More often than not, your website is the first introduction most parents get to your child care center.

If your child care website looks like it was built in the early 2000s, parents are going to assume that your child care center is stuck in the past, too.

An outdated website can also make it difficult for parents to find the information they're looking for. If your website navigation is confusing or cluttered, they're likely to click away and look for a child care center with a more user-friendly website.

It's important to keep your child care website up-to-date with the latest design trends.

More than half of all web traffic now comes from mobile devices, so it's essential that your child care website is optimized for mobile.

If your website isn't mobile-friendly, it will be difficult for parents to view your website on their phone or tablet. They may have to zoom in and out to try to read your content or click on links, and they're likely to get frustrated and give up.

A responsive web design will resize itself to fit any screen, making it easy for parents to view your website no matter what device they're using.

Pro tip - Is your website up to par where mobile friendliness is concerned? Take Google's Mobile-Friendly Test to find out.

The average person has a very short attention span, especially when browsing the internet, so you have a limited amount of time to make a good impression on website visitors.

If your child care website takes more than a few seconds to load, parents are likely to click away before they even have a chance to see what your center has to offer.

Unreliable web hosting, unoptimized images and too many plugins can all contribute to a slow loading website.

To ensure your child care website loads quickly, make sure you're using a reliable web hosting service, optimize all of your images before you upload them to your website and only use plugins that are absolutely necessary.

Pro tip - Do your web pages load quickly enough? Find out with Google's PageSpeed Insights.

When parents entrust you with the care of their children, they need to know that their personal information is safe.

If your child care website isn't secure, it will likely have a message in the browser bar that says "Not Secure." This is enough to make most parents click away from your website and look for a child care center that takes security seriously.

A secure website has an SSL certificate, which encrypts the information that's sent between your website and visitors' web browsers. This protects sensitive information, like credit card numbers and passwords, from being intercepted by hackers.

If you're not sure if your child care website is secure, look for the padlock icon in the browser bar. If you don't see it, your website isn't secure.

If your child care website isn't ranking high on Google, parents are likely to find your competitors before they find you.

There are a number of factors that contribute to how well your website ranks in search engines, including the quality of your content, the number of backlinks you have and your website's load time.

But, the first step in child care SEO and content marketing is keyword research. You need to find out what parents are searching for when they're looking for child care in your area.

Then, you can create content for your child care website that targets those keywords and helps you rank higher in search results.

Even if parents can find your child care website, that doesn't mean they're going to enroll their children in your program.

Your website's conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who take a desired action, like filling out a contact form or signing up for a tour.

A low conversion rate could be caused by a number of factors, including a poorly designed website, unoptimized forms or a lack of compelling content.

To increase your website's conversion rate, make sure your forms are short and easy to fill out, place calls-to-action throughout your website and create content that speaks to the needs of your target audience.

Your child care website's bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate is generally indicative of a poorly designed website.

There are a number of factors that can contribute to a high bounce rate, including a lack of engaging content, slow loading pages and a confusing navigation menu.

To reduce your website's bounce rate, make sure your content is well-written and relevant to your target audience, optimize your website's speed and design a user-friendly navigation menu.