Building a Digital Presence: 5 Tips to Dominate Online
Building an online presence is more important than ever before and for several compelling reasons. Now that the COVID-19 pandemic has forced people around the world to shop online and companies to migrate online, we find ourselves needing a strong digital presence to survive and thrive in a competitive environment. Even without a pandemic on our hands, the growing importance of digital is undeniable as more and more customers continue to browse the web for companies, products, and services.
Yes, even if you’re operating strictly offline, you still need a strong digital presence because potential customers will first research you online before getting in touch. On the other hand, returning customers want to check out your offers and updates online before coming back to your place of business.
But regardless of whether you’re operating online, offline, or in both realms, you need to know which digital areas to invest in. Here are the five digital tactics that will allow you to dominate online in 2021 and beyond.
Investing heavily in SEO
The first and one of the most important elements of a winning digital strategy is SEO. A lot goes into search engine optimization nowadays, as Google keeps dishing out new ranking factors and keeps redefining the importance of old ones. One thing is for sure, though, you need a dedicated team of SEO professionals who can tackle every requirement for a stellar online presence, brand visibility, and awareness in the competitive online world.
Your goal is to rank as high as possible in the relevant search results, making sure to rank on the first page of Google to build brand authority and relevance in the eyes of your target demographic. To do this, you need to optimize your website through technical and on-site SEO, making sure to integrate the right keywords, choose a good domain name, and enhance the UX as much as possible.
Dominating the social media realm
Social media is dominating the online world right now, which should come as no surprise seeing as how everyone and their dog nowadays has a social media account. But in all seriousness, experienced business leaders and digital marketers know that social media is the key to online success for modern brands. Your brand must be present on all relevant social channels, meaning that you should choose your channels carefully.
Your social strategy should revolve around the channels where your audience is present the most. Be sure to conduct a thorough social analysis and create a strategy for every social channel where you can make an impact. Then, coordinate your social channels and their management teams to ensure brand consistency on every network.
Post content regularly and in the times when your audience members are most likely to see it. Engage with your followers in conversation, ask meaningful questions, and continue the conversation in the comments and DMs.
Build a winning content strategy
Speaking of posting content regularly, it’s important to remember that content marketing is still one of the most powerful ways to build a thriving online presence. Not only does Google prioritize websites that publish fresh, optimized content regularly, but the online audience also wants and needs to consume quality content from their favourite brands regularly.
Business leaders need to prioritize regular content creation and optimization nowadays, which is a complex task that’s best outsourced to a dedicated agency. If you take a look at what some of the leading SEO agencies are doing right now, like the Four Dots team with their approach to content, you will see that experts are focusing on creating long-form content with relevant keywords along with a rich backlink portfolio.
These and other factors are extremely important in getting the content noticed across the online realm, and pushing “link juice” back to your website to improve its standing in the search results.
Providing a better experience to the user
UX is an integral part of website development, and it has become an important ranking factor for Google in recent years. The basic premise is that much of your ranking potential boils down to your site’s usability, meaning that you have to optimize it for a stellar performance on all devices.
You should aim to optimize your website for seamless mobile browsing and leverage accelerated mobile pages to help Google rank you higher in the search results. It’s also important to improve the user experience through quality-of-life improvements like intuitive scrolling, fast loading times, a simple site structure, and the like.
Building a presence with paid ads
Last but not least, don’t forget about paid ads as a great tactic for building brand visibility and motivating customers to buy quickly. With PPC campaigns, you can consistently rank at the top of the search results in the sponsored section, and get notices immediately across the web.
Paid ads cost money, though, so you have to make strategic investments and run a cost-breakdown analysis of your campaigns to make them more impactful in the future. You should utilize your Google Ads platform to get the necessary insights to see how your ads are performing and how you can make them better to make a bigger impact and convert more customers.
Wrapping up
There is no way around it, you have to build a strong digital presence to survive and grow your business. Invest in these five areas of digital management and you will set the stage for long-term success in the online realm in the years to come.
