It can be hard to stand out online in a sea of people and businesses. Your potential customers may never find you if you have a brilliant product or service. 

The internet is crowded, so if your business isn’t visible now, it won’t be anytime soon. Visibility is paramount in any marketing campaign—regardless of whether you are just starting as a company or want to expand your horizons with new advertising methods. 

Luckily, there are ways to increase your online visibility as a business, whether you’re just starting and hoping to get noticed by potential customers or you’re looking for new ways to reach the audience you already have. 

The trick is knowing how to do it effectively. 

If you want to know how to increase your visibility as a business and grow from there, keep reading for our insider secrets that will skyrocket your success in no time.

Phase 1: Establishing A Solid Foundation

Before growing your online presence, you must create a solid foundation for your business. This means having a strong website, an easy-to-read mission statement, and a clear brand image. You also have to have a strategy for choosing where to focus your efforts. 

For example, you might decide to emphasize your social media or content marketing over SEO because it’s a more significant focus for your business. You also need to have a plan to monitor and maintain your progress. 

Whether you’re working with a team or doing it all yourself, you can’t expect to see results without first taking care of the basics. You can’t expect people to find you if they can’t even find you online. 

Remember that while it might take some time to see results, you can’t rush this first phase. It’s critical to the success of your business and won’t happen overnight. However, the payoff will be worth it in the long run.

Phase 2: Audience Building & Content Marketing

Once you’ve established your business on the web, it’s time to start building your audience. Whether you’re selling products or services, the more people who recognize your brand, the more likely they’ll buy from you in the future. There are endless ways to do this, but a solid content marketing plan is the best place to start. 

Think about the problems your customers face and create blogs and articles that answer those questions. For example, if you sell beauty products, you could develop articles about skincare, makeup for different skin types, and other related topics. 

The more content you have available for people to read, the more likely they find it useful. This can lead to more traffic and, eventually, more sales as people share your articles and encourage others to visit your site.

Phase 3: Small Business SEO 

While you’re busy building your audience, you also want to start increasing your small business SEO efforts. 

Not sure what that is and how it can benefit your company? SEO is the practice of improving your website’s rank on search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. This is important because the higher you rank, the more likely people are to click on your site when they are searching for something you offer. 

This can lead to more traffic and sales for your business, which is why SEO is an essential part of growing your online presence. Now, before you start throwing links and keywords around willy-nilly, you need to follow SEO best practices. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a penalty from the search engines, which could end up hurting your business even more. 

Getting penalized can be catastrophic for your online presence, especially if you have a large following that relies on you. This is why small business SEO strategies shouldn’t be taken lightly, depending on the scale of your business operations.  

Phase 4: Paid Advertising

This is the last step in strengthening your online presence, but it’s an important one. Having established a reliable company and started building an audience, it’s time to incorporate paid advertising into your marketing efforts. 

Paid advertising isn’t just for giant companies with big budgets—it’s a great way to get the word out about your business and reach a wider audience. 

There are many different ways to do paid advertising, including social media ads, Google AdWords, and even email marketing campaigns. These strategies are designed to allow marketers to target a specific audience and reach out to them in whichever way they see fit. 

Importance of Online Visibility

As we’ve discussed, there is a lot that goes into increasing your online visibility as a business. But why is it so important? Here’s what you can expect from establishing a strong online presence. 

• Targeted traffic – Whether you choose to focus on SEO or paid advertising, you’re reaching people who are actively looking for your services. This means that your marketing dollars are getting the most bang for their buck. 
• Low cost – When compared to other forms of marketing, like print, radio, and television, online marketing is relatively inexpensive. This is especially true if you choose to focus on SEO. 
• Measurable results – With traditional marketing, it can be difficult to tell if your efforts are paying off. With online marketing, you can track and measure just about everything. 
• Repeat business – When people find your website and decide to buy from you, you’re likely to see them again in the future.

To Sum It Up

The Internet is a crowded place, so standing out from the crowds requires a multi-faceted approach. You can’t rely on one tactic alone to reach more people. Instead, you need to follow a proven process that includes creating a solid foundation, building an audience, optimizing your website, and then advertising to a wider audience. Again, these strategies don’t happen overnight. They’re long-term efforts that require patience and consistency. 

With that said, you can expect to see results from these strategies within six months or so. From there, it’s all about scaling your efforts and continuing to grow your business.