According to HubSpot, 81% of consumers perform online research before making any purchase. Consequently, appearing on Google’s top search results can significantly increase your business profitability.
But how can you increase your online visibility?
In this guide, we discuss the three golden rules to maximize your online visibility and grow your small business profitably.
Let’s get started!
What Is Online Visibility?
Online visibility refers to the presence of a brand or its product in the consumer environment. When people look for your products or services online, do they find you or other businesses?
If they find you, you have a strong online presence, but if they see other businesses instead, you need to improve your digital footprint.
Your business may have a great website, but how can customers find you if it’s not optimized for online visibility? There are numerous SEO tools you can leverage online. Nevertheless, you have to put effort into increasing your online presence.
Why Does It Matter?
While traffic does not equal revenue, with more users visiting your website, you can convert them to leads and make more sales.
According to Internet Live Stats, 3.5 billion searches are done daily on Google. Consequently, it’s vital to get featured on Google’s top results if you want to earn tremendous returns.
And with more people going online to search for products and services both locally and non-locally, it means this figure will continue to increase.
If you offer home services like plumbing and several users in your area search for ‘plumbing services,’ appearing on the first page results will present you as an expert in your field. Consequently, more users will visit your site, and they can decide to buy from you.
According to SEO Expert, 88% of local searches on mobile devices end in calls or visits within 24 hours. Hence, increasing your local reach through online visibility will earn you more engagements and sales.
Below are more reasons why online visibility matters:
- It helps to enhance your brand reputation.
- It keeps you ahead of the competition.
- It improves your credibility.
The 3 Golden Rules to Build Your Digital Footprint on Google
1. Optimize Your Website with Recent Content
One of the most effective ways to improve your online visibility is by creating quality and relevant content for your target audience. Some of the content types you can leverage to maximize your online visibility include:
- Blog Posts
With 77% of internet users reading blog posts regularly, you need a blog to realize business growth. While this shows there’s a high demand for blog content, it’s up to you to create a blog and post new content that resonates with the audience often. So, how can you accomplish this?
- Start by identifying your audience and what they are looking for on the internet.
- Write topics on the same subject to address their concerns or questions.
- Create content that reverberates with your brand’s voice.
Implementing these tips will help you increase your reach, engage more new customers, and retain past clients.
- Images
Since images appeal to the human eye, they give you a competitive advantage in organic search. Due to this, a search snippet featuring an image is more likely to receive visitors than one featuring a text only.
So, when creating blog posts or other written content, include unique photos and follow Google’s guidelines in specifying the thumbnail image for every page. You can also do basic image SEO and use schema to mark up the images.
- Videos
Video is enormously successful content that most customers find helpful, and almost 75% of clients are likely to buy products after watching a video. So what’s unique with video content?
Videos help you interact with your audience in the comments or when they ask questions, and it also increases shares. Consequently, your site receives much traffic and, ultimately, sales, increasing your returns.
Some of the best video practices you can implement include:
- Addressing your target audience’s pain points.
- Providing relevant information.
- Providing solutions to their problems.
Remember to keep this content short (two to three minutes) and avoid advertising your products or services in the video. You can also maximize video benefits by having a CTA at the end to send your viewers to your website or landing pages.
- GeoJuice Check-ins
GeoJuice check-ins create geotagged and hyperlocal content in your digital footprint, increasing your online visibility. As a result, it increases your local reach, helping you grow your business profitably.
2. Maintain Your Google My Business Listing
GMB is a free tool that helps you manage your online presence across Google and its growing portfolio advantages. When it’s well-optimized, the GMB profile can bring you numerous benefits such as traffic and even transactions.
Below are ways you can maintain your GMB profile to enhance your online visibility:
- Categorize
Claiming your Google My Business account is not enough; you need to categorize your business appropriately. Reason?
Categorizing gives your target audience clear information on the products or services you offer. For instance, if you offer home services, your category and subcategory will describe the specific service you provide, let’s say plumbing.
As a result, when local internet users search for plumbing services, you are more likely to secure a prime position and more website visits since your details match the search.
- Add Photos
Do you have images on your GMB profile?
If yes, are they relevant to your niche?
According to Hootsuite, businesses that use images on their GMB listings receive up to 35% more clicks to their websites than those entities that don’t.
Moreover, a picture can tell your target audience who you are and affect your branding. For example, it shows whether you are professional, inviting, and if you are worth the client’s money.
So, ensure you have relevant and appealing photos on your GMB to enhance your visibility!
- Localize
When creating your GMB page, Google requires you to search and claim your business if it’s listed. Consequently, it eliminates the possibility of duplicating efforts in the exact location.
Another way you can localize the GMB account is through NAP data. Ensure you have accurate NAP info and it’s consistent in all online platforms. For instance, your website, GMB, and social media.
This helps search engines identify your business when there is a similar search; hence it gives you an edge in the competition.
- Get Reviews
The number of reviews and review scores of your GMB profile determines whether Google will feature you in the prime positions or not. As a result, you need to get more reviews from your previous clients.
Your responsiveness also matters as it impacts your online presence. When you respond to your clients’ reviews, the search engine vets you as a reliable business, offering you top spots in google maps and local search results.
3. Spend Strategically on Google Ads
Planning to increase traffic to your website through ads? Focusing on scaling your clicks and CTR will help you accomplish this. You can start by developing exceptional ad texts and keywords that are relevant to your audience.
Then evaluate your clicks, CTR, search terms, and ranking keywords. Perhaps you are wondering why you should go through all this hustle. Keywords and ad text make an effective combination that gives you an upper hand on local rankings.
Google Ads also allows you to run campaigns for the website traffic through specific features and settings. As a result, it helps you build a list of site visitors that you will reconnect with in the future.
How do you evaluate the effectiveness of your ads to improve your campaign?
- Evaluate your clicks and click-through rate to see how many users found your ads appealing and visited your site. In addition, you can measure the clicks and CTR at all levels of your GMB page.
- Monitor your keyword performance by creating a new keyword list as it helps focus on those that are giving you results. You can also utilize keyword matching options to target a specific audience.
Running a keyword diagnosis also helps you know the quality of your keywords. Reason? It displays information on the keyword quality score and if they’re boosting your ad’s performance.
- Search terms play a crucial role in improving your ads. When you use a broad keyword and a user searches for a term related to it, they will get your ad as one of the results.
Although this may help drive traffic to your site, it is necessary to narrow your ads to the specific terms used by users. As a result, you need to check the terms directing people to your ads and add them as new keywords.
What if you identify any irrelevant keywords? You can categorize them as negative keywords so they won’t facilitate your ad.
Attend a Surefire Local Marketing Platform demo
Are you looking for a single platform that is accessible on all devices and browsers? Then, Surefire Local Marketing Platform is your ideal local marketing software. Our platform is user-friendly and ensures you get fast results.
It also helps you strengthen customer connections and personalize messages and communication to establish long-term relationships with them. As a result, it makes your marketing strategy effective, earning you high returns!
Do you want to learn more about our Local Marketing Platform? Attend our demo to see how you can make your hyperlocal marketing easy!