In this day and age, a successful business can no longer neglect its online presence. Keeping up with the competition means finding innovative ways to boost your online footprint, such as using SEO strategies for eCommerce to improve visibility on search engines.
In the third quarter of 2020, online sales conversions went down from 2.28% to 2.06% compared to the previous year. This shows that researching how to increase your online presence and improve your web strategy is essential to reach buyers in the years to come.
Businesses seeking to differentiate themselves from their competition need to focus on unique web presence marketing tactics, which we’ll discuss in more detail below.
For easy navigation, this table of contents summarizes our top tips on developing a more substantial online presence:
Table of Contents
The most important thing to do for your business in terms of how to increase online presence is to set aside a budget. While there are plenty of free tools and do-it-yourself options that exist, seeking guidance from an expert can help you navigate complicated SEO practices and prevent any glitches along the way.
Ideally, good and effective SEO services should cost around $500 or more every month, depending on your needs and available resources. As you create a budget, think about all the costs involved in your digital marketing campaigns, such as total ad spend, the cost of email marketing, and other fees you might have to pay.
If you don’t already have one, the most important way to increase your online presence is to have a website in the first place. In addition to having social media accounts, a website to showcase your portfolio, products, and or other goods and services can help you widen your customer base.
Some website builders to help get you started include Wix, WordPress, Squarespace, and Shopify. Including high-quality images, videos, and more can make your brand more attractive to consumers. If your budget allows it, hiring a website designer can give you some additional peace of mind in terms of usability and design.
Investing in search engine optimization, or SEO for short can improve web presence by making your website more visible on search engine results pages. However, SEO involves several components and takes substantial time to give you the results you’re after. Unlike pay-per-click advertising, SEO takes several months to increase web traffic.
SEO can involve generating backlinks, producing relevant content, improving page speed, and making use of keywords related to your area of business. Conducting a website audit can help you identify key areas of improvement. The major benefit of SEO is that it provides lasting results that are more arguably more cost-effective in the long term.
How can a business optimize its online business presence and make it accessible to others? Reading up on Web Content Accessibility Guidelines can make your site more inclusive for those that may need access to larger fonts, more contrasting colors, and text-to-speech access.
By doing so, you can also convey more positive brand values and encourage like-minded individuals to do business with your brand. At the very least, ensuring that your website is optimized for both web and mobile can improve the user experience all around. Simplifying the checkout process and following the principles of design can make a huge impact.
An effective web presence marketing strategy also involves getting online feedback through customer reviews. By getting real feedback from your customer base, you can build greater brand credibility and gain the trust of customers. Feature reviews on your product or service pages to positively influence buying decisions.
They can also improve user interaction online while encouraging word of mouth to interested buyers. As a bonus, you can also create a rewards system that gives customers points, extra discounts, or other perks for leaving their feedback. Other options include surveys and quick questionnaires.
In addition to SEO, the process of how to increase online presence includes investing in online ads. In comparison to print ads, online ads can be more effective because it enables your business to create directly targeted messages to your intended customers. This can improve your value for money and lead to more sales.
Using a mixture of methods like email marketing, social media ads, mobile advertising, video advertising can help you reach global markets. The good news is that you can also easily track the success of online ads with useful metrics, such as if it resulted in a sale. In comparison to SEO, it can be a great way to generate faster results.
It’s not just enough to have social media accounts to improve web presence. To make the most out of these online avenues, you’ll need to regularly engage with and respond to your customer base. For instance, creating interactive quizzes, using specialized hashtags, and hosting giveaways are some great ways to boost engagement.
Other ways you can increase online presence involve using social media influencers to help you promote your business, especially those relevant to your specific niche. This can increase your follower count, the number of retweets you receive, and more. This is an effective method to focus on if you’re thinking about how to improve your online presence.
In addition to text and images, nothing grabs a viewer’s attention like videos. These days, video marketing is growing more popular than ever, making it an interactive way to improve your online presence. Live streams, Tik Tok, and YouTube channels are just a few of the avenues you can use to generate buzz around your brand.
Depending on your industry, you can host interviews, create tutorials, show off your employees, or introduce new products, or raise awareness for a good cause. Consider using Facebook Stories, Instagram Stories, and even LinkedIn Stories to maximize your impact. With some luck, your content might even go viral!
How to increase your online presence also requires staying up to date. Creating fresh and relevant content will remind readers of your brand, rather than letting your social media accounts grow stale over time. However, there is a fine line between posting too much and just enough, depending on your platform of choice.
To make it easier for you, scheduling posts in advance with apps like Later can help you save time and energy. You can also repurpose previous content with updated tips, and see what’s trending in your industry of choice. Encouraging users to sign up for a monthly or weekly newsletter can lead to more clicks on your blog posts and other sales.
Simply put, A/B testing or split testing is the process of comparing two different versions of a concept (e.g. a web page, article, or social media campaign) to determine which one drives better results in terms of sales and other important metrics. These versions are shown to various website visitors to evaluate which one is more successful.
At the end of the day, A/B tests can provide valuable insights into which design changes can lead to maximum efficiency. Addressing visitor pain points such as low page load speeds, blurry photos, or difficult navigation can increase conversations and result in greater sales over time.
How can a business optimize its online business presence? Using Google Analytics gives you key information regarding your website traffic, page views, most visited pages, conversion rate, ad bounce rate. This helps you gauge the success of your digital marketing strategy and check whether any adjustments need to be made.
With more data on the age, gender, and location of your site visitors, you’ll be able to create more targeted ads and relevant content to engage your audience. You’ll also be able to discover which sources of traffic direct people to your website (e.g. search engines, blogs, social media pages) and focus on improving these.
Having a Google My Business profile is crucial for boosting your local SEO. You’ll also want to create timely content in line with local news stories, create a mobile-friendly website, rely on local keywords, and create a localized “About Us” section on your page.
Instagram continues to be a popular social media platform for business, with over one billion users across the globe. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok are also popular social media platforms for businesses.
The short answer is that all businesses need local SEO, but service-oriented businesses in particular cannot do without a local SEO strategy. This includes medical services, law offices, restaurants, plumbers, pet services, and the like.
It goes without saying that local keywords need to always include your location, both in terms of your specific city and then your specific state. From there, include industry-related keywords to hone in on your niche.
The “best” keywords are going to be the ones relevant to your industry and service. This is why you’ll need to do thorough competitor research to find out what keywords they use, including what local keyword modifiers they utilize.
As you’re thinking about how to improve your online presence, remember that progress might be slower than you’d expect. If you’re a smaller business with a lower budget, social media and local SEO strategies might be more affordable options compared to a national ad campaign.
Using multiple strategies at once can help your brand reach a wider variety of consumers and boost your online presence more effectively. The bottom line is that making your website user-friendly and accessible is the best way to gain customers and clients.
For further strategies and insights, learn more about the various methods you can use when it comes to increasing eCommerce sales at Bliss Drive today.
