More and more people are using the Internet to buy products and services and find local businesses. If you own a company, it has never been more beneficial to attract attention online. Enhancing your visibility can help you attract new customers, raise brand awareness, increase sales and drive more traffic to your website and social media feeds. In this guide, we’ll share some top tips to help you optimize online visibility to boost sales.
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Improve your search ranking with effective SEO
SEO, or search engine optimization, is a digital marketing technique, which helps brands to attract attention through high search engine rankings. The aim is to get to the top of page 1 and encourage web users to click on your links, view your content and buy your products or services. Less than 1% of users reach the second page of search results. If your links appear on page 2, or even further down the list, it’s difficult to generate leads and boost site traffic. Improving your search ranking is key to increase traffic and create and convert more high-quality leads.
Many factors influence SEO success, including keyword research, the quality and authenticity of content, content readability and aesthetics and the use of on and off-page SEO features, including backlinks, tags, titles, optimized metadata, keywords and internal links. If you’re not an experienced marketer, or you don’t have a marketing team in-house, it’s beneficial to think about working with a digital marketing agency. Look for a company that specializes in SEO and has an excellent track record. Experienced marketing teams can help you implement a targeted strategy, which will help you achieve your objectives and reach target audiences.
Effective, impactful SEO campaigns can increase the potential for marketing success using other methods, including content marketing and affiliate marketing. SEO affiliate marketing makes it easier for businesses to attract customers who already have a desire to buy based on their search query and intention and the keywords they use. If you employ affiliate marketers, you can capitalize on their influence and reach to bring customers to your website or follow links to purchase products directly through the affiliate link. In addition to enhancing your online visibility and encouraging buyers to complete purchases, affiliate marketing can also be cost-effective for brands because they only pay the affiliate when a customer buys a product through the affiliate link.
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Design a fantastic website
Bringing prospective customers to your website is only part of the process of making sales. The second phase involves impressing potential clients or buyers with your website. If your website doesn’t match customer expectations, you may lose the sale, even if the customer is impressed with the product. Red flags include slow-loading pages, poor-quality images, low-quality content, broken links, error codes and dull, uninspiring aesthetics. Review your website design, highlight areas for improvement and invest time and effort in enhancing the look, performance and functionality of your website.
To take your website to the next level and boost conversion rates, it’s helpful to understand what customers want and what drives them away. Speed is a major factor, for example. Around 40% of web users will leave a site if it takes longer than 3 seconds for the page to load. If you’re refreshing your site, it’s beneficial to test different ideas and designs and analyze data and customer feedback. If you’ve got a high abandonment rate on the delivery page, for example, your fees may be too high or customers may not be satisfied with the range of shipping options.
Embrace social media
Social media used to be a network for friends and family members to catch up and stay in touch. Today, it’s much more than this. Social platforms provide amazing opportunities for businesses to improve online visibility and boost sales. You can advertise and promote products and services through social apps, but you can also reach new audiences and get to know followers and prospective clients on a deeper level. In 2023, almost 60% of consumers bought products they’d seen on social media, but crucially, customers also now prefer to choose brands they follow on social apps. A Sprout Social study revealed that around 90% of people buy from companies they follow.
Social media is a fantastic tool to advertise products and make sales, but it can also help persuade customers to choose brands by providing information before the final stages of the sales funnel. If you’re looking for a restaurant, for example, you can use social media to see photographs, view reviews from other users and find out more about the menu, events and news before you commit to booking a table. Another incredible benefit to social media marketing is engaging with customers and building relationships. You can use posts to help followers get to know your business better and understand your brand values as well as using interactions to help you get to know your customers. More than 80% of consumers prefer to buy from brands whose values align with theirs so engagement and showing the human side of the business are key.
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Encourage online reviews
Online reviews play an increasingly integral role in helping customers choose which businesses to work with or products to buy. Did you know that over 90% of people now check online reviews? Encouraging customers to leave reviews and sharing positive comments can help you attract shoppers, diners, customers or clients and set your business apart. Positive reviews push customers towards specific brands or products while negative reviews have the opposite effect. Research indicates that up to 90% of people won’t buy a product if it has bad reviews.
If you’re a new business, or your company doesn’t have many reviews online, make it as easy as possible for customers to share feedback. Include a link on confirmation emails and social media posts and incentivize reviews. You could offer an entry into a competition to win a prize, for example.
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More people shop online and use the Internet to find businesses than ever before. As a company owner, it’s hugely beneficial to capitalize on the popularity of social media, search engines and online shopping to boost sales. There are many ways you can enhance online visibility to attract new customers, persuade them to buy from you and supercharge sales. Examples include running effective SEO campaigns and using social media to promote your products and services and connect with customers. Ensuring your website looks great and is easy to navigate and use is also crucial. It’s also beneficial to encourage customers to leave reviews and share feedback to get your business noticed and take advantage of marketing methods that will help you optimize reach and increase sales, such as SEO affiliate marketing.