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The Importance and Advantages of Having an Online Presence For Your Business

May 4, 2022

As an increasingly large portion of consumers turns to Internet resources to find businesses, more business owners understand the importance and the advantages of having a robust digital presence. Being well represented online is necessary for success in most industries. Technology and online options are moving at such a rapid pace. If you need help building an online presence, now is the time to get started.

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The Advantages of Having a Web and Social Presence

Having a digital presence comes with many advantages for your business, and the biggest one is a greater chance at capturing prospects. Having online properties gives you more opportunities to reach a more significant number of potential customers. Compare two different companies: one that only has a website (that is not optimized), and another that has a website that is optimized for search engines, several social media profiles, and is listed in dozens of online directories. Let us break down why the second company has an advantage over the first one.

The first company has a small online presence, only consisting of their website, and that website is not optimized for search engines or performance. Some people searching for the first company’s products or services may find them, but it is much harder for consumers to find that company either through Google or a directory such as Yelp or through social media.

Meanwhile, the second company invests in their digital properties. Their website is optimized, so people can find their site much easier on search engines, they have an active social media presence, and they are listed in many directories and third-party websites. By putting in the effort and time to increase their presence online, the second company casts a much wider net to reach as many people as possible, and the more people they reach, the more potential customers they can get from their efforts.

Build Your Roadmap for a Better Digital Presence

Having an expansive online presence grants you the chance to reach more leads, so you may be wondering what you can do to expand your business’s web and social presence. A good place to start when expanding your presence is to have a central hub that all other digital marketing efforts support: your website.

Make sure your site is up to date and mobile-friendly. According to Statista, mobile devices accounted for roughly 63 percent of organic search engine visits in the fourth quarter of 2021. An increasingly large number of people are using their mobile devices to find businesses, so your website has to be responsive to different screen sizes and be easy to read and navigate. The content on your website also needs to be up to date and the overall design and architecture needs to be user-friendly. Now here are the strategies and benefits of different digital properties that grow your online presence.

WSI constent content creation map | online presence | VIEWS Digital Marketing

Our chart shows how the different strategies discussed in this blog fit into your overall strategy: from acquiring leads to communicating with them and more.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization is the process of improving and adjusting a website to appear at the top of a search engine results page. One of the most common tactics in SEO is to write content that is optimized for specific keywords related to a company’s products or services. In-depth content that addresses users’ questions, and is relevant to their searches will help a website achieve higher rankings in a search engine.

A higher rank in Google search results mean that a website appears earlier and farther up in the results page whenever a user searches for keywords and terms that the website is optimized for, leading to more visibility and traffic. Since few people will click on Google results past the first page, ranking your content as highly as possible for your desired keywords (and locations if applicable) should be your goal.

Citations, Directories, Maps

For a local business, Google Business Profile is an essential directory listing that also establishes your prominence in google maps. Directories are databases of companies; think of websites like Google Business Profile, YellowPages, or a chamber of commerce. These listings give your company an online presence that helps build trust and authority for your website. Search engines like Google use these directories to help determine how trustworthy a business is, seeing how consistent and accurate a business’s information is across these directories. The more accurate directories a business has, and the more active a business is on said directories (posting updates, responding to reviews), the more likely Google will rank said business’s website higher in results pages. Many of the voice search devices require validated listings in directories.

In addition, directories also give consumers more opportunities to find your business, as many people use directories such as Yelp or Google Business Profile when researching companies, especially for local businesses.

Social Media

Another area that can help increase your online presence is social media. Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, TikTok, and Youtube have become ubiquitous to the point that many consumers use these platforms to find out information about a specific business. Active social media accounts help foster engagement with your brand, and keeping your brand top of mind is crucial to getting leads to convert into customers.

Depending on your business, different platforms are ideal for you to focus your efforts. Platforms such as Reddit are great for building a community around your business through user-generated content and connecting with current customers to retain them in the future, while others such as LinkedIn or Twitter are better suited if you have a B2B business.

Video & Multi-media

Multi-media content has been growing significantly over the years, particularly video and podcasts. You probably know that Google is the largest search engine in the world, but did you know that YouTube is the second largest, with over 2.24 billion users, with Statista saying that in 2021, people streamed around 694,000 hours of content per minute. Depending on your business, YouTube can be where a significant portion of potential customers are searching for products or services that you provide. Also, videos and podcasts can be optimized and syndicated, which Google can rank, which gives you more chances of your content ranking over your competitors.

A Strong Online Presence is a Competitive Advantage

An online presence is a necessity for any business, big or small, to flourish and thrive in the modern world. If you need help establishing and growing your digital presence, contact VIEWS Digital Marketing. The digital marketing consultants at VIEWS have years of experience optimizing websites, content, and creating personalized digital marketing strategies. We have shown results in growing our clients’ brands and generating more leads for their businesses. Contact us today to see how we can help get more leads for you.