These days, online visibility is important for every business. How big is the online footprint of your business? Do you show up in all the places your customers – or prospective customers – hang out?
The Internet has played a large part in ‘leveling the playing field’ for small and medium businesses. It’s possible for anyone with a laptop and an Internet connection to create a huge footprint, at very little cost.
Social media sites play a large role here – hungry for new content, they make it easy for articles, images and videos to be published and disseminated.
If your business website is not as visible as it could be, there’s a simple 3-step process to fix that.
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Step 1: Fix your site
It’s pointless trying to improve your online visibility if your website is broken. You need to be sure that your visitors have a great user experience – that means no broken links, simple navigation, mobile friendliness and valuable content.
You should also ensure that users – and the search engines – can easily work out what your pages are about. This means descriptive page titles, headlines and sub-headings.
It may seem obvious, but make sure that your contact details are correct, and easy to find. I’ve seen websites where there’s no indication of which city the business is located in.
Maybe that’s not an issue for an online store, but for a hairdresser, restaurant or house painter, people need to know that you’re nearby. Most people won’t make the effort to find out where you are if it’s not immediately obvious. They’ll simply move on to the next website.
It’s also vital that you maintain your site. Most website software, like WordPress, is updated a few times a year, and one reason for the updates is to improve security. A website with outdated software and plugins is more vulnerable to hackers.
Step 2: Create Awesome Content
High quality, original content has always been important on the Internet. These days, it’s one of the key ingredients for a successful business website.
Your content should aim to educate, entertain and engage your audience, and the best way to do this is simply to answer the questions your prospects have about your product or service.
Creating content can be a slow and tedious task, however. You may be tempted to outsource it – but the content you, yourself, create will probably have more personal insight into your business.
Your content can be more than just text – think about publishing videos, interviews, podcasts, infographics, case studies and pictures of your business, your products and your staff.
Content should be added regularly, and updated when appropriate.
The more high-quality content you publish, the more your customers will see you as an authority in your industry.
Step 3: Spread Your Message
Social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter and YouTube offer a great way to spread your content. But don’t stop there – there are dozens of social networks which provide free communication channels to reach your customers and prospects.
You don’t even need to post your content in more than one place – it’s easy to set up a syndication network which shares your message automatically.
Improve Your Online Visibility
If you’d like to know more about increasing the online visibility of your business, you can download our free 3-page “Business Visibility System” Special Report by clicking on the button below.
In the report, you’ll find 5 free online tools to find out whether your website needs to be fixed. There’s also a specific method to create 3 to 6 months worth of quality content in less than a day. You’ll learn about a free service which will let you share your content – automatically – with dozens of social media sites.
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