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.

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

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