Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Regardless of the kind of business you operate, there are many things you can gain from having a strong online presence. With a powerful online presence, you can boost brand awareness, increase leads and increase sales. So, as we are moving closer to 2023, every business must plan to take its online presence to the next level.
In this post, we will explain some important things every business should do to improve its online presence in 2023.
Build a user-friendly, attractive website
When creating an impressive online presence in 2023, the importance of having a website cannot be overemphasized. Your website can make it easier for people to know what you are capable of offering them. Additionally, it can tell people more about your work process, work hours, location, contact information and lots more.
But you shouldn’t just create any site. It must be user-friendly and visually appealing. This is because the expectations of consumers are high nowadays. As a result, they will not waste their time on a low-quality, hard-to-navigate website. So, you should hire the service of experienced website developers and designers to ensure your site meets the required standard.
Related: 4 Content Marketing Strategies You Should Use in 2023
Use SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a digital marketing strategy for increasing your brand’s visibility in search results. As your website ranks higher in search results, more people will be able to come across your brand. Therefore, SEO can make a big difference in your online presence.
To optimize your site for SEO in 2023, you should invest in finding the most relevant keywords. Afterward, use the keywords appropriately and naturally in your headers, meta description, blog content, social media posts, etc.
Also, you shouldn’t forget the three most crucial aspects of SEO, which are:
When done correctly, SEO will help you to reach more potential customers, thus, boosting your online presence.
Related: 6 SEO Tips to Benefit Any Business
Take advantage of local directories
Although it may seem that local directories are only meant for local businesses, all businesses can gain from them. With the directories aid, many would-be customers can check out your business without going to your site. So, as you are trying to boost your business’s online presence, you need to create profiles on local directories such as Google.
Invest in online ads
While a business can grow online organically without ads, online ads can make the job easier and faster. Therefore, if you want to improve your business’s online presence, you need to invest in online ads. Facebook, Google, YouTube and other platforms now allow users to pay for ads. These ads will showcase your offers, ensuring that more people know about your business.
Online ads are helpful for businesses in different ways. Firstly, it can be tailored to suit your target audience. You can use age, interests, location, gender, behavior and other parameters to determine who will see the ads. Secondly, the ads can be done in varying formats, such as images, texts, infographics and videos.
Focus on only the most important online platforms
You can explore numerous platforms when it comes to boosting the image of your business online. However, you must be careful, as being present on several platforms may not be advantageous to your business. Generally, you will have to spend lots of time online marketing your business through numerous platforms. This can be pretty distracting and even prevent you from offering quality services and products to existing customers.
As a result, you should only focus on the most vital platforms. If you can only maximize the use of your website, emails and three social media platforms, you should concentrate on them. You just need to select the best platforms that will assist you in getting the most from your online presence.
Post shareable and emotional content consistently
Another way to improve your online presence is to post content your audience can share with friends. By sharing your content, it will be able to reach more people, thus, boosting your online presence. Nevertheless, most users will only share content that resonates with them emotionally. So, creating emotional and shareable content from time to time on your website and social media pages is paramount.
Infuse emotional phrases and words into your headers, captions, blog posts, etc. Add exciting images, videos, stats and emojis to your content. Also, you can directly encourage the readers to share your post.
Use email marketing
Even though email marketing is one of the oldest means of digital marketing, it is still crucial today. Many internet users utilize emails and check their inbox messages regularly. According to Optinmonster.com, about 99% of email users open their emails at least once daily. So, if you can reach out to existing and would-be customers through emails, you will increase your online presence in 2023.
To optimize email marketing, you must build an email list and craft unique subject lines and content. Also, you must send emails regularly, but don’t spam your audiences.
Explore guest posting
As you continue to look for ways to improve the online presence of your business, you shouldn’t limit it to your platforms. For instance, guest posting can be a great way to let more people know about your business. Guest posting refers to the process of creating a blog post on another platform’s blog. You need to add a link to your website or blog in the blog post. When people engage with your post on the website, they may click the link and visit your website.
When choosing a platform for guest posting, ensure it is a platform with many audiences. Such a platform will allow you to reach more people.
After doing everything above, you should keep track of the progress of your effort with Google Analytics, SEMrush, Ahrefs, etc. Keep updating these things until you have accomplished the goal of improving your business’s online presence in 2023.
