Sometimes it seems as if the internet is both a blessing and a curse. While the internet enables you to expose your business to millions of people online, it also means that your competitors can receive the same, if not more, exposure. The online marketing battlefield is brutal.
If you feel that your competitors have a stronger online presence than you do, you should make a concerted effort to improve both your company’s online aesthetic and visibility. It’s not as hard to do as it sounds. Here are 5 ways to get a head start on your competitors online.
1. Build a Better Website
The first thing you need to do is make sure that you’ve built a great website. It’s important that you have a great website if you want people to take your business seriously, and it’s even more important if you can actually make sales on your site. Your website should be:
- Highly visual
- Well-organized with a pyramid structure
- Fast
- Utilize call-to-actions (CTAs)
- Describes what your business sells and, if relevant, where you’re located
You don’t need any coding knowledge to improve your website. Use an online web builder to easily create a gorgeous website that you’re able to structure however you see fit. Most online website builders will host your site on secure servers that are operate at fast speeds (if you’re website is too slow, users won’t stay very long).
Make sure your website has plenty of great CTAs so you can increase your conversion rate.
2. Use Pay Per Click Advertising
Pay per click (PPC) advertising is one of the most effective ways to market your business online, and it’s why Google makes such an enormous amount of money. When you conduct pay per click advertising on a search engine, you’ll be able to place an ad for your business on searches that are relevant to whatever your company sells. It’s a great way to make your website more visible on web searches.
But pay per click advertising is only effective if you utilize the right strategy: you’ve got to pick the right keywords, and your website must be SEO-optimized for those keywords. You might consider hiring a PPC company to help you plan your strategy and track the success of your PPC campaign so you know you’re not wasting money on fruitless advertising.
3. Incorporate SEO
Piggy-backing on PPC, you should make sure your website incorporates strong search engine optimization (SEO). When users search for a product or service online, search engines assemble a list of companies that sell that product. Websites that have strong SEO are listed higher on the search rankings, and those are the websites more likely to draw traffic and convert sales. If you want to rank higher on search results, your website needs to be SEO-optimized.
To improve your SEO, make sure that you’re using keywords on your website that are relevant to your business and which are commonly searched for. You should also incorporate “local SEO:” using the name of the city or area in which you’re based. So if your business sells flowers, your website should have the text: “San Francisco flower delivery” and semantic variations.
4. Have a Dominant Social Media Presence
Social media is one of the main draws of the internet these days, and if you have stingy competitors online then you definitely need to make sure that you have a powerful social media presence. You want to get as many “likes,” “shares,” and “follows,” as possible, and the best way to do that is to consistently post good content. Social media is also a good first step to taking your business mobile.
People love memes and humorous posts, so try and post that sort of content when you can so long as it pertains to your business and product. Also try and engage with users by responding to comments and offering giveaways. Use a tried-and-true social media marketing software to help you plan your social media campaigns.
5. Partner Up
It’s always easier to beat the competition when you’ve got some allies to help you out. If your business has strategic partners, ask them to promote your business on their website and social media channels. In exchange, you’ll do the same for them.
This process, in SEO terminology, is called link building. You and your partners can create targeted content that links out to each other’s websites, which will boost each company’s SEO, web traffic, and brand awareness.
You don’t need not invest a huge amount of money to overtake your competitors online! Just follow these 5 tips and your business can drastically improve its visibility and profitability.
