Visibility is important for business growth and diversifying the target audience. Investing in a billboard and flashing signs was the go-to method in the past; however, nowadays, it all comes down to your online presence. As of January 2024, 5.35 billion people use the Internet, making up 66.2% of the world’s population.
In this modern digital world, businesses must have a strong online presence to stand out from their competitors. However, what exactly is an online presence? How to improve your online presence and differentiate your brand from the crowd of competitors seeking customers’ attention?
If you are a business owner who has recently started a small business or firm, all these questions might be on your mind. Let’s understand everything about online presence, the benefits of having an online presence, and different methods for establishing a successful online presence.
Understanding Online Presence
Your online presence is all about making it easy for customers to contact your company or brand. If you’re looking for a professional to take on some web development work, you will use a search engine to find a reputable web developer.
As soon as you type in “reputed web developers” in the search bar and hit the search button, you will find a list of businesses and independent contractors offering their services for web development. Now, you will check the first five websites, conduct more research, and choose one of the contractors with the best services at affordable rates. This is the most common process every customer follows.
Most businesses think that a website is all that is required to have an online presence, but there are more things required. Search engine marketing, social media marketing, and others are also required to create an effective online presence. Overall, an online presence can be referred to as a sum of marketing efforts to publicise the brand, not only through the brand’s website but also through other platforms.
Why is Online Presence Important?
Here are a few reasons to understand why is online presence important for your business:
- 63% of shopping journeys begin online. Customers may interact with your brand if your brand has high online visibility.
- 97% of customers search online for local goods and services. Having a strong online presence allows ideal customers to learn about your existence and discover you when they require the services that you offer.
- With a strong online presence, people can discover your business, learn about it, engage with it, and contact you whenever is convenient for them.
- 83% of consumers rely on online information before making a purchase decision. If businesses fail to include all relevant information in multiple sources, there is a risk of rejection from consumers and search engines.
- On average, it takes seven business-to-consumer interactions for a lead to become a customer. If you’re visible on multiple Internet channels, you’ll expedite the process of converting a lead into a potential customer.
How to Improve Your Online Presence?
To help you establish your online presence, here is a list of the top strategies for how to improve your online presence:
1. Optimise Your Website for Search Engine
It is essential to make it simpler for your customers to reach you when they search for your company online or are looking for services similar to those you offer. The art of using keywords in your website content to appear strongly on search engine results pages is known as search engine optimisation or SEO.
Search for target keywords that will help you rank high in search engine results. When creating a blog, use the keywords throughout the content to help the search engine recognise what your website is all about. There are many keyword research tools that you can utilise to find targeted keywords.
If your company operates within a certain geographic location, local SEO can be helpful. You can rank higher in local searches by including geographic terms in your keyword phrases (for example, “graphic designers in San Francisco”).
However, while optimising your website and blog for search engines, avoid overstuffing keywords. Use them naturally and strategically. Also, avoid using keywords in context without considering their context and readability.
2. Effective Use of Social Media
Social media can be used as a marketing tool to boost your online presence and promote your brand by connecting with your target audience and sharing posts and short videos about your services. Staying active online is more about quality rather than quantity. Based on your requirements, you can choose the platform where your target audience remains active. The platform to consider are:
- YouTube
- Snapchat
- TikTok
Focus on building a loyal, specialised following of individuals who are interested in your brand and prepared for what you have to offer. If you want your content to appear in consumers’ feeds via social algorithms, you need to create high-quality pieces that generate engagement. Besides, it is important to jump on trends and create content according to that so there are higher chances of getting viral and reaching the right target audience.
3. Content Marketing and Blogging
Creating informative content for your followers is a great way to improve your online presence. The content you create is an excellent way to present your brand and give professional insight into the field or industry you’re passionate about.
Here are some common types of content for websites:
- Blogs and articles,
- Video blogs, or vlogs,
- Audio podcasts, and
- eBooks and brochures.
Articles should have a call-to-action (CTA) that encourages readers to sign up for your services, subscribe, or contact you. If your website doesn’t have an integrated content management system for content marketing, consider using a service like WordPress to monitor blog posts and build a subscriber list.
4. Email Marketing
Email marketing has proven beneficial over time for reaching the target audience. It’s a powerful advertising method that keeps your audience interested between purchases by educating them about your services. Email campaigns can boost sales, promote consumer loyalty, and raise brand awareness.
Here is how you can utilise the full potential of email marketing:
- Drip campaigns are one of the effective strategies for building relationships with your audience. In drip campaigns, businesses send emails based on user activities or timelines.
- Newsletters provide helpful content and frequent updates about your brand to the customers.
- Outbound email is a strategy to reach prospective clients who haven’t expressed interest in your product or service.
5. Online Advertising
Using paid advertising, you can rapidly appear on search results pages, social media feeds, and websites that your target audience visits. Here are just a handful of the numerous advertising choices available to improve your online presence and thereby grow your business.
- Search Ads: Paid search advertisements are valuable for businesses as they increase their visibility on search engine results pages and connect with their target audience.
- Social Ads: Social media ads have a higher reach and engagement rates than organic posts.
- Display Ads: Display advertisements present companies to targeted audiences based on their interests and behaviours.
- Retargeting Ads: Retargeting ads is a method of reaching out to your previous audiences who have visited your website.
- Google Local Service Ads: Google Local Service Ads appear at the top of the SERP, with a green “Google Guaranteed” badge below the name and help in reaching a wider audience.
6. Customer Reviews and Testimonials
Testimonials from customers are among the most effective types of social proof for improving your brand’s visibility, credibility, and reliability. Thus, by strategically showcasing the best online reviews, you can increase client trust, attract more customers, and experience constant business growth.
Here are some suggestions on how to enhance your positive online reviews with an adequate amount of online evidence:
- Include ratings, reviews, and testimonials in your paid advertising communications to increase engagement and validate your brand’s performance.
- Add a review tab on your website or a review section on the homepage so that visitors can easily see the positive comments and reviews you have received.
- Post encouraging feedback from customers and visually striking content on the social media channels where your target audience is most active.
7. Website Speed Optimisation
Website speed optimisation is another strategy for improving online presence. Website speed plays an essential role in getting high rankings in search engine results. Additional advantages of website speed optimisation include better user experience, reduced bounce rate, and increased conversion rate. Here are some different ways you can improve your brand’s website loading speed:
1. Image Optimisation
Your web pages tend to load more slowly with large images, which will not provide the best user experience. Image optimisation reduces file size, which helps in quick web page loading. Here’s how you can optimise the images:
- When it comes to site speed, using tools like Caesium or other online tools to reduce file size will make a big difference.
- Site speed can also be improved by using lazy loading strategies, which load images only when they are visible.
- Remember that having too many images on one page will cause your website to load more slowly.
- Images in WebP format perform better as they are 25-34% smaller in size than JPEG images and 26% smaller than PNG images.
2. Reduce Redirects
Redirects cause a new page to load more slowly. To reduce redirects, update your page’s links and eliminate any unnecessary links that are no longer helpful. For a fully optimised website, you can reduce your redirects by doing the following.
- Eliminate any plugins that you don’t need because they can cause needless redirects.
- Check your website frequently for outdated redirects that point to pages that are already removed.
3. Implement VPS
A Virtual Private Server (VPS) is a physical server divided into multiple separate virtual machines. Each VPS has its own operating system, configuration, and dedicated resources and operates like an independent server. Hosting your website on VPS is better than shared hosting.
Your hosting requirements could change as your online presence grows. Cloud VPS hosting provides smooth scalability, allowing you to increase your resources without interruptions. This guarantees that your application or website can accommodate growing traffic and adapt to changing needs.
4. Minimise HTTP Requests
Every time a visitor lands on your page, the browser sends an HTTP request for each element. The website loads slowly due to the scripts, stylesheets, and images. You could minimise HTTP requests by using tools for online presence like CSS and JavaScript compressions, which would reduce the number of elements or combine them into one.
Tools For Online Presence
Here are some free tools for online presence that can help you in achieving your goals of building your online presence:
1. LOCALiQ’s free Online Presence Grader
You can enter your website into LOCALiQ’s free Online Presence Grader to receive an overall online presence score. This grade is composed of three separate categories: digital advertising performance, social and local presence, and website quality.
2. Google Search
Google yourself and check out the SERP results. Your website will appear first, and your Google My Business profile will appear on the right side of the page. Look over the results to ensure that all the information is accurate and that your business has positive reviews.
3. Google’s Page Speed Insights
By entering your website’s URL into the PageSpeed Insights tool, you may receive a score for your website on desktop and mobile devices and strategies to improve the score.
4. Google Alerts
Google Alerts allows you to be alerted when new results appear for a specific topic in Google Search, in this case, your business.
Conclusion
Having a strong online presence allows your company to be noticed by new clients, regardless of how long you’ve been in business.
The strategies, ranging from SEO and social media marketing to content marketing, will help you effectively connect with your audience and promote your business online. By utilising these strategies, you can produce captivating content and establish your authority in your industry.
However, to create a plan that appeals to your target audience, you must understand each platform’s unique features and user demographics. The more touch points you have with your audience, the more you can develop your reputation, raise brand awareness, implement data-driven optimisations, and ultimately increase sales.
Frequently Asked Questions
To establish a strong online presence, businesses should create a clear brand identity and a user-friendly website, optimise the website and blog content for search engines, invest in content marketing, and connect with their target audience through social media platforms.
Social media can improve your brand’s online presence by allowing you to reach a wider audience and build brand awareness. By creating and promoting your services through social media platforms, you attract and engage with customers on a personal level.
SEO is a long-term approach designed to improve your online presence and website visibility. Search engine algorithms are constantly changing, so it is essential to keep your website up to date to maintain its rankings.
