Expanding Your Horizons: How a Website Increases Visibility and Reach
The Digital Edge Series | Part 1
Welcome to Part One of The Digital Edge Series!It is incredibly important to be found online today if you are a small business owner looking to expand your visibility and reach.
Why? Because you are going to have more potential customers discovering your products and services. All this discovery by those new potential customers is going to lead to talking as people get to know you and your business. This is going to ultimately lead you to getting more sales 💰!
On the other hand, without a strong online presence, your small business is going to risk being overshadowed by those competitors who are more visible and accessible via online modes.
So, let’s find out how to remedy that. In this article, we’ll be going over exactly what visibility and reach means with regard to your website and four basic strategies that will help get you started on a path towards expanding your visibility and reach, aka growing your business.
Visibility and Reach in the Context of Your Small Business Website
The two terms you’re going to want to keep in mind when considering an online presence are visibility and reach.
VISIBILITY refers to how easy it is for a new potential customer (meaning someone searching for a way to fix their problem, whatever it may be) to find you online. Search engine rankings, social media presence if you use it, and your overall online footprint are three things that will affect your visibility.
So, if you offer equine dentistry, for example, is someone who has a horse 🐎 in need of dental care going to be able to quickly and easily find you in an online search? If not, then your visibility needs work and that’s where a website comes in.
Before we move on though, let’s go over our other term, reach.
REACH is what you have when your target audience (the audience you are most trying to serve) is hanging out at your website, reading your content, and sharing it with others (essentially word-of-mouth referral, just online).
Improving your reach involves increasing the number of your target audience visitors and there are many strategies for doing this, but long-form content marketing (aka blogging on your website 💻) is one of the best ways because anyone can do it, it doesn’t cost much to start, and it gathers traction in the online world over time.
Now that we have a good understanding of those terms, let’s get into the four basic strategies for improving your visibility and reach, which are also considered to be basic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategies.
Four Basic Strategies to Improve Your Visibility and Reach
Alright, so now you’re probably really wondering what the first strategy is to enhance your visibility and reach but hold your horses for just one moment 🐴.
You’re probably already thinking this, and the answer is yes, you must have a website if you want to truly implement these strategies. Although some could be applied to other platforms as well, such as social media, they are best paired with a website too. So, here are the strategies and terms to be aware of that will allow your ideal customer to easily find you and stick around for the long run, even if you aren’t the one designing your website.
Strategy Number One
Our first basic SEO strategy is KEYWORD RESEARCH 🔍, aka words that your target audience is searching for, hence the words that you need to learn and use in your content.
Keyword research is the process of identifying the words and phrases people use when they search for information online. These keywords are crucial for getting your website content to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) which is what you need to have happen if you want your customers to be able to quickly and easily find your website.
Here’s an example. If you are a horse trainer and you give riding lessons in dressage, then you might expect that your ideal customers are going to be searching for a term like this “dressage riding lessons” and you would take that term and sprinkle it naturally throughout your website content.
While you may be thinking now that you might as well just make the entirety of your website content into keywords, take note that there is such a thing as too many keywords, known as keyword stuffing. So… don’t use them excessively, you want your content to be enjoyable to read and to make sense.
Let’s dive a little deeper into this topic.
There are three ways that doing your keyword research is going to massively help you and the first is through targeted traffic.
By really singling out those specific keywords that your audience is most searching for, you’re going to be giving those ideal clients a direct path to you and your website, such as a horse rescue focusing on the long-tail keyword “adoptable rescue horses”. Now someone searching for that specific phrase is much more likely to come across that website.
The second way keyword research will help you is all about your content strategy.
Having a list of the best keywords for your business or niche is going to help you generate an enormous amount of content ideas that will be perfect for not only bringing in new ideal clientele, but also in keeping them around. If you know exactly what you need to write about next on your blog, you’ll never struggle with writer’s block again and in fact, if you’re like me, you’ll be even more motivated to get the next article out 🖊.
And the third way that keyword research can help you is by providing you with a competitive advantage.
This will happen after doing your keyword research. You’ll be able to go to your competitor’s website and identify which keywords they are targeting the most which is going to allow you to fill in the gaps and differentiate your keyword use and therefore your content.
As you can see, keyword research is incredibly valuable to your visibility and reach and is something that should not be forgotten. It’s also a tactic that you will continually use when creating new content and should always be in the back of your mind 💭.
Strategy Number Two
Next up is QUALITY CONTENT, and this strategy is all about creating super engaging and informative content that your target audience enjoys and looks forward to.
This approach is my personal favorite as someone who has always enjoyed writing and organizing information. It also goes hand in hand with our first strategy, keyword research, because guess where else you can sprinkle your favorite little keywords??
That’s right, a blog, so get your notepad ready 🗒!!
If you’re a wordy person, then a blog is going to be your new favorite platform because everything you wish you could tell your potential customers about can be easily accessed while also looking great and not clogging up your website. The bulk of your knowledge is so much better off in organized articles rather than just strewn about haphazardly and overwhelmingly on your website pages.
And, if you aren’t into writing, don’t despair! My blog management services can help you implement this strategy with no problem. I have three different tiers to choose from depending on how many blog articles you intend to post each month. I’ll make it super easy and dare I say, even fun for you by helping you brainstorm, write, edit, and post what you know best so that you can share your knowledge 📖 with those who need it.
Strategy Number Three
Moving on to our next two basic SEO strategies, On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO.
While they might sound boring, perhaps even daunting, they are incredibly important to the outcome of your overall SEO performance.
Diving right in, the most important aspect of ON-PAGE SEO is to make sure that your website is mobile-friendly, meaning it can be accessed by any device 📱. This means that when someone decides to search on a whim with their mobile phone and they come across a link to your website, they will actually be able to read it and it will be organized and functional just as if they were looking at it on a computer at home.
This applies to someone on a tablet or other device as well and this is an aspect of website design that is being continually pressed these days (for good reason) and one you can’t go without. Luckily, Squarespace handles mobile optimization perfectly and they make it amazingly easy to ensure that your website looks just as beautiful ✨on a phone as it does on a computer.
The other portion of On-Page SEO involves adjusting the little details behind your website, meaning the SEO titles, SEO descriptions, and image alt text, all of which can help your website move up in the search engine rankings.
Strategy Number Four
The final basic SEO strategy we’ll go over here in this article is OFF-PAGE SEO.
This strategy involves promoting your website elsewhere online to build authority by borrowing the audience of someone else 🗣. The way to do this is by building backlinks and this can be done through guest blogging, social media marketing, and influencer collaborations.
Let’s talk more about guest blogging.
Here’s an example, you are building your business as an equine farrier, so you write an informative article about the importance of regular hoof care, and you send that article to a popular local horse trainer asking them to allow you as a guest blogger on their website. In your guest blog, you incorporate links that direct the horse trainer’s large and interested audience back to your website giving you traffic (aka business, aka sales) and also helping them inform and engage their audience.
It’s a win-win 💯 situation when done correctly, and by this, I mean that it’s important to be a guest blogger for someone who has an audience that will be truly interested in your products and services. A jewelry website’s audience probably isn’t interested in farrier services for example.
Another important aspect of guest blogging is to seek out those who have large enough audiences to put that backlink to work for you. There’s no harm in guest blogging for those with small audiences, but just keep in mind that the bigger and more engaged their audience is, the better the results will be for you.
Start Implementing These Basic Strategies Today
Thanks so much for taking the time to read through this article about how important it is as a small business owner focused on growth to improve your visibility and reach and to start implementing those basic SEO strategies, because the sooner you start, the sooner they will start to pay off 💵.
Whether you have been in business for a long time or you are just starting out on a new business journey, a website is only going to help you achieve your goals and build long-term success.
Oh, and maybe you’re still undecided about whether you should get a website up and running. If so, then you really should read my previous article, Why Every Small Business Needs a Website. It also touches on the most common excuses people give for not having a website, and I promise they just don’t fly these days.
Now if you’re chomping at the bit 🏇 to get your website up and running or if your website is long overdue for a spruce up (you know, that old site you haven’t touched in years) send me an email! I’d love to help you!
Last, but not least, if you’re currently DIYing your site (props to you!) then you can easily start implementing what we’ve talked about here. Just get started with these three actions: brainstorming relevant keywords for your industry, ensuring that your site is mobile-friendly, and writing a draft for that first or next blog article.
Remember, consistency is key 🗝, and SEO is not a one-and-done kind of thing, it takes time to accumulate traction. It is the slow-and-steady route, but it will save you time in the end.
With dedication and some basic strategies like the ones we’ve talked about in this article, your small business can achieve greater visibility and reach online, leading you down a path towards increased business growth, authority, and credibility.
Good luck, and if you want to learn more, you can sign up for my newsletter 💌 to be notified of fresh new content full of tips and insights. Let’s keep in touch!