As a full-service marketing agency we’re going to talk about
getting your business noticed from a digital perspective. That means
all the online tactics and digital strategies…
Organic Listings
When you first build your website, being in the search engines is
essential. After all, if you’re not in the search engines, how is anyone
going to find your shiny new, or freshly rebuilt website?
These days, the search engines are very good at finding websites
online, whether you inform them or not, but it’s best practice to give
the search engines your website address and other details that will help
them discover, crawl, index, and rank your web pages.
So, as a first port of call, set up accounts for your business in both Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console.
Then add your website address and ensure that you tell the tools the
address of your website’s XML sitemap. As a WordPress website design
agency, we recommend the Yoast SEO plugin which automatically creates an
XML sitemap index, then XML sitemaps for your posts as well as pages.
Business Profiles
Two of the major search engines, Google and Bing, allow you to create
business profiles. When you sign up to, and enter your details at Bing Places and Google Business Profile, you’re further helping the search engines provide the best information for potential visitors.
Business profiles allow you to provide detail of your business, such
as address, phone number, email, website address, and opening hours.
Additionally, you can ask your customers for reviews, and display your
ratings. We’ve achieved 4.9/5 starts from our own excellent customer
service and fantastic services.
Search results have evolved from being simple pages of ten items of
text entries, to now being dynamic, and relevant. By having a business
profile with Bing or Google, if your business is associated with a
specific search result, your business listing may appear as part of
those search results.
The “local pack” of a map and map pins, will list three business
profiles, including name, your rating, contact details, and opening
times plus links to your website and direction to your premises. These
are all extremely important to raise your business profile in the search
results.
Trade and Business Directories
There’s not quite as much onus as there once was for firms to be in
trade or business directories these days, especially seeing as Bing and
Google’s business profiles are the search engines’ number one source of
data. But it is still advisable, and useful to add your website to any
other top directories. Afterall, you’re trying to get your business
noticed, so being in as many high-profile places as possible is the goal
here.
Usually, they have a free sign-up option where you can enter your
basic details, just as you would for your Bing Places or Google Business
Profile. Use this free listing to claim a basic foothold and be listed
in a place where your users may look for you.
Classic examples are Yell.com,
what is now the online version of what used to be The Yellow Pages
[Remember those gigantic yellow books that used to appear on your
doorstep every year?! – Ed] and Thomson Local.
There are also specialist directories for tradespeople, such as TrustATrader and Checkatrade,
where you can find plumbers, electricians, and floor screeding
contractors. They are heavily advertised on UK local radio and national
TV stations, so they’re great places for an additional profile.
Alternatively, if you’re a member of a trade association, make sure
you’re listed with them, whether in a personal or a business capacity.
This can also earn you greater visibility and trust.
Pay Per Click
One of the first challenges of having a brand-new website, is that
you’re coming to the market late, and there are already well-established
businesses, in some places dominating the search results. Their domain
names may have been registered for over twenty years, they’ve built up
links, and reputations, so they may be very well placed and rather
incumbent. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can take weeks and months to build up quality rankings, it’s a long process. One option on hand is Pay Per Click or PPC advertising.
Let’s say you just launched your website last week and are seeing no
organic results. You’ll need to employ a reputable SEO agency on a digital retainer to improve in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) but you can “leapfrog” the current organic listings with a paid ad.
If you’re selling iPhones, for example, and want to appear for
searches for “latest iPhone” then you’ll probably notice that the top
organic results are for Apple’s own website (with three further
sitelinks to take up a lot of screen real estate), then telecoms company
O2, and retailer Argos.
However, by using PPC, Currys are the first in the list of shopping
ads, followed by Argos, who have jumped above Apple themselves, with
Sky, Carphone Warehouse and EE all being visible, where they were not in
the hallowed “top ten” organic results.
PPC gets your business noticed, and whilst you’re running high-volume
PPC ads in Google Ads and the Microsoft Advertising Network, you can
strategically build your web presence using on-page and technical SEO
techniques that will earn you better positions in the long term.
Social Media
Just as you set up your presence in a Google Business Profile and
Bing Places, so you should “stake your claim” in the relevant social
media channels. Not every business will use all their channels but
secure your brand name in all the platforms, add your logo and business
details, with a link to your website and that is a good start.
The next thing to realise is that running a quality social media presence is time consuming and can
be a full-time job. You’ll need to remember Pareto’s Law and focus on
the social media channels that earn you the most visibility and
engagement.
Dip your toe in the water, follow your customers and potential
customers, put out relevant messages in your brand’s tone of voice, and
engage with your audience. Be social! That’s often the most overlooked
aspect of social media!
Being active in social media channels like Twitter, Facebook,
Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok can generate brand awareness as well as
building brand equity and generating clicks, leads, etc.
If your social needs laser-focused delivery, you can always move on
to paid social media, the equivalent of PPC, but on those same channels.
