How to Rapidly Move Your Business Online
By Kris Reid
Despite the growing need to be visible online, there is still a massive number of businesses without an established online presence. Some may have a grand, visually pleasant website, but still aren’t able to reach their target market. In a highly competitive industry, you only have two choices—go big or go home. And in today’s business climate, going big means you have to be in front of where your customers are looking, while positioning yourself as an authority in your niche.
With the pandemic not only threatening people’s health, but also hinting a lurking recession in the not so distant future, it’s very important for businesses to keep afloat. Clearly, it’s currently impossible for people to visit traditional brick-and-mortar shops in times of crisis. However, this doesn’t mean you can’t continue to get more customers and keep your business running.
The message is clear—now, more than ever is the right time to grow business online.
Strategies to Move and Grow Your Business Online
Moving your business online can be daunting. Nonetheless, there are tips that you can pick up on how to do so effectively and efficiently. With proper guidance and help from the professionals, the process can be much easier.
Of course, the very first step you need to take is build a website. If you already have one, you can proceed to website optimization. You should spend enough time and effort in optimizing your site using whitehat SEO techniques, instead of merely beautifying it. The goal here is for people to find your business online. A pretty site would be useless if people cannot find it.
Once you have a working website, conduct a site audit. This way, you’ll be able to know if your website is properly structured.
You need to have a search engine optimization (SEO) expert to conduct keyword research and identify what your customers are actively looking for online. Then, integrate your chosen keywords into all the content that you create for your site, from your metadata to your blog post headings.
Also, you need to get more backlinks. The more links you get from relevant websites in your niche, the more chances your customers will find your website and Google will view you as an authority.
All of these can be achieved with a sound SEO strategy. You get to be where your customers are and you get to be the solution to the problems they’re searching for in Google, effectively establishing yourself as an authority in your niche.
What Sets SEO Apart from Other Strategies?
Social media marketing, paid advertising, and other online platforms can help generate traffic to a website. However, according to the Search Engine Journal, 51% of online traffic is vastly driven by search engines. Compared to paid advertisements, organic search results receive more clicks and look more credible to tech-savvy searchers.
When done properly, SEO can generate more sales for your business over time. If you curate relevant content that rightfully ranks with the right keywords, your website traffic will surely increase over time, as opposed to paid advertising that demands continuous funding to generate more traffic.
While search engines are becoming smarter, they still need help to determine what businesses to present to users. By optimizing your website and providing valuable information, you can assure yourself that it will be indexed as one of the top choices when potential customers search for your products or services.
Why Does SEO Work to Capture Organic Traffic?
SEO works for any kind of business because it’s 100% data driven. From demographic targeting to keyword research, data is the driving force behind every strategy formulated.
Through this, you can get rid of all elements of chance from your advertising and marketing processes. You can also evaluate the effectiveness of campaigns and make adjustments when needed.
What SEO Strategies Can You Use to Rapidly Grow Your Business?
As physical shops and offices temporarily close down, Google is flooded with people searching for “how to make your business grow”. Basically, doing it with the use of SEO involves three important steps.
Keyword research
You need to start with thorough keyword research. In doing so, you need to know what your customers are looking for and where they’re searching for answers.
For example, if you’re a vegan hotel in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, you should analyze your competitors’ most searched keywords. If you’re targeting the vegan demographic, then you should use keywords, like “vegan restaurant in Phnom Penh” and “guest house in Phnom Penh”. Using them in your metadata and content will surely improve your hotel’s rankings on the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Getting in front of your target market
After keyword research, you need to bring your products, services, and message to your target market. How? Through keyword mapping and content planning. These strategies will allow you to position keywords strategically within all of your content.
Aside from this, you should also set up a Google My Business (GMB) profile to build your reputation and value as a brand, both to your customers and to Google.
Having effective calls to action
You need to motivate your audience to do something about the information they learned from you. With the help of incentives and pop-ups, you need to encourage your audience to take action, whether it be subscribing to your newsletter or actually making a purchase.
How to make your business grow online doesn’t need to be confusing and stressful. If you partner with SEO experts, you can come up with the best digital marketing strategies to help your business thrive, especially during difficult times, such as today when businesses and consumers alike are suffering the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
About the Author
Kris Reid, aka the Coolest Guy in SEO, is the CEO of Ardor SEO. He lost his job as a software engineer in a financial firm in Europe when the 2007-2008 Global Financial Crisis hit, but earned his way back to success by providing SEO and digital marketing services to businesses around the world.
Kris is now an established authority in SEO, working with businesses in every industry and nice. With a team of experts currently based in Saigon, and managing a team remotely in the Philippines, they are showing how to make your business grow consistently by getting more customers and predictably grow their revenue streams.
To learn more about the Kris Reid and to contact him, find out more here: