Do you run a local business and want to know how to make your business thrive online as well? Try these 4 tips and see how fast you can create your online empire.
1. Double Down on SEO
SEO is more than just a list of tasks to perform – it’s an ongoing complex marketing strategy that requires continual monitoring and adjustments to optimize results. You can’t really stop performing SEO because if you do, you’ll fall behind your competitors.
If you want your online business to thrive, you need to have an ongoing search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. SEO aims to optimize your content and website in order to make your web pages appear in search results. Ideally, you want your pages to show up on the first page, but you’ll still get some traffic if you don’t make it to the first page.
It’s important to hire a professional agency that understands your market and demographics, but when you’re a business with local patrons, you need an agency that understands the locals.
There are plenty of SEO agencies that specialize in local search, like Nuclear Networking, for example. When you need to reach local customers, a specialized local SEO team will help you get big results.
2. Connect Your Online Business to Your Physical Business
If your town has a thriving nightlife, or if your business is popular, you’ll benefit from connecting your online business to your physical business. People like to exist in both worlds, and you can give them the best of both.
One way to accomplish this is by creating a digital loyalty program that can be presented in your business. For example, if you own a bar or restaurant, print a QR code on your coasters that prompts guests to sign up for your newsletter. Once they sign up, give them a discount code they can use immediately to save money on their tab.
There are other ways to connect your online and physical business. You can offer online ordering, online reservations, and anything else that will provide value to your customers online.
3. Hire a Professional Website Developer
When you think about hiring a professional website developer, you might first be concerned about the cost. Naturally, you’ll pay more for an expert, and it’s well worth the cost.
Think of your website as a revenue-generating asset rather than an inconvenient expense. When you create it correctly from the start, it will serve you in the long run and you won’t need to rebuild it over and over again.
You’ll find an endless supply of people online claiming to be experienced developers, but many are just winging it and only know how to use drag-and-drop editors.
To find the right developer, you need to ask the right questions. For example, Moz.com published a list of 20 questions that include the following:
- What industry sites and blogs do you read regularly?
- Do you prefer to work alone or on a team?
- Can you write HTML by hand?
- Can you write table-less XHTML? Do you validate your code?
- Can I see your portfolio?
- What websites have you built in the past?
These questions are important. You want a developer who stays up-to-date with the latest trends and changes, someone who works as a team, and knows HTML inside and out. You also want someone who writes clean code and has a portfolio of websites that are still on the internet.
If a developer says all of their websites have since vanished, they either have no experience or they’ve only designed sites for friends and family who have abandoned their projects. It’s also possible that they were a developer ten years ago which means they probably aren’t on top of current coding standards.
4. Allow Your SEO Agency to Suggest Content Changes
When you hire a professional SEO agency, they’ll get you better results when they can control your content. Ideally, your content should be written by professional writers. However, if your content is decent, your SEO team may only need to make slight changes to include important keywords and phrases.
Search engines determine the relevance of pages based on keywords and phrases along with related keywords and phrases. It’s important to have a variety of phrases in your content, but it must be done naturally.
Your SEO agency might also suggest making changes like writing longer blog posts (1,000+ words), posting content at regular intervals, and spending money on a professional content writer for your most important pages.
Achieving Online Success Takes Time
Being successful online takes time. However, when you integrate your online presence with your real-world presence, you’ll get results slightly faster. While your marketing team lays the foundation for SEO and other digital marketing strategies, your customers will promote your online presence through word of mouth.
