Creating and maintaining good online presence is basically a full time job. There is no easy way to do this and you can’t just stop once you manage to generate high traffic on your website or social media profile. In order to stay visible and relevant, you need a constant flow of new content, so that users have something new to enjoy.
YouTube channels, social media pages, entertainment websites as well as online stores, always try to bring something new and fresh, and to remain active. As a result, we usually get new posts, articles or videos on a weekly basis, considering that quality content cannot be created within a day.
So, if you are interested in creating and optimizing your online presence in the year 2017, then you might find the following suggestions quite helpful.
Create a website
The very first and probably the most essential element of the online presence is a website. So, if you don’t have one, you should start with that. Depending on the purpose of your website (personal, online store, blog, magazine, business website etc.) you should pick a corresponding domain name. You should also either hire a web designer or select quality web building tools and a guide that can help you create your very first website.
If you want a quality website that needs to attract a lot of users who are going to use the platform actively, either for viewing content or for contributing, you should ensure that it is a high quality website.
A poorly designed website that lack optimization for other devices will reflect negatively on your online presence, so it’s better to go without a website than with one that is poorly designed. So, either find a quality guide before you start creating a website, or hire a professional.
Optimize your content
The website is just a first step, you should also give your users something interesting and insightful, if you are to motivate them to frequently visit your site. For that reason you should also have social media sharing buttons on your site, so that users can conveniently share the content they like, and you should do the same on your social network pages.
However, if you want your content to be truly visible, it needs to be optimized and visible to the search engines. Basically, your title, your keywords, and topics need to correspond with your website’s niche and they should target the searcher’s intent. In other words, you should write or create video guides or tutorials, as well as product reviews.
Quality web hosting and CDN
Content quality is not the only thing that has an important impact on positive user experience and on your visibility. In order for your website to be categorized as valuable and relevant, you need to ensure it loads fast and that it can support a large number of active users at once. You can do this by picking a competent web hosting agency that has good server uptime.
Additionally, your web hosting provider should offer you content distribution network or CDN. This will allow your website to be uploaded to different servers across the globe, which again will increase its visibility, since search engines take server proximity into account when someone types a particular search query. Moreover, server proximity also impacts website’s loading time, so users around the world will have the same experience as those who are in the same town as you.
Local SEO
The best form of exposure is definitely word of mouth marketing, or getting personally recommended to be precise. In other words, you need to work towards this goal, or to impress the locals so that they could recommend you, and as the word spreads, your popularity will grow.
Since this is the case, you need to rely on your friends and family, as well as local SEO, and secure your position on a local level. Consult with an SEO expert or SEO agency about the best approach to local SEO, and make sure your product or content is adjusted in that manner.
Embrace the sharing economy
Having a website and optimized content is a great way to start, but that certainly is not enough. New websites are popping up each day and since everyone is trying to solidify their online presence, the endeavour becomes much more difficult due to all the competition.
Luckily, there are other ways to get noticed and acquire users. A sharing-economy relies on different apps and online platforms to connect people together, or to connect consumers with providers and job-seekers with employers etc.
It would be wise to find an online platform or an app which can help you out in this department and register there. This is a great way to get noticed by your core audience, and to get their feedback, which can help you out in the future.
Social media marketing
Lastly, you need to be active on social networks, and share your website content there as well. If you are an online store, it would be wise to allow users to order products via social media, or to provide customer support over chat.
Social networks allow you to boost your posts, and this won’t even burden your budget. You can simply pay to test how your content will perform, and monitor the results. If everything goes well, you won’t need these services in the future, and if it doesn’t that means you need to alter your approach.
It is crucial though, to use catchy taglines, and meta descriptions along with corresponding and popular hashtags, if you want to boost your visibility.
As you can see this is not too complicated, but it is an ongoing process and you must constantly adjust your strategies in order to figure out what resonates best with your users. As long as you do as instructed, you should be able to create a strong and widespread online presence.
