Recent studies have shown that small businesses who take a particular interest in their online presence can see nearly 40% more revenue annually. In today’s digital marketplace, online visibility is paramount and if you don’t take the necessary steps to improve online awareness for your business, you are simply putting yourself at a critical disadvantage.
Your company’s online presence can make or break your potential for success. Customers expect a certain level of online visibility and without it you are going to have a much tougher time finding a loyal customer base, all because they can’t find you where they expect to find you online.
These days, just about every business has a website but that’s not enough anymore. There is a multitude of methods available for increasing your company’s visibility through a smart and comprehensive online presence. But each component must be carefully considered and well-thought out, otherwise you will be doing more harm than good to your brand.
Your Website
Every online presence begins with a great website. Not just a good one, a great one. But that does not mean that your website has to be overly complicated and overproduced. You should have the best website that your company can afford. What do you not want to do is devise something all on your own, it will look cheap and probably lack the level of functionality expected from a professional organization.
A lackluster website is one that should reflect the type of business you own and consider the audience you expect to reach with it. Think of all the essential components that your website should offer, for instance, if you run a restaurant you should have your menu visible for all to see.
Search Engine Optimization
Better known by the acronym SEO, this is the means by which you will get your website the greatest level of exposure online. Customers are going online to find your business; they are going to start that search by using one of the many search engines that are available out there. Google, Yahoo, Bing, you’ve heard of them all.
A customer types a search into their engine and receives multiple pages of search results. Your website will be among them; however, the placement of your site can have a major impact on whether or not anyone finds it in their results. Most users don’t go beyond the second page, they typically find the site they want at the top of the first page.
You want your website to be in that position. If it isn’t, you could be losing customers to your competition. When you optimize your website content to fall in line with the exacting criteria of the search engines, Google and the like are more likely to put your site in the position with the most visibility.
Social Media
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, these are your most important marketing tools now. Creating a profile and generating constant content on these platforms can get you an audience of billions. Not millions, billions. If you don’t have a presence on these sites, you just aren’t getting maximum visibility online. Period.
