These days, having a website is considered step one when you’re running a business. In fact, NOT having a website may end up hurting your business. If customers can’t find you online, they might wonder if you’re a legitimate business. As a company, not having a website – even if you’re not selling anything online – could even be considered strange, so you can see how the cultural shift to online has really solidified.
Because everyone is online now, improving your brand’s online presence is important to help you cut through all of this noise. This is especially true if you’re new on the scene, haven’t had the time to optimize your content for SEO, or haven’t managed to curate a wide array of reviews from independent users that may help a customer decide to give your enterprise a go.
In this post, we’ll discuss how to improve the online presence of your brand.
Use Verification Services
You may be able to get a headstart online by allowing users to rate their experience with you. Incentivizing online reviews by offering them discounts on their next order if they post a review detailing their honest experience with your brand (believe it or not, four-star well-reasoned reviews are better than five-star glowing reviews at this stage), can help others see that your brand not only delivered but potentially delivered well.
On top of this, you may use firms like TrustPilot to give you a verification score, or you may use website hosting services that showcase everything is approved, like the website’s SSL certificate verifying encrypted traffic. With good web design and a clear, consistent layout, you’ll present the most trustworthy picture, and it’s not hard to see why some may be more willing to give you the benefit of the doubt should you offer that.
Avoid Falling Into Spam Traps
It’s also good to avoid falling into spam traps if you can. Often, these are spam emails that require correspondence which can lower your spam score if you’re not careful, meaning that search engines and other verified services look at your online brand with suspicion and may even penalize your organic traffic, or send your emails straight to the spam folder of your user’s email inbox.
Taking the time to identify spam traps with a reliable tool from IP quality score can help you avoid that, especially when you’re just starting out and trying to build some credibility to begin with.
Work On Your SEO With A Trusted Marketing Agency
Many new brands make the mistake of trying to keep up with their own SEO by writing a huge blog, posting too many keywords in each article, and swapping links with other services to raise their backlink authority.
You’re better off working with a verified SEO service that can help your score by copywriting correctly, with the right brief, or using blogger outreach or niche edits to build your backlink score.
Working on your SEO score will enable you to raise your presence in a local area via organic search rankings, and may even inspire you to curate landing pages for each service in each district.
In the long run, it’s sure to make something of a profound difference to your approach.
Show Your Face Or A Trusted Representative
It can be nice to put a face to the name, which is why many small businesses or online firms use the owner or founder as the smiling face present in marketing material. It’s just nice to know there are real, living people behind the businesses we use because while that’s the case for every firm, many companies can feel faceless and somewhat impersonal.
Are you more likely to use the services of a CPA if you know who works there and who might be operating your accounts? As you can see, sometimes a new service needs this kind of personable credibility, but if you’re not confident in doing that, then using a staff member as an ambassador, or even hiring an actor to present your products or video tutorials can be a nice alternative compromise should it be required.
With this advice, you’re sure to improve the online validity and integrity of your brand, inspiring those to come across your platform and see the value in it immediately. With a little care and confidence, over time you will showcase your worth and value, making sure your previous clients, customers, and online curation confirms your trustworthiness.