In today’s era, an individual spends almost eight hours a day doing digital activities. More than half the day is more than most of us sleep. We inherit different identities online, being alter egos (Reddit), hobbyists (gaming, freelancers), professionals (LinkedIn), social butterflies (Facebook), and consumers (whom we are mainly focusing on in this blog).
Whether you are brick-and-mortar, online, service-based, or a business, a strong online presence makes all the difference today. Well it is not just limited to big eCommerce brands, local businesses get an immense push and support from it. In addition, you can never ignore the fact that 97% of consumers look out for local businesses online.
How Do You Define Online Presence?
Online presence is not only about existing online, but it also equates to having a presence. Online presence paints the full picture of your business that depends on:
The internet: Your current progress with regard to social media algorithms and search engines.
You: The efforts you put in and the content you produce.
The audience: How individuals online perceive your, how they engage with your website/blogs, what are their reviews about your business, and more.
Just as your online existence gets you on pace, an online presence is tied to your reputation, visibility, and credibility online. Without a strong online presence, you are standing nowhere. It is the best or nothing in this growing world of cyberspace.
How To Boost Your Presence Online
No matter how one finds out about your business, including an ad posting, social media, direct mail, or a friend’s recommendation, their first step is to visit your website. Exploring the business is all about how appealing your site is and how easily one can access the information they want.
According to research, about 56% of consumers do not consider a business without a website. Here are some tactics and strategies to improve the tour website’s presence online.
a. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Did you know that not even half of the small businesses invest in SEO? In addition, about 18% of small businesses do not ever plan to target SEO efforts, including content creation, link building, or keyword research. SEO sets a hallmark for your online presence and is the only way to make it on the first page of Google for free. We understand it is time taking but once done right, it continues to replenish you with treats after treats. Learn with Mul-T-Media, how to improve SEO to boost your online presence:
Improve your core web vital to make them align with the page experience update.
Follow the tried-and-true best practices such as optimizing images, building links, and creating keyword-targeted, quality content.
Try to stay on the top of mobile errors as all sites these days are indexed on the web by mobile-first indexing.
Prioritizing your local SEO is necessary. Pandemic has strengthened consumer support for local businesses that will continue to boost post-COVID.
Make rich snippets appear below your site title in the SERP by using schema markup, including main navigation pages and ratings.
b. Website Development & Graphic Design
Consumers have high expectations these days. A business must have an interactive, smooth, and attractive website, or rather none. In fact, about 75% of consumers have stated to judge a company’s credibility based on its website design. Therefore, it is time for a website makeover!
Mul-T-Media professionals suggest that hiring an expert to set up your site would be great. DIY builders are awesome! Although people spend hours learning and experiencing endless glitches, at times ending up spending more than hiring an expert.
Having a lead-generating website that functions and appears exactly just as you framed it without losing your precious hours and hair on your head makes it worth every penny.
c. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing
Paid advertising is a fast way to appear prominently on social media feeds, websites, and search engines to your ideal customers frequently. With SEO, you can target the audience with keywords, but with PPC, you can layer audiences by targeting those who meet your criteria.
d. Social Media
Using social media to boost your online presence is a no second thought. Vast majority of individual spend hours scrolling their favorite platform. Getting your work to them with advance sharing capabilities makes it an amplification tool. According to Sprout Social, after a person follows your brand on social media, 89% will buy from the brand, 85% will recommend the brand to a family or friend, and 91% of consumers will visit its website.
Online presence is only about quality, not quantity. Do not reach out to every platform. Choose those where you can find your audience and then limit the number you choose according on your bandwidth. Having one or two accounts with solid engagement is much better than having several accounts with weak activity.
e. Marketing Agency
Although you can learn marketing insights from authorized sources, you can never meet the experience and resources a marketing agency is likely to provide. Market agencies help to maximize resources and time, ultimately making your path to a higher ROI.
Digital marketing agencies can provide access to the latest tools, technology, and resources you need to strengthen your search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click advertising, social media strategies, and content advertising.
Digital marketing experts keep know-how of how the latest happenings and news would affect your business. Some digital marketing agencies help to create powerful PPC, SEO, and social media campaigns that focus on building an effective online presence.
Bottom Line
In the physical world, maybe you are limited to just one place, but online, you can be in multiple places at once where you are potential and current customers are spending most of their time daily. Be it, a new start-up or a legacy business trying to cope with the technology, having a strong online presence will help your business reach out to new customers.
With more touchpoints to be discovered by your audience, you will make data-driven optimizations, increase brand awareness, build your reputation, and ultimately increase revenue.
