Every small business or any business needs to have an online presence. It is one way of ensuring that people or potential customers know about your business. Only if customers know about it, then they can come into your store or make purchases from what your business offers. Industrial plumbing or a café, every small business can benefit from an online presence.
However, even you are online, how does your website stand out amongst so many others? Some may say that an SEO option will work. This article explores ways that your business can stand out and be found quickly online.
- You must invest in building a social media presence. It is a powerful tool for increasing your visibility online.
- Review sites help you in getting noticed. Any kind of review will be visible online, and your business name will appear here. Review sites such as TripAdvisor are like directories. Get your business into such high-ranking review sites, and you get the social proof as well.
- Getting your business into online directories can give you the advantage of leveraging the site’s traffic. If you register your business, for example, a café on yellow pages. Then if someone searches for café’s in a particular area, then your business can come up in that list.
- Try to sell some of your products online through sites like Etsy and Amazon. If someone searches online for a product, then an Amazon result often shows up.
- Engage with forums online and share your knowledge on online platforms. Answer questions on Reddit and Quora. This will help in cultivating your social credit and recognition
- Affiliate sites let you feature your products. They have a set charge, and you can showcase your product there. You can generate leads and grab more eyeballs.
- Write a blog and maintain it. There are many advantages to it. It gives a reason why people can visit your site. You can share things on social media, and you can show off your skills and knowledge online. Blogs increase your search engine rankings and can improve conversion rates.
- Try to connect with other blogs. That way, their followers get exposure to your blog as well.
- Focus on local blogs for your niche offerings. This ensures that locally, you get more business.
- Try getting guest bloggers for your blog. They write a post for you or post on their own blog, linking you. They will promote it through their network, and you can promote it through yours.
- Encourage your readers to share and fans to share your blog with other users.
- Use Search Engine Optimization or SEO. Certain parts of the website can be more powerful. Google and other search engines look for sites that offer truthful, useful and quality content regularly. Keep your URLs simple and submit your sitemap. Use proper title tags and do not duplicate your pages.
- The test that is clicked to go to a different link is known as anchor text. Optimize this anchor text. This text tells what the linked site is related to. For example, a link to CoffeeWorld will have an anchor text “Coffee”.
- Meta tags are pieces of text that don’t appear on the final page. These are read by search engines and ranked by them. Three types of meta tags can be managed. Meta description, title tag and meta robot tags.
- Ensure that your websites are responsive to all devices. Google also takes the mobile experience as a parameter to rank accounts. Go to your website to see if the functionality is good on mobiles and make sure it works well.
- Registering with Google business can get your business on Google maps. Give your real address, real phone number, business name, and the business model.
- Having a Google+ profile has benefits. Google pulls local business listings which is good for your business.
- Ensure your business details are listed correctly on directories.
- Do the same in Bing as you do for Google.
- Do a search on statistics for keywords.
- Use the keywords on your online listings and blogs.
- Using keywords in meta descriptions.
- Use them on headings.
- Using keywords on URLs.
- Add keywords to images.
- Ask your network of friends and family to visit your site and share content.
- Reward people who promote your content and site.
- Advertise on social media and try to get more visibility.
- Get a rating by the Better Business Bureau.
- Try advertising with GoogleAdWords.
Creating traffic for your site isn’t easy and keeping a presence online is challenging. But if you manage to do this right, then your online activities will generate multiple leads for you.