New Twitter owner and billionaire Elon Musk recently announced he may be opening up the “Blue Check” for $8 a month, rather than the rigorous process you had to go through to potentially get it before.
For most platforms, establishing your business is not a simple monthly charge. It can take time and effort to build an audience on social media or gain traffic for your website. Luckily, the effort you put into one often helps the others, and you don’t need to be an SEO expert to get started.
The average person spends 8 hours a day doing digital activities, there is no shortage of time or eyes to view the content you create but it is a competitive market now (it’s estimated 252,000 new websites are created daily).
How do we definite an online presence? It’s not merely existing online, while just having a website or social media page may get you traffic you can still do things to increase that traffic. Your online presence has three key components: visibility, credibility, and reputation.
Yes, even reputation is a factor that comes in when you’re trying to get your website “ranked” on Google. By ranked we mean having a place in search engine results when a potential customer types in a keyword phrase.
You want to protect your online reputation by posting content that is relevant to your business, if you’re in refrigerator sales the bulk of your content should be about refrigerators not the latest trendy outwear for the 2023 season. Trying to gain traffic by “tricking’ people into clicking will reduce your reputation and your ability to creep up in the search engine results.
On a similar note, credibility is another factor and you can greatly amplify that by connecting with other websites in the form of “backlinks”, basically they link to your website and you link to theirs. In our refrigeration example, if you sell refrigerators but don’t repair them sharing links with another business that does would improve your businesses credibility online and give you a boost from whatever traffic that other business sends your way.
Finally, visibility is what happens when you combine your efforts in improving your reputation and credibility online by posting and sharing valuable content to your audience. There’s a world of difference that happens traffic wise when you appear on the first page of Google vs the 2nd page and beyond.
It doesn’t stop with optimizing your website though, here are 10 other things to work on to improve your online presence and give your business a boost in traffic that could lead to a boost in customer conversions:
- Have an easy to navigate site: The first is a no brainer, if your website is clunky or slow to load people won’t stick around to see what you’re selling. Google has a page speed tool that can give you some insight on how your website stacks up.
- Start a blog: If you’re not currently writing a blog (like this) then you’re missing out on a weekly (or daily, or monthly, whatever works for your schedule) injection of new keywords to your website. Landing pages are great but they’re one and done, you can strengthen your online presence by adding new content about your business through a blog.
- Post on social media too: You don’t need to be on every social media platform, some may not be relevant to your business. We encourage you to think about the platforms where your customers are likely to be, and then post daily on those platforms. You can create simple marketing graphics with a tool like Canva which practically does the work for you.
- Use hashtags too: Hashtags allow you to connect your content to people who enjoy the same content or are interested in a specific topic. Going back to our refrigerator example, if there’s a new model from a popular brand then using that brand name as a hashtag could make sense in the announcement post about it.
- Don’t ignore business directories: If you’re struggling to find a way to share links with other websites, starting with the free business directories is one of the best ways to improve your online presence and have your business linked from somewhere else. Start with the big traffic sites like Google My Business, Facebook, and Bing.
Wondering what makes a good website? Here are 6 bonus tips:
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Trying to work on your online presence can be difficult if the technology you use in your business Isn’t up to the task. Imagine taking the time to write out that first blog post and your computer crashes, you may be done with it before you even get started.
Valley Techlogic can help you with your technology goals, and having a service plan with us is like working on any of the topics we covered in this blog, you will see a net overall improvement across the board. Learn more with a free consultation today.
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This article was powered by Valley Techlogic, an IT service provider in Atwater, CA. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/valleytechlogic.
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