Many people believe that just having a website will suddenly bring them to the attention of everyone looking for their product or service, unfortunately, in a world where thousands of new websites are registered daily, your site is quite honestly, a needle in a haystack. The website development is only the beginning. Once it’s complete, you need to get about the business of marketing it to increase your corporate visibility online, this is what we call Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
Search Engine Optimisation is really just a fancy term for setting up your website to get as many hits as possible from search engines when potential clients are looking for your products or services. Much of this is done through strategic website content, listings various online directories, social media links (and engagement). Let’s look a little closer at each of these elements.
Strategic Website Content:
Most clients profess the (arguably correct) assumption that their clients aren’t interested in reading pages full of text about what they do. Clients don’t generally poor over a detailed list of all your products, services, processes and life stories, but unfortunately, search engines do. Search engines like Google use the content on your website to ascertain whether or not your business can accurately provide the correct answer to the terms potential clients are using to search for your services. By strategically using certain words or phrases based on their search volume, you can help increase the chances that your site will show up in search results. There are of course many other factors other than just text, the right alt tags on images for example and how long your site has been live compared to more popular and better known businesses in the industry, but making sure that your content game is top notch is an important place to start.
Online Directories
When deciding whether or not to use your website to fulfill a potential client’s search request, search engines consider what various directories have on their lists for such a service/product. Sites like Yelp and Yellow Pages are important as they provide your business with another listing on the internet and since your website is listed on these “authority sites”, it provides a valuable link to your website as well.
Some important things to include in your directory listing: Business name, address, contact information, hours of operation and most importantly, a keyword rich business description!
According to PopNetMedia, there are the best online directories to list your business on in 2016
- Google Places
- CrunchBase
- Bing Places
- Super Pages
- Yellow Pages
- Yelp
- Local
- White Pages
- Manta
- Angel.co
- Merchant Circle
- Yahoo!
- Yellow Book
- City Search
- MapQuest
- BBB
- Angi
- Biznik
- Foursquare
- Area Connect
- Magic Local
- Mojo Pages
- Yellow Bot
- Local Pages
- Yellow Wise
- Get Fave
- Tupalo
- Zip Local
- EZ Local
- City Squares
- US City
- Kudzu
- Express Update
- Alexa
- Dmoz
- Dizila
- Locality
- Brown Book
- Judy’s Book
- BOTW
- City Slick
- Business Journals
- Just Click Local
- Twibs
- Directory Company
- Yellow Assistance
- US GEO
- Navteq
- ABC Directory
Social Media
Social media is a great place to connect with clients, and much like the directories above, they also help in putting your business out there. Your social media pages should be set up like a mini-website, with all the basic business information: name, location, contact info, and a keyword rich blurb. Keeping your social media accounts updated with regular information and using it to run advertisements on promotions is also an excellent way to keep in touch with clients and make new ones.
Need help getting more visibility for your website? Give me a call at 587-893-7686 or send me a message, I will be happy to help!