Getting found on the internet is the hallmark of any online
business, as this is how millions of audience can get to know and do business
with your company. Take online
visibility as the navigation to locate you on the map. Imagine you were going
somewhere you’d never been before and necessarily
don’t have specifics about it, so you just typed in a general location or place
in your navigator, definitely, it’s going to give you a list of related
locations, and then you will choose
exactly where you are going or the closest result.
In the same way, people looking for businesses like yours
would type in a general term relating to your business and will have to choose
from the results they get- so, your duty
is to ensure that you find a place in these results, otherwise no one will be
able to find your business.
In essence, the more visible your company is, online, the
more likely people within your industry will look to you for necessary products
or services.
Many small business owners struggle with this aspect of
online marketing and think it’s confusing and that’s because there is too much
information on the internet without clear explanation.
In this article, I will share five simple ways you can
increase your company’s online visibility for free, yet with great results.
1.
Utilize SEO tools: SEO- stands for Search Engine
Optimization, and since we are talking about searching and finding your website
online, I guess you know that SEO is indeed very important and the way you do
this is by injecting content and key words that points back to your website on
the internet. You can use different free online tools to check how well your
website comes on in search results and when you know this, you constantly
improve your visibility using these other methods. There are hundreds of free SEO
tools online, including the Google webmaster and analytics and Bing web master
tools, to monitor analytics and performance of your website. Check out other
ways to improve your online visibility here.
2.
Publish fresh, relevant content regularly:
Ensure that you publish fresh content on your website regularly and also update
your content from time to time. Google crawls all websites on the internet for
fresh and new content, which is what will help your website to rank higher on
Google search algorithm. Except people specifically know your website, they
would only type in general terms, phrases or words in Google search engine and
this will only populate the most relevant ones. So, to regularly appear in
searches relating to what you do, updating your website with relevant content
is crucial.
3.
Publish
digital content on external sites: Publish value added materials such as
videos, images, slides, PDFs and audios on external websites such as Youtube,
Google images, slideshare, and the likes. Your content gets to much more
audience, promoting your website and also giving you backlinks in search engines
sometimes.
4.
Do social – Social media is a must if you must
continue to attract fans and online subscribers to your brand. While your
online fans may not necessarily become customers, it’s a good place to
demonstrate your expertise and authority in your industry.
5.
Use outbound and inbound links so Google can
index cached pages: This is a great way to appear well in Google’s search.
Outbound link is when you add external link to content on your site, pointing
to other domains and websites. When you link out to related domains, it not
only helps the search engine to understand your niche, but also helps to
increase the trust and quality of your site which plays a vital role in your website’s
SEO. Inbound links on the other hand is when you have links from other sites
linking back to your website and this can be obtained free in a number of ways.
You can do this by writing guest posts on other websites or by placing details
about your website on other website, thereby, giving you backlinks. These links
also raise your website’s visibility when done well.
For more ways to increase your company’s online visibility,
check out these resources. Know that this takes time and it requires consistent
action, if you want your company to continuously be visible online.