer will wish to go forward with a sale. A smart buyer will ask for a disclosure to be signed, making the seller liable for all issues that could arise after the sale is made.
By thinking in advance and making sure all is right and legal before a potential sale, will mitigate the problems.
Is Your Website Mobile-friendly?
This should be a pretty obvious tip, but having a mobile-friendly website is huge, especially in today’s day and age. If your business and website find that their mobile website is up and running, there are tests that google can run to ensure that the mobile site is functional. Without a well-optimized mobile experience for customers, the website traffic and potential revenue might be at risk.
It’s no secret that the mobile age is highly developing, and fast, so if your website isn’t at the forefront, you will risk falling behind. If you are looking to increase the value of your website then you have to start looking at mobile optimization options.
Using Copywriting to your advantage
Effective and solid copywriting is huge in the communication of your brand’s message. Apart from communicating the brand’s message, effective copywriting is also key for more sales. With a well-written strategy and quality information, you can get the website results you have been wanting. Customer engagement, click-through rate, and purchases will benefit from your copywriting strategy.
With this acting as the backbone of your website, the value will increase almost overnight. The more valuable and attractive your website will become to the buyers that are interested in investing.
Working with Multiple Monetization Channels
As with anyone, buyers will look first at those websites with multiple income channels. For example, if you are running a blog, earning an income from informational products, running personal events, and selling services, will be the best options. On the other hand, if you are a business selling products, adding Google Adsense to your site could help you launch an affiliate program or additional website that will link to your main page. This way, you will have countless forms of income and revenue.
If your company is always on its toes and thinking about the various ways this can be done, you are already miles ahead of the competition. No matter what sources are used to drive income, multiple ones are needed to ensure a steady revenue flow and to grow in worth.
Featuring Some Celebrities Testimonials or Guest Posts
Have you ever considered quality quest content for your website? Many haven’t, and because of this, are risking some serious popularity. By inviting other guests from the industry to post articles on a blog, or to stand behind the services offered will do wonders for your website’s value.
The most important word to remember is quality. The content that is coming from different guests or celebrities must be quality and for one simple reason. If you’re going to take the time and ask someone to produce something with real value, it needs to add value to those it will come into contact with. Writing a load of average content that is found on countless other websites won’t be beneficial in the long run.
Here are a few pointers when it comes to quality content.
- The content on your website should be highly original, and not generated.
- Having author bios will also help the credibility of your website and its writers as well.
- Keeping articles around 1,500 words and up is ideal.
- Articles should include links that aren’t self-serving and should be relevant.
The bottom line is that guest posts really are a wonderful way to bring in website traffic and sometimes boost sales, depending on the content of the post.
Creating a Sales Funnel
A sales funnel collects information, most commonly with a lead magnet or an offer, and works to sell you something. Not all websites are a sales funnel because many websites are simply informational. When visitors view a website, they will most likely get the information and then go somewhere else to purchase the services or products spoken about. A sales funnel makes this possible to all things on one site.
Without a proper and working sales funnel, websites are unable to successfully sell products on the given website. From building strong customer awareness and gathering leads to then monetizing them, a sales funnel will do it all. Point blank, sales funnels bring everything together. If your company can show the potential buyer that there is a successful sales funnel working hard on the website, its value will skyrocket.
Building a Solid E-Mail List
An email list of clients and customers will work great for any website. This list will provide all the information needed for a targeted group of people, making it easy to communicate. These are the people that already know all your website is about and are up to date on products and services.
Putting out offers, news, or future plans through a set email list will give off a much better reputation than simply cold calling random groups of people. Also, if you do decide to sell your website, this is a perfect asset to lead with, and one that will cause buyers to pay more for it. The bottom line is that customers are an absolute ticket item to a successful business and website, so this email list will, without a doubt, add value to your site.
Using Original Images and Creative Videos for Unique Website Content
A simple picture or video is the best way to drive user and customer engagement. Content can be presented in many ways besides that of the typical written content. Videos and images are a great way to increase customer conversations and boost client enthusiasm.
Video content, in particular, stemming from youtube, will help with search rankings and social media frequency. Using images is also considered essential to create a crystal brand image. Well-produced and clever images are a shoo-in to add value to your articles, and in turn, your website.
Having Content Delivered Through a CDN
Content delivery networks, also known as a CDN, is defined as a series of cache services that have the ability to store online content and provide it to the users that are closest to those particular services. Now, CDN truly delivers more than half of all the traffic that’s accumulated over the web. Getting a CDN will add to your website in these listed ways.
- Faster page loading speeds
- The ability to handle high levels of traffic
- Blocking the bots that are spamming your website and your customers
- Increasing security against DDoS attacks
Out of all these benefits, the speed benefit is of the utmost importance. Having a delay in the page loading time can make or break your website’s success. As soon as the page loading time goes up, your site’s conversation rates drop. Looking into the loading time of the pages of your website can be done externally through plenty of other websites on the internet.
Using an SSL Certificate
SSL stands for secure sockets layers, which is a well-known and standard technology that allows global encryption and communication between web browsers and web servers. If your website has this certificate you will be able to ensure your customers that while on your website, their connection is secure. This will significantly increase their trust, and boost your online value.
There are many benefits that SSL certificates offer, and will ensure that only the intended parties will be able to see what is happening. These certificates also protect against phishing, safeguarding credit card information, and ensures that your website is original and not a scam company.
Only Using Personalized Content
This should be a tip that is highly obvious for many, but it must be said. Many successful websites use personalized content and can argue that it’s the only way to go. By creating personalized content, your website can target any services and products that are shown to users based on their personal data. This data will include their location, the devices used to access websites, any search terms used, their local time, a website’s visit frequency, and their behavior on certain pages.
With this personalized content in mind, your website can create engagement and conversations with customers and improve leads while being extremely customer-friendly.
Having a Vast Network of Internal Links
This key is most important for blogs. A website without a proper system of internal links in place can often be difficult to navigate. Unlinked content is also more susceptible to stealing for use on other websites by competitors and bots. If you are publishing articles with countless links to other pages on your website, or even outside of your website, customers will be able to navigate easily.
Additionally, it’s harder for other websites or companies to copy information if it’s linked to other pages on your website. Of course, some content on your website, especially if you have a website funnel, might get stolen, but most likely this won’t happen. With all your content specific to your website and your website alone, buyers will be more interested because competition will be little.
Hosting a High-Quality UI or UX Design
Hiring a quality designer for your website, or choosing a unique design, will create a great and new user experience. This way, you will ensure a quality brand image and one that is strong in your customer’s eyes. Having professional images and a user-friendly layout that customers can relate to and use happily is one of the best and easiest ways to increase your website’s value.
If you wish to choose this avenue but don’t want to hire a full-time designer, using freelance designers and sites will do the trick. This way, you can get more than one design to work with and can choose what’s best for your website from there.
Ready to Boost Your Websites Value Now?
Now that you have all the steps and tricks needed to boost your website’s value, are you ready to go? Just remember two things when looking to create the best value for your website. First, being able to systematize and automate as many procedures as possible is highly beneficial. All the new technology available at the tips of your fingers allows you to work smarter and not harder, allowing more time for customer satisfaction and working on the things that matter to you in terms of your website.
Second, removing yourself from the emotions when selling your website can make the process go much smoother. In order to successfully exit, you and your business must show the buyer that the site can fully operate without your help.
