Seven Outstanding Ways To Increase Your ONLINE PRESENCE
In my years of experience writing for https://jasminedigitalagency.com.ng/blog/online-presence-seven-outstanding-ways-in-2023/ I have come to a conclusion that having an online presence is a great deal for any business.
Whether you are service-based, or bricks and mortar, store owner, local business owner or online business, an exceptional online presence is required. and this does not pertain to E-commerce alone While e-commerce growth has been accelerated by the online presence, so also does it has a tremendous effect on local businesses. And the fact remains that 98% of consumers go online on a daily basis to find and research local businesses. So as the jet age evolves so is the need for a strong online presence
In this informative, power-packed guide I will be sharing with you all you need to know about how to increase your online presence. Which includes:
• What an online presence means (simple definition)
• Seven outstanding ways to increase your online presence in 2023
• Basic tool you need to get started in order to monitor and maintain your online presence.
By the end of this article, you will be ready to show at every nook and cranny on the internet.
What do you think of online presence?
What Online presence is and what is not, a lot of people today think they have a presence online but the truth of it is that they don’t exist meaning there is a big difference between being online and having an online presence, this means that your presence is the deeper layer that paint the full picture of your business.
You: this includes all your activities on the online space and the kind of content you put online
The Internet: this connects you to the world with no limitations whatsoever, regarding your stand in search engines and the social media network and algorithms
The online Audience: how your audience perceives your business, what they say, and how you engage with them.
As online presence may get you to the map, it’s also talks about your business credibility, reputation.
Why you need a strong online presence?
The more ways you can place your business in front of your target audience with quality experiences, the more opportunities you have to build brand awareness and improve your reputation. But there are other ways a strong online presence benefits your business
• Be seen as a legitimate business: 89% visit a store based on what you do and your online presence, customer tends to deduce if your business is legit or not, because customers rely on multiple sources of information that they find about your business before making a purchase decision, and if you cannot provide all those information across the internet, you might miss customer and search engine also.
• Get discovered: 99% of internet users search online for products and service, hence a serious online presence makes it easy for an idea customer who are not aware of your existence to discover you. Even when they are searching for what you offer or not
• To market your business 24 hours: when you have a credible online presence customers can learn, search, and engage with your business anytime that is convenient for them.
• For more conversions: being visible on multiple channels create more opportunities to happen for your business, because it takes an average of 10 of leads to become buying clients.
• To gain googles trust: When it comes to ranking google takes more than website visibility into account, google look across the web and how consistent you are.
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Seven outstanding ways to increase your online presence
No matter how someone finds out about your business—whether through social media, an ad, a listing, direct mail, a friend, or even seeing it in their travels—their first inclination is to go to your website. Going into the business or calling is far less appealing than browsing your site on their own terms and gathering the information they want, quickly. Which is why 60% of consumers won’t consider a business without a website.
56% of consumers won’t consider a business without a website.
And that’s a stat from 2017, so the percentage has most likely grown and been further accelerated.
So, with that being said, here’s how to use your website for an optimal online presence
GET AN ATTRACTIVE WEBSITE FOR YOUR BUSINESS.
Consumers have high expectations these days—to the point that a business without a good website, such business is better off not having one at all. In fact, 77% of consumers have admitted to judging a company’s credibility based on their website design and the kind of content found on their web. So, it is a very important factor when it comes to online presence.PERFORMING SEO WITH THE LATEST UPDATES
Did you know that only 50% of small businesses invest in SEO? Or that only 20% of small businesses do not plan to ever pursue targeted SEO efforts like link building, creating content, or doing keyword research?
SEO is a freeway to be found on Google’s first page—the hallmark of an online presence.
It takes time, but when done right, it is the gift that just keeps on giving.
Here’s how to use search engine optimization to increase your online presence:
• Follow the tried-and-true best practices like creating quality, keyword-targeted content, optimizing images, and building links.
• Improve your WEB VITALS to align with your page experience.
• Stay on top of mobile errors. All sites on the web are now indexed by mobile web indexing.
• Use schema markup so that rich snippets can appear below your site title in the SERP, like ratings or even your main navigation pages.
• Prioritize your LOCAL SEO. The pandemic has strengthened consumer support for local businesses, which will continue on and on.
- TARGET MORE KEYWORD WITH BUSINESS BLOG POST.
The core pages of your website (homepage, about, pricing, products/services, contact) are relatively limited in terms of optimizing for keywords other than your service and location. You don’t have much text to work with and the goal is to distill the information down to the essentials visitors are looking for.
With a business blog, each post you publish can dive deep into a relevant keyword and be individually optimized to rank for such a keyword, allowing you the opportunity to appear in search results for tons of searches your target customers are performing at various stages in their journey. More first-page appearances don’t just mean a strong online presence; it also equates to more traffic for your conversion-optimized site and greater credibility.
In fact, businesses that publish blogs four times a week get 4.5+ more traffic and 5.5+ more leads than businesses that only blog once a week.
Plus, this is where you can demonstrate your expertise and your brand credibility shine through—both of which play into the reputation component of your online presence.
When blogging for online presence, make sure to:
• Target one keyword (or keyword theme) per post and include it in your title, headings, image file names, alt text, and meta description.
• Target question keywords with H2s to increase your chances of showing up in “People also ask.”
• Use numbered and bulleted lists where appropriate to be FEATURED SNNIPETS -friendly.
• Promote your posts using social media and email
- INCREASING YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE WITH ADVERTISING
Using social media to increase your online presence is a no-brainer, as its vast user bases and sharing capabilities make it an amplification tool. We also know that social signal can improve your SEO.
Plus, according to sprout media, after following a brand on social media, 93% of consumers will visit its website, 89% will buy from the brand, and 85% will recommend the brand to a family or friend.
Here’s how to improve your social media presence
- perform social media SEO
The Facebook platform receives over 2.5bn searches per day. And in 2020, Instagram announced that it now supports general keyword searches (as opposed to just accounts, hashtags, and people). So just like with your website, you should include high-ranking popular keywords in your profiles and posts. You can use many of the same keywords as you do with your site, but perhaps with a bias toward idea-oriented and lighter-hearted queries. Social media platforms are more of the browsing and inspirational types. But it all depends on your business. The first result for the query “How to clean a sink” on Facebook is a video with almost a million views.
You should also still be using hashtags in your posts to improve your social media presence but treat them as you would keywords. Use broad hashtags sparingly and focus more on location-based and niche terms so that you can increase your visibility to the right audience.
BE ACTIVE
You’ve heard this a million times, and now, for the million-and-one time: If you’re going to make social media a part of your online presence, you need to have an active account. So that means publishing quality posts regularly, responding to likes and comments on those posts, liking and commenting on your followers’ posts, answering direct messages, sharing content from other sources, and more. And it means doing this consistently. This is the difference between a profile and a presence.
If being able to have this type of engagement means only having one profile, then so be it. Better to have one vibrant profile than to have three that are subpar. And precisely why it’s important to only take on the number of profiles you can manage.
Plus, if you want to find and connect with social media influencers, you need to be active in your niche so you can identify who is realistic to reach out to and gradually build your relationship with them.
- INCREASE YOUR ONLINE PRESENT WITH LISTING
With thousands of online directories out there, creating listings for your business can help you show up in more places online. In addition, links to your site from popular directories serve as local citations for your business, which Google takes into consideration when ranking your site. Finally, curated “Top 10” lists from popular directories can dominate the SERP, so if you’re ranking in their top 10, you can achieve that much more exposure.
But reaping these benefits takes more than just throwing your NAP out there and then kicking back. Let’s cover the steps for using online listings to properly boost your online presence.
START WITH HIGHER HITTER
Many of the smaller directories out their aggregate information from the biggest ones. So, take the time to perfect your listings on the following sites:
Google My Business (If you only do one of the suggestions in this post, let it be this one!)
Your GOOGLE MY BUSINESS PROFILE is arguably the new homepage for your business. It provides all of the essential details of your business, directly in the SERP for Search and Maps
- INCREASE YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE WITH ADVERTISING
Paid advertising is a fast way to show up prominently on search engines, social media feeds, and websites your ideal customers frequent. With SEO, you can really only target your audience with keywords, but with PPC, you can layer audiences onto your targeting based on a number of criteria. Here are some of many the different ad options you can use to Increase your online presence.
SEARCH ADS
It’s worth investing in paid search ads because not only do they land you at the top of the SERP, but they also reach your target customers when they have the highest intent. And if you can get your site to rank in both organic and paid results for a keyword, the chances of getting a click on one or the other are higher.
DISPLAY ADS
Display ads put your business in front of your ideal customer based on their interests, behaviors, types of websites and apps they frequent, and even places they’ve visited. Though display ads have lower engagement rates than search ads, they will earn you lots of impressions, and like social media ads, you have more options for branding, color theory, and creativity.
LEVERAGE ON THE POWER OF VIDEO FOR MORE SHARE AND MEMORABILITY.
There are tons of marketing videos out there that highlight the importance of this medium for growing your business, but in terms of online presence, you should know these three:
• Social video generates up to 150% more shares than text and image content combined.
• Viewers retain 97%of a message when they watch it in a video compared to 10% when reading it in text.
• YouTube is, by far (with the exception of Facebook) the most popular online platform in the U.S and some other developed countries.