“In a field of millions of websites, how will yours be found? Make sure you stand out in the crowd.” – cmsreport.com
In this age of digitization, every business owner recognizes the importance of ensuring the online visibility of the business through well-articulated promotional activities, an eyeball- grabbing website and highly enticing and exciting social media sites. Your competitors are already there, and so if your company’s focus is not on increasing and retaining the online visibility of the business, it could soon find the business in deep trouble. Increasing the online visibility of the business is a process and not a one-off reaction to some issue. Many companies are unable to focus consistently on this process due to either paucity of time or lack of expertise in this realm. The good news is that many professional companies exist that help with building online visibility. In order to let customers and prospective ones know what your company is about, it is critical to reach out to them. Unless customers know what they can expect in terms of customer service and offerings, they would not be attracted to or remain with the company.
Increasing the online visibility of the business is making sure that the ‘right’ people can ‘find’ your company in the sea of companies and websites on the internet. Customers expect accessibility, which for any business translates to being visible both online and in the real world. We believe that in order for customers to know where your brick and mortar store is, they should first be able to find your business online. Consistent strategies to increase the online visibility of the business therefore become critical from this perspective too. Your company could put up signs and directions to make it easier for people to find the real world store and even send out marketing material to this end. However, given that customers prefer to go ‘online’ before venturing out, the obvious thing for them would be to first ‘check-out’ the company and business in the virtual world. By checking the virtual presence of the company, customers usually make a decision on whether they would like to associate with a company or not.
Increasing the online visibility of the business translates to making your business ‘findable’ on the internet. The process of becoming visible largely depends on your company’s website and a consistent and updated presence on all, the possible social media site but with a focused reference to your company’s official website. By doing so, your company ensures that even if the social media sites were to shut down or be inaccessible for any reason, your company’s website will ensure the online visibility of the business. In addition, it makes a lot of sense for your company and is part of customer service to keep customers informed about your website even when you send out emails. The signature of the company representative must also include the company’s address and website id that is easily linkable. There could also be a call to action asking the recipient to visit the website.
As we have repeatedly discussed, and you would know too, customers always seem to be short on time and hence if your website and or social media sites, is not easily findable, they would not try searching. Ensure that these sites have regularly searched words and phrases related to your industry, products and services such that people will be able to find the sites without any delay when they put in the keywords. This is a great method to not only increase the online visibility of the business but also reduce customer effort. In addition, these sites must have updated, relevant and interesting content that is useable by customers and readers ensuring that they continually return to your sites. In this age of social media, increasing the online visibility of the business has become somewhat easier – your company just needs to know how to leverage it. Ensuring that all content and your website links are easily shareable provides enhanced visibility and spreads the word about your company quicker. People are more likely to open a ‘page’, article and even ‘check out’ a website when it is recommended by those who they like and trust.
The need to build and increase online visibility of the business for any company must not be undermined and most definitely is never possible to overstate. Without any online presence, no company – large or small can hope to survive and it would be useless to be ‘online’ without the required visibility to the target audience. As anyone running a business is aware, the competition has increased and it has become exceedingly tough to attract and retain customers. When companies make the effort of increasing online visibility of the business through the methods discussed, search engines ‘help’ companies by placing them high on SERP which further gains more ‘visitors’ to the site, which in turn increases the chances of gaining business.
When putting together strategies to build and increase online visibility of the business, companies must first ascertain who their target audience is. Without a proper understanding of the ‘kind’ of customers, it would be tough for them to customize the website to appeal to this audience. Every aspect of the company’s website must find favour with this set of people, who would then be happy to share it on with others.
Keywords and phrases play an indispensable part in the ‘searchable quality’ of websites. In order to gain and increase online visibility of the business, the selection of these words must judicious. Most readers and customers would normally put in words that they would be familiar with and can identify with – something that website builders must remember. The website is there to serve and gain more customers and hence in the spirit of customer service, the website must be easily accessible and findable. It would make a lot of sense for companies to ‘test’ a set of keywords before publicising their website – the strongest and the most easily searched words should find a place on the website.
As we mentioned, customers often need information on the go and as such will first access sites they are familiar with and use often. However, they would stop accessing a company’s site if the content and information therein is not updated and current. It is imperative for companies to consistently tweak and regularly update their website content, including the pictures and graphics, for the website to be relevant and useful. The search engines too, reject out-dated and stale content, and soon all attempts at increasing online visibility of the business will be futile.
Another method that is growing in popularity is linking the company’s website with other websites. For example, you would have seen links of a shopping site when you open up a website and even if you are not ‘buying’ at that time, it is instinctive to click on one of these sites gaining ‘traffic’ for them too.
It is not easy building and running a company – that is a given. In addition, attaining and increasing the online visibility of the business is an even bigger challenge and ignoring it r taking this aspect for granted can prove detrimental. There is far too much information, too many companies that are vying for top spot and without sustained effort; you could find yourself in a sordid position. The good news is that even if a company does not have the expertise to increase the online visibility of the business, there are professionals who can help and a company can benefit by using their knowhow in this particular realm. It may be tough and time consuming but investing in this activity has huge payoffs.
