PI Magazine Article: Bring New Clients by Optimizing Your Website

For most process servers and private investigators, finding new clients is a constant endeavor. They often use different traditional methods for client acquisition such as referral programs, sending letters to potential clients and simple word-of-mouth marketing. The hustling and hard work usually pays off for those who are strategic and persistent, but many of them are failing to fully leverage one of the best tools they have to bring clients to them: their websites.

A glance at company websites across the process serving and private investigation fields reveals an overwhelming number of sites that likely aren’t doing their owners much good when it comes to attracting new clients. Obvious problems include a lack of search engine optimization, poorly organized sites, broken links, misspellings and more. With some tweaking and a closer focus on building an online presence that draws people in, these poor-performing websites can become a steady source of incoming leads.

To help you improve the drawing power of your website, we offer you this list of eight tips to make your website more appealing to potential clients and increase your site’s traffic.

1. Choose a memorable domain name
Choosing your domain name is a critical step when shaping your online presence. It should be short enough that people will be able to remember it, and it should be closely related to your business. So instead of www.a1processserversexpressnewyork.com, which is much too lengthy, it would be better to go with www.a1processservers.com. Other tips for choosing a quality domain name include:

• Avoid using hyphens in the domain name, such as www.a1process-servers.com. People often have trouble remembering where the hyphen should be placed in the web address.
• Make sure the domain name contains keywords specific to your business. “Process server,” “process servers,” or “process serving” all have many people searching for those terms on a monthly basis, so it helps to include them in your domain name.
• Check to see whether the domain name you’re considering is easy for people to type. If it requires navigating all over the keyboard, people are less likely to want to type that address often.

2. Repair your broken links
Not only do visitors to your website become annoyed when they click on a link and they receive an error message, but the search engines also may eventually penalize you for it. If the search engines are crawling through your pages and stumble across a broken link, they will see it as a roadblock and will stop crawling that page. You want each page of your website to allow search engines to easily scan the content without any obstacles in the way, which is why making sure your links work is key.

3. Become an expert blogger
Posting blogs on your website has many benefits, as web-savvy business owners have known for years. Search engines love new content on your website because it gives them more pages to crawl, and you can spice up the content by using industry-specific keywords.

In addition to bring in more search engine traffic, blogging can establish you as an expert in your field. If potential clients are coming to your site for information, or if your peers regularly read your articles about topics that are of interest to them, your website will become a destination for information-seekers everywhere. Establishing yourself as an expert also makes it more likely that visitors to your site will want to work with you, as you obviously have the knowledge and experience to get the job done.

4. Give your keywords local appeal
If you operate in Houston, you want people to find your website when they search for Houston process servers or private investigators online. To target your website for location-specific keywords, make sure they are displayed in the right places on your website. For example, include “Houston process server” in the page title, meta description and within content. This strategic use of localized keywords will point search engines in your direction when they are searching for professionals in the area where your firm operates.

5. Learn to love the camera
Videos are a great way to share information and drive web traffic to your site. Producing a simple video has become relatively easy; all it takes is a video camera and a user-friendly video editing software program. You can also optimize videos for search engines by using keywords in the video title and in the video description.

6. Proofread, proofread, proofread
If a potential client is browsing your website to learn more about your firm and the services you offer, grammar, spelling and punctuation mistakes can be a major turn-off for that person. They could assume that if you lack attention to detail with the content of your website, you will handle their legal needs with the same carelessness. If you know someone who has a way with words, ask that person to go over your website with a fine-toothed comb so that your website meets the standards of even the strictest grammarians.

7. Let your satisfied clients do the talking
Testimonials are a powerful way to showcase your talents and how you have successfully helped clients in the past. Don’t be shy about asking for testimonials from several of your clients with whom you have had extremely successful working relationships. When potential clients visit your website and read glowing accounts of how your services benefited others, they will be much more likely to want to work with your firm. These testimonials can also be in video form if you have the tools and time to film and edit the video.

Conclusion
The above tips are meant to make you take a critical look at your website to see where you can make improvements. You don’t need to go out and spend an arm and a leg on a professionally developed new website, but you can quickly overhaul your existing site to really make it work for you as a lead generation tool.