How To Improve Your Local Business Visibility Online
The internet is the internet. People are people. A lot of businesses you see these days treat their customers as statistics or reasons to increase their bottom-line profits.
This strategy is excellent for the short term success but is useless in the long-term, as people will eventually catch on and ditch giving their business altogether. Here are a few tips for increasing your visibility online.
1. Become A Local Legend
By far one of the best things you can do for your business’ online presence is to market, advertise and spread the word about your business in everything local. This means local podcasts, local radio stations and TV broadcasts, local directory business listings and the like. Your best customers are the people you talk to and interact with on a day to day basis – because you have the opportunity to build strong relationships with them. Plus, people enjoy bragging about “success stories” that came from their towns.
2. Master SEO
Do you know that stuffing your website with keywords is frowned by virtually every search engine out there? (At least the ones that matter). A couple decades ago, it was natural to come across websites that mentioned a product or service two or three times within a paragraph. These days, websites that use these tactics are blacklisted and rightfully lose their ranking in search engines. This is why it is crucial to learn up-to-date search engine optimisation (SEO) principles for ensuring every page of your website entices people ethically.
3. Produce Relevant Content
You’ve undoubtedly heard that content is king – while this is true, just because you’re producing content doesn’t mean you will garner hundreds of thousands of visitors and customers. Regardless, there is an indubitable benefit towards producing regular, high-quality content (such as how to’s, walk throughs and tutorials) that solve problems—in the form of blogs—on your website.
This paints you as an authority within your industry, and makes your business more trustworthy in the eyes of customers: which is all or nothing, this day and age. The matter of the fact is this: most people use the internet to find answers to their problems and questions; once you become that solution, and offer practical advice for solving problems, they will be more likely to buy your advertised products that sell more ways to solve their problems. This increases your online visibility and increases your chances of making a sale.
4. Don’t Shout
Many sales letters and modern advertisements these days have a tendency to “shout” at customers. Much to the point that people—whether they’re interested in the product or not—gladly ignore the commercial or advertisement.
This is because many advertisers falsely believe that “shouting” in their ads will help them stand out from the competition – in an effort to gather audiences’ attention. A much more natural and inviting way to welcome customers is to talk to them as they are: like everyday people, looking for engaging conversation about solving everyday problems.
Conclusion
Increasing your online presence doesn’t have to be a battleground. As we’ve just reviewed, it doesn’t take a lot of effort (although it does require a bit of elbow grease) to increase your online visibility. If doing so doesn’t increase your immediate sales, rest assured that making yourself more visible online will present you as more of an authority over your competitors in the same region.