Guest post by Naomi Dinsmore
Have you recently launched your business start up website but have little to no visitors at all?
Did you spend time choosing your website colours? Or writing blog posts? Or even spent hundreds of pounds on a big-shot website designer?
But now you have launched no one is looking?
You have no readers?
Your website is quiet and you are starting to doubt yourself?
Should I just quit? Am I a failure? Why did I ever bother?
Well I have good news for you.
To begin with you don’t need to quit. There are over a billion websites on the internet and yours is just one. But don’t let that put you off trying hard to get your website noticed!
I’ve included a list of my top 3 tips for instant online visibility for any business start up that you need to start applying so your website can get noticed on the World Wide Web.
Web Design
You may have already designed your website and this may be an obvious tip but it’s still a very common mistake. Your website design should be what your target audience wants and what is associated within your industry. Have you picked the wrong colours and design for your website? Check out your competition and other industry leader’s websites. This will help you to get clear on the common colours related to your industry.
When choosing your website colours choose only two or three. You need to have one main colour and one or two accent colours. Look at this website for example the main background colour is white and the secondary colours are blue and a little green.
Lastly have clear navigation buttons so visitors can find what they need and want quickly.
Include clear navigation buttons on you site so visitors can find what they need and want quickly.Achieving the right layout and web design for your audience helps to keep readers on your website for longer periods.
“How Does This Help?”
Google analyses how long visitors stay on your site and what pages they visited. This information is partially used to rank your website in their search engine and to determine the value of your site.
Websites that are full of advertisements and spam tend to be quickly clicked away from by the reader which tells Google that the website doesn’t maintain any value because no one stays there!
By creating a user friendly website you will encourage your readers to stay for longer periods of time. This helps to boost your website ranking which grows online visibility.
“How Can I Create This?”
- Easy Navigation Buttons
There is nothing more frustrating than when you are on a website and you can’t find exactly what you want!
Ensure your navigation buttons are in clear view just like the buttons on this website. They are a permanent fixture on the left hand side and coloured in a different shade of blue which means they stand out a little bit more. Your navigation buttons should include a Home, About and Contact page. You can add in additional pages depending on your niche and customer needs.
- Skim-Ability
With the majority of people now using mobile devices to access the internet they usually don’t have time to spend hours (sometimes even minutes) reading through lengthy web pages. Make sure your about page, blog posts and home page are easy to read and can be scanned over.
Include sub headings, bullets points and break up the content so it’s easy to simply skim over as well as read through the entire thing.
- Colour and Ad Control
Unless your niche commonly uses extremely bright, loud colours I would avoid this. Overly bright colours can become distracting and even make a customer click away if your website colours become annoying.
The biggest mistakes I see on websites are sales adverts that flash, move and contain hyped up promotion prices. There is nothing wrong with the odd advert but make sure it doesn’t take over your website and is relevant your business start up. For example if you sell a mobile dog grooming service your adverts could advertise dog accessories and clothes.
Social Media
Since the birth of Facebook there are many social media companies out there, but to join and manage them all would be pointless and time consuming. To improve your business start up visibility, choose the social networks your audience mainly uses and are most relevant to your business.
If your target audience needs to visually see your products then social media networks that mainly use images will get you more online visibility. For example if you sell jewelry, clothes, art or furniture the best social media networks would be Pinterest and Instagram where customers can see your work. If you sell EBooks, Audios or mentoring services then Twitter would be the best option as you can use catchy, short sentences to promote your products.
If your business means that you are regularly in contact and communication with other businesses then LinkedIn would be best for business to business connections.
Always choose the social networks your target audience prefers, but don’t neglect the most popular. Facebook is still the reigning champion for the most popular social networking sites, so you should still open and maintain a Facebook account because your customers are likely to have one too.
When creating a profile on any social media account be clear on the purpose of your business and include your main keywords for your business within the profile.
Adding keywords in your profile helps the users to find you. And don’t forget to add a website link that directs users to your website.
Stay in Contact
The biggest social media networks easily push out over a billion messages every day. If you don’t stay in regular contact with your followers you will easily be forgotten. The best way to maintain daily contact with your audience is to use a social media automation tool where you can plan, time and schedule exactly when and how often you want your message sent out (and to what account). I personally use BufferApp but there are many others to choose from.
RELATED: How to Find Your Ideal Client on Social Media
Calls to Action
When messaging your followers add in ‘calls to action’. A ‘call to action’ is a short statement where you ask the reader to perform a certain action. This could be to ‘Retweet This Tweet’ or ‘Sign up to the Newsletter’ or ‘Like This’ or even to ‘Buy Now’. Not all your messages need a call to action and not all your ‘calls to action’ should be about buying.
RELATED: Social Media in 30 Minutes a Day – Is It Really Possible?
“How does this help?”
Google is starting to rank and determine the value of a website by how strong a social media following and presence that website has. The more your business is shared, ‘Tweeted’ and ‘Liked’ the better Google will rank your site and increase visibility in its search engine.
Blogging
Google uses their very own tech spiders and robots to crawl the majority of websites on the Internet to check for updated information which helps them decide where to rank you. The easiest way to add new information regularly to your website is to blog. Blogging is similar to just writing articles which are added to a file on your site.
RELATED: How to Get Your Blog Post Shared 1000 Times.
“How Does This Help?”
Blogging helps add more pages to your website which also improves ranking because Google uses the amount of pages contained on a website to decide rank position.
But if you have never blogged before you might be thinking…
“How do I write?”
“What do I write about?”
“Will anyone really be reading it?”
The best way to get better at blogging is to practice often. Publish a new post at least once a month.
To know what to write about just think about common problems within your industry or use your blog to respond to questions that your customers ask/email you about.
Finally your blog will be read by your target audience and this helps them to see you as an industry leader and a valuable resource.
Conclusion
As I’m sure you have realised a strong element to gaining online visibility is following Google’s guidelines. No one knows exactly how Google decides where or how to rank websites but all the methods listed above are all tested and proven methods.
Your journey to improving your online visibility will include further education about Google and to ensure you stay updated with the latest changes in the rules and regulations about how they rank.
A great resource is Matt Cutts’ Blog. Matt Cutts is the head of Google’s Web spam Team and he regularly uploads videos and blog posts about how Google will be ranking your site.
Let Denise and me know what you’re doing to gain online visibility for your business start up. Please leave your comments below.
photo credit: nico.cavallotto via photopin cc
Oddly someone told me to drop my blog from the main website! I couldn’t work out if they were trolling me or not. Either way blogging is great for getting some initial traction, one thing I’ve been struggling with is that I’m blogging in an industry that is very heavy on picture content and not so much on the word count.
How would you recommend that I grow my blog visitor count through image heavy blogging?
Hey, I just checked out your blog. Boy, is it a beauty. I’m rarely envious but right now I’ve got kitchen jealously!
The way you can build up your word count on your beautiful image heavy blog is to simple break down your current content. For example your latest post…21 KITCHEN TRENDS IN 2015 YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT. Let’s use number 1 which is…
1. Furniture style design.
There is only one short sentence used which was…
As more of our time and social gatherings are spent within the kitchen area it’s only natural that the kitchen would slowly start to morph into a room that incorporates living room style furniture…
There is nothing wrong with this but just break it down. Why not tell your readers how to create this look.
Talk about what type of lighting is best.
What is the best types of flooring?
What about the style of furniture and where you personally recommend purchasing it from.
What paint works best and what finish?
Or create a list of blog post ideas that don’t need to have several images and only need content. For example…
Every Thing You Need to Know When Before Purchasing a New Work Top.
Biggest Mistakes People Make When Buying a New Kitchen Work Top
5 Secrets I Tell All my Customers When They Don’t Know How to Choose The Perfect Kitchen
Your visitors expect images so there is nothing wrong with that. Just test different ideas out, see what get’s better results and go with that!
I hope this helps. Let me know if it does
Naomi
PS – Encase you were wondering my favourite kitchens were 12, 14 and 21
What is your opinion about guest blogging ?
Samson Sundar
Hi Samson,
Guest posting is another great method to gain more online visibility. But remember to ensure your guest post is of high quality content and relevant to the blog you want your post featured on.
Thanks for comment
Naomi
Hi Naomi,
I love that mention:
1. Great website and layout
2. Great content
3. Social presence
Each is equally important for the very reasons you outlined. In my opinion, the greatest area of neglect comes in creating great content because we are still persuaded and informed by mass marketing, which does not work in blogging or social media.
That’s the focus of a new book I’m writing and we have to be clear that we have to identify with and inspire people if we are to get to the point where our blogs are influential and helpful to readers. We can’t do that in a mass marketing model that tries to appeal to everyone based on features/benefits/price over conversing with one problem with one person, which the web allows us to do masterfully.
Thanks for sharing a great article.
I hope you have an incredible week ahead!!!
~ Don Purdum
Hi Don,
The saying will never die… Content is King!
For me personally… Flashy, well designed, great looking blogs with poor content never lasts long with me. They have that materialistic effect. Like a new top that you don’t need but really want. Once you’ve got it, you don’t care and it’s boring.
Majority of the blogs I read with the best content are the most basic, but still well designed for their audience
Thanks for commenting
Naomi
Hey Naomi,
I’m glad that you mentioned that Google also ranks you by how active you are on social media by the engagement you have with your audience. This is a very important factor outside the engagement you have on your blog and the shares! I really like the way they rank sites now compared to years ago which makes it a lot more fair to everyone in the blogosphere.
I also like the fact that you mentioned which social media sites would correlate to what we are all doing with your businesses. I’m usually on Facebook and twitter, but it’s good to know for me as well as for beginners to market whatever we’re all promoting on the site that really fits our agenda!
Great information here Naomi! Thanks for sharing!
I found your blog post on kingged.com under the category of internet marketing
http://kingged.com/3-top-tips-for-instant-online-visibility-for-any-business-start-up/
Hi Sherman,
I completely agree. It is much fairer how blogs are ranked now days. The old days of link farms and keyword stuffing seems to be over!
Which gives the genuine bloggers a chance for their hard work to shine through.
I guess, Google decided to also use social media as part of your ranking because it takes time to build a large audience which means you must be something special. I know you can buy Twitter followers because I’m spammed with offers constantly but my guess is Google is already one step ahead and knows the difference between a steady growth from an overnight burst of followers!
Thanks for comment
Naomi
Naomi
I’m finding it difficult to choose which one of the three you list as being important…and I cannot.
With great design…visitors won’t want to read more.
Without great blogging content…visitors won’t want to share via social media.
You have picked the most important 3..excellent advice.
Thanks,
Andrew
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for the comment and lovely words 🙂
Naomi