Increase Your Online Presence

Your website is the most important part of your web presence, in large part because you can control the content and website design. It is not by any means the only part of your web presence. Whether or not you’ve actively published or promoted your business on any social media or business listing, there is probably at least some mention of your business on somebody else’s website. Business listing websites, like Yelp, often list businesses by default and give business owners the chance to “claim the profile”. Other sites rely on the business owner to submit their information.

Website

You ultimately decide what content is going to be on your website. Make sure you do as much SEO as you can here, since your options will be very limited elsewhere.

Social Media

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the rest of the social media sites have pretty simple sign up process. When choosing your particular social media user name, be sure to check the top 3 or 4 platforms for your desired name. It helps to have a consistent name across all of your social media profiles.

Directories

Big directories like Yelp that have global coverage are obvious place to list your business. State and local business listings are probably less obvious, as are industry specific business listings. Try Googling you or your competitors to see what kind of directory listing websites come up in the search results. Also try to change the location you’re Googling from to expand your horizons.

Links

Look up links to your website by Google Search Console. Try to get links from relevant and reputable websites. Links from low quality websites can actually hurt your rankings, so more is not necessarily better with link building. Google’s algorithms are very good at discovering spam links, so don’t pay for links unless you’re truly desperate, and even then…. don’t do it.

Alerts

Set up Google Alerts for your business name or your domain name. This will keep you from being surprised or blindsided with bad publicity or a traffic spike that might crash your website. It can also provide opportunities to engage the public and convert leads into sales in as close to real time as most people get online.