Finding a place for your small business in the Digital world can be a daunting prospect. There’s so many avenues, opportunities (and pitfalls) to explore and consider. Knowing where to start can be half the battle!

Thankfully, they are proven strategies and techniques to grow your business online and fast. Here at First Curve Digital we’re passionate about helping small businesses flourish online. We recommend getting the foundations right first and then your business can really blossom!

So, how do we go about growing your business online?

 

Social Media

Getting your business set up on all the major social networks can be a really easy way to build your online presence. Not only can social media increase your visibility, if done correctly, you can successfully identify new leads and buying customers!

With changes to the Facebook feed algorithm over the last few years, plummeting organic reach, it’s not the easiest platform to build a profile for a relatively new or small business these days.

That’s why we’d recommend starting on Twitter! There are some neat little techniques you can implement that will see your followers increase rapidly over a short space of time.

 

  1. Hashtag Research – Don’t go shooting in the dark. Do your research first! By taking the time to do a little bit of hashtag research, you can successfully find new niche’s, topics and demographics to reach out to and target.

 

  1. Photo Tagging – This is such an under-utilized twitter marketing strategy. Simply find the profiles of influencers or others you want to get your tweet in front of, upload a photo, and tag them in it! This will show up in their notifications, giving your profile and business instant visibility.

 

  1. Following the Right People – Sometimes it’s just not enough to build something and expect people to flock to you. Scout around Twitter and identify profiles that have similar interests and relevancy to yours and hit the ‘follow’ button. If they like the look of you, they’ll follow you back, creating another source of prospective engagement.

 

 

Optimising On-Page Content

Don’t think of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) as just a channel. SEO is your website. Everything you have on your website, from titles to page copy is crawled by Google’s indexing spiders. So, every piece of content you have live, is a chance to rank higher and a chance to get more organic traffic to your website!

How do you go about optimising your website for organic traffic?

 

  1. Keyword Research – Although there are hundreds of ranking factors Google take into account, Keyword Research still plays a fundamental part in building the foundations for your website. Keyword research can surface exactly what your prospective customers are looking for and how many are looking for it. Targeting localised and ‘long tail’ keywords can provide an excellent way to get your business ranking fast.

 

  1. Optimise Your Page Title – All too often you see websites neglecting the power of a well-optimised page title. Your page titles should target the keywords you want to rank for on that page, as well as a catchy call to action to get people clicking through from the search results pages.

 

  1. Rich and Informative Page Copy – Including well-optimised page copy on each page gives you another opportunity to rank for keywords, as well as providing extra relevancy for search engines about your content. Including high volume keywords and semantically related keywords is a great way to improve your likelihood of ranking for those terms. As well as including keywords, ensure your page copy is engaging, informative and directs the reader to take action!

 

 

Local SEO

You can improve the local visibility of your business in just 10 minutes or so! By claiming a free ‘Google My Business’ listing, you have the opportunity to create a profile for your business. It asks you to include information such as name, location, phone number, opening hours etc. Your ‘Google My Business’ listing will improve visibility for your company in the local area, whilst also providing prospective customers with extra information and contact points, creating trust and confidence in your brand.

As well as the above, make sure you’re targeting localised keywords within your copy and titles on your website. For example, say you’re a new Artisan Bakery in Bedford. If you just targeted the keyword of “Artisan Bakery”, your chances of ranking for that keyword vs everyone else across the UK would be pretty slim. However, if you choose to target “Artisan Bakery in Bedford”, your chances of ranking for this ‘longer tail’ keyword would be greatly increased. Plus, it could well improve footfall into your bricks and mortar shop!

 

Link Building

Another tried and tested method for growing businesses online. Link building is essentially the art of reaching out to similar websites and influencers within your niche and getting them to link back to your website from there’s. You can do this by offering a service, guest posting or by just simply highlighting an awesome piece of content or offer you may have. The more links your website has pointing to it, the more link ‘authority’ and weighting Google gives it. Link authority is one of the major ranking factors and indicates your website is trusted and offers excellent content.

 

Word of Mouth

This may seem slightly counter-intuitive when we’re talking about growing a business online. But it’s just one more weapon in your armoury you can use. If you talk to people in person about your business, the world we live in dictates at some point they will go online and check you out. Perhaps casually point out you have a Facebook or Twitter profile. That extra ‘follow’ or ‘like’ is one extra person that’s going to see your updates and content!

 

Conclusions

As we mentioned in the opening paragraphs, getting the foundations right for your business online is crucial to further it’s potential. In this article, we’ve highlighted some of the first things you might want to consider to put your business on the map in the Digital world. Once you’re happy with your first steps, there are countless other ways to help grow your business online. By getting the simple things right first, the only way is up!