Let’s face it, 2020 was a tough year for the majority of businesses and 2021 wasn’t a vast improvement. BUT, the need to be digitally relevant has never been so high.
Whether you are starting a new business or trying to get your current business back up and running, working on your brand’s Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and online branding is a must. This blog provides a number of ways you can optimise your brand online to increase traffic for your site, improve the chances of converting web and social media traffic into qualified leads, and how you can increase your revenue, ROI and repeat business. You can do all of this by following Media Garden’s five easy steps:
1) Enhance User Experience (UX)
There are over six billion webpages worldwide. The average browser spends about six hours and 43 minutes online each day. Nearly 40% of these browsers will exit, or “bounce” off a site within 0.05 seconds if it is unattractive, slow, poorly laid out, contains annoying pop-ups, and/or doesn’t load correctly. No matter what platform you’re using, make sure that your site is user-friendly, easy to navigate, aesthetically pleasing and quick and responsive. All of these factors improve UX, will encourage visitors to stay on your site and increase conversion rates. Also, the Google Search algorithm is now favouring websites with great UX.
2) Improve your Local SEO with Citations
So you have a business, be it brand new or pretty established, but your phone is not ringing and the only new emails you receive are from SEO companies overseas guaranteeing to get you on page one of Google. What do you do to attract new business? A quick and easy way to get discovered by search engines is to build up your citations. Citations, i.e. your business information, is basic info for your company such as its name, location, telephone number, and a detailed description that informs customers of who you are, what you do and how to make contact with you. It is important to make sure all of this information is correct and as consistent as it can be across Google my Business, Bing, Yahoo and thousands of other directories. You can either miss out on or frustrate customers if they cannot reach you properly or if the service you provide hasn’t been properly defined. Citations can be easily created manually or with the use of a ‘data aggregator’ or with the use of a citation building service.
3) Optimise your Brand YouTube Channel
Do not underestimate the importance of creating a business channel with video content on YouTube. 70% of YouTube users rely on this platform to help make decisions on purchases. Plus, those who use YouTube mobile, are twice as likely to watch an in-app advertisement than an ad on television which proves how YouTube marketing and content creation can be. By optimising your YouTube channel you can make your videos easier to find by naming your video with a target keyword or phrase, providing an accurate video description, tagging your video with popular keywords and ensuring that you correctly categorise your video. If you’re unsure how to do this, search on YouTube! 😉
4) Optimise your Facebook Business Page
Social media has become an integral part of many peoples lives, with Facebook being at the forefront of this with nearly 3 billion active users. Around 1.7 billion of these users access their Facebook profile daily! This being the case, it is abundantly clear how powerful the platform can be when it comes to branding and getting your business out there to the masses. In order to take advantage of this level of exposure, we recommend optimising your social media profiles with targeted keywords that pertain to your business and providing detailed information such as the type of business you are, contact number, address, your business story and USPs, etc. Encouraging customers to write Facebook reviews, provided you offered a great product or service experience, will build credibility, act as recommendations for even more customers and increase the chances of your business being found on Facebook and Google. If you there is a time where you receive a bad review, Facebook gives you the functionality to engage with those customers so that you can resolve any issue they may have and allow you to prove that you care about customer feedback and are willing to rectify any displeasure.
5) Optimise Your Google Business Page and Attract Local Reviews
With an average of 3.8 million searches per minute, Google is the most used search engine on the web. These search requests consist of a wide variance of requests, many of which include people looking for local businesses. To give your business the best chance of being found by local customers on Google, it is vital to create a Google My Business page (which you should have done during your citation building). Information such as your type of business, the address, hours of operation, and company description will all improve your online visibility, but remember to attach images of your business location, services, and products and start posting updates and offers at least once a week. The Google search algorithm favors Google Maps/Business updates. Finally, be sure to ask happy customers to write reviews on your Google Maps page. Yes, we know, more reviews again! It can be very difficult to say complimentary things about ourselves, so let your customers do it for you. It will increase your star rating when people are searching for the products and services you offer or when they research your company.
As you can see, there are many ways to grow your business online, some better than others but if you apply all of them you’re certainly giving yourself a better chance of success. Get in touch with Media Garden today.
