15 Ways to Build a Spectacular Online Presence

How to build a solid online presence

Here are 15 ways to you can build a strong competitive online presence for your business:

1. Provide a great user experience.

When designing your website, look at it from the standpoint of a user. 

• Ensure it’s easy for people to find your contact details if they need to get in touch. 
• Create an appealing design with a stylish color scheme, readable fonts and engaging visuals. 
• Make sure all the forms and buttons on your site work as intended. 
• Structure your site so everything is straightforward and logically links all your categories, subcategories and pages.

Learn more about the best website builders and design services.

2. Think mobile-first.

More than three quarters (76 percent) of Americans use their smartphone for online purchasing, according to the Pew Research Center. That means it is important to deliver information about your products and services in an optimized mobile format. Without this, your pages load slowly on smartphones and tablets, and will be difficult to view, alienating mobile users. 

To hang onto your loyal customers and reach new prospects, always think mobile-first, especially since mobile-friendly content also enhances your search rankings. 

3. Make your website 100 percent secure.

If your website enables shoppers to pay online and requires them to provide personal data, you need to build trust with e-commerce customers by collaborating with a reputable security service and using reliable encryption algorithms to protect sensitive data. Prominently display security labels and certificates on your homepage. 

4. Take advantage of social media and influencers.

Many social media channels might connect you with your target audience but only a handful have a broad enough reach to make them worth your time and money. Select the top three platforms that yield the highest returns and build your social media presence on those. [Related article: The Importance of Social Media for Small Businesses]

The platforms you choose depend on the specifics of your business. Certain brands are unlikely to find an audience on Instagram or YouTube. If you are unsure where you fit in, begin your social media marketing on LinkedIn, Facebook and X (formerly Twitter). This trio is suitable for almost any company. [Related article: Creating a LinkedIn Business Profile]

Post daily short messages, take polls, organize contests and ask your followers questions. The main thing is that your brand’s name regularly pops up in the newsfeed of your target audience. 

One way to gain traction on your social media channels is to work with online influencers. Influencers are social media users with a large following who can help promote your brand to their audience. Some influencer audience profiles will be close to your own target audience and you can both benefit from that crossover.

You can approach influencers you like yourself or work with a third-party agency that will match you up with them. Make sure you feel your brand is safe in the hands of each influencer you collaborate with because their actions can impact your reputation. 

Influencer Marketing Hub estimates that for every $1 spent on influencer marketing, there is a sales return of $5.20. You can track how successful individual influencer collaborations are with tools like Google Analytics and UTM tracking codes.

5. Use email to reach prospects. 

In comparison with social media, email newsletters may seem somewhat obsolete, but it is still an effective channel of communication. So, don’t write it off. Most web users have an email account they check regularly. [Read related: Best Email Marketing Services]

Some brands steer clear of email marketing for fear that their promotional letters will end up in the spam folder. But that is less likely to happen if you customize your messages to include only relevant and useful information aimed at addressing customers’ problems and satisfying their needs. 

To build a quality email list, categorize your subscribers by repeat customers, recent subscribers and former customers you lost touch with. Customize your messages to each group, selecting words that resonate with each to drive active buyer behavior. Pay attention to the timing and frequency of your emails to avoid being too intrusive and to make sure your prospects see and read your messages.

To encourage more sign ups for your email marketing list, add an opt-in form to your website, especially on high-traffic pages. You could also use exit-intent popups to capture visitors before they leave your site.

Be careful to update your email marketing campaigns by removing inactive subscribers. This will increase your credibility rating with your email marketing provider and ensure you stay on the right side of email marketing laws like GDPR and CAN-SPAM.

6. Start creating and distributing content.

You can use your small business blog to provide information about the high-quality products or services your brand offers, highlight their benefits, answer commonly asked questions, foresee challenges customers may face and provide simple solutions. Use customer-oriented content to show your prospects you are always there to offer support and address their concerns. 

Your blog provides a perfect forum for building strong and lasting relationships with your customers. Use it to create an online community of like-minded followers and educate them about your brand. Share your knowledge as an expert on your products, and avoid coming off as a merchant only interested in making money. 

Embed links to your landing pages in your blog articles, to unobtrusively lead potential customers to the buy button. Also, insert strong keywords in your text to push your website higher in search rankings.

Remember to blog frequently — a few times a week should be enough. Vary the content to keep it interesting to readers. For example, how-to guides, product use tips and case studies all get great engagement. The more content you have, the more chances readers have of finding you when they’re looking for information. Google also rewards sites that post high-quality blogs consistently.

Build a content calendar for your blogs that balances:

• Top of funnel content: This is educational and informative posts designed to appeal to a wider audience who may not yet be familiar with your company. Problem-solving tips and beginner guides work well at this stage of the buying cycle.
• Middle funnel content: This is when a customer has decided that they want a product or service and is evaluating their options. Create content that uses case studies to show the results others have gotten from your products or services, and answers more in-depth, use-case-related questions.
• Bottom funnel content: This is action-oriented content designed to promote your product or service when a potential customer is ready to buy. For blogs and articles, this could be product tutorials and FAQs that address common customer concerns.

Promote your new blogs to your customers once a week with a round-up of your latest articles by email. Every time you publish a new blog, promote it on your social media feeds to give customers and prospects an extra reason to visit your website. 

7. Optimize your site for search engines.

While promoting your blogs and articles by email and social media will draw traffic to your site, it’s mostly going to bring existing subscribers. You need to think about how you’ll cast a wider net to get people who’ve never heard of you before.

A well-planned and executed search engine optimization (SEO) strategy can help you with this. Key tactics you can use include:

• Posting high-quality content that Google recognizes as authoritative
• Using relevant keywords in your content, titles and meta descriptions
• Making sure your website is mobile-responsive
• Optimizing your website’s loading speed so visitors don’t have to wait
• Getting authoritative sites to link back to your website

Tools like Google Analytics will help you optimize your site for search engines. It is excellent for tracking metrics like page views, bounce rate, average session duration and conversion rates. This will give you real insight into which type of content connects with your audience and which pages need improvement.

It’s also useful for tracking whether your visitors are taking the actions you want like signing up for a newsletter or buying something. Review analytics data regularly, so you can monitor your performance over time and change your strategy if and when necessary.

8. Target local searchers.

If you operate in certain geographic areas, you should tailor your SEO to target local searchers. The best way to do this is to get Google to associate your business with a particular location or locations. [Related article: 14 Ways to Improve Your Local Marketing Strategy]

There are dozens of online directories and free websites you can list your business on. People tend to trust directories since they are usually verified and reduce the risk of hiring a subpar service provider. Creating a profile on popular platforms, such as Bing Places, Yelp and Yellow Pages, can boost your website rankings, especially in local search. 

Google Business Profiles allow you to manage how your local business is listed and classified by Google. If you haven’t done so already, claim your listing with Google. Add as much information about your business as possible including your business hours, a list of your products and services, and any high-quality imagery you can share.

On each directory and Google Business Profiles, make sure that your business name, address and phone number (NAP) are consistent. This uniformity improves your credibility with Google and avoids any potential confusion. Create a listing for every location you serve if you operate in multiple areas. Try to link them to location-specific pages on your website to further boost your local SEO efforts.

9. Get more customer reviews.

The more positive customer reviews on your Google Business Profile, the more likely you are to be listed high on their search pages. Reviews on other platforms like Yelp and Trustpilot also help.

That’s because Google uses reviews as a factor in determining local search rankings and customer trust. You can use this to your advantage. Many review platforms, including Google, allow you to embed links in your emails that take customers through to the review page, making it easy for them to share their feedback.

You should always respond to online reviews quickly, especially the negative ones. Although reading a bad review might sting at first, never let a crisis go to waste. Negative reviews give you the chance to demonstrate your commitment to customer satisfaction. [Related article: What Should You Do If You Get a Bad Review?]

Managing your online reputation is important. Make sure you monitor what customers are saying about your company regularly. If there are issues that reoccur over many reviews, this may tell you that there’s something you need to improve about your business. [Related article: How to Protect Your Brand Reputation]

10. Participate in online forums and communities.

Whether you run a B2B or B2C company, participating in online forums and communities offers two distinct advantages.

First, it’s another place to list your business. Make sure you maintain the consistency with your business name, address and phone number on these sites as you did with your Google Business Profile and other directory listings.

Some online forums may offer paid listing or sponsorship options. Consider them but think of the potential return on investment first. Don’t be too swayed by traffic levels because it’s who sees it that counts. For example, if you sell T-shirt printing equipment, sponsoring a forum that has 5,000 company owners selling personalized workwear is much more valuable than a forum with 20 million NFL fans.

Second, it’s a great place to show off your expertise and build your professional reputation. Find forums, discussion boards or social media groups where your target audience congregates. Answer questions and be generous with your advice without being too overly promotional.

This approach can help establish you as a thought leader in your sector. While many of the people you interact with may not need your products and services yet, you have a better chance of being the first they contact when they do.

11. Have a live chatbot and knowledge base on your site.

New AI-powered chatbots can answer detailed questions about your products and services at any time of the day and night. If you connect your chatbot to your e-commerce or CRM platform, your client may be able to log in and ask for details on outstanding orders and get answers to their other questions.

Chatbots are great for improving customer service and they can also turn initial conversations into sales and actionable leads.

A knowledge base on a website is a self-service library of information where customers can find answers to common questions or troubleshoot issues on their own. Knowledge bases save your customer service team time by reducing the number of support requests they get. They’re also great for search engine optimization campaigns because of the extra high-quality content you upload to your site.

12. Get involved in digital PR.

Look for ways you can provide an angle to a journalist to feature your story.

If you run a local restaurant, get out a press release that showcases a significant charitable donation to the city or town paper. If you run a haulage business, contact a journalist working for a logistics trade paper about an innovation you’re spearheading. Give them something their readers would want to know about.

Build relationships with online journalists whose readerships are most likely to align to your audiences. Track brand mentions with tools like Mention and highlight media coverage in your blogs and social media posts.

13. Launch paid advertising campaigns.

One way to get to the top of search engines and in the news feeds of Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn users is with paid advertising.

Depending on the platform, you can bid on keywords searchers use; audience demographics like age, sex and location as well as behavioral and buying habits. You can create campaigns seen by the types of people and businesses you specify.

In most cases, you are only charged when someone clicks on your advertisement. Industry statistics suggest the average cost per click is $4.66. Google and Facebook have the highest returns on investment with Google topping out at 200 percent.

PPC advertising can be difficult to get right so start off with a small budget and test different formats to see which generates the greatest response.

14. Run retargeting campaigns.

The average website conversion ratio is between 2 percent and 5 percent. Retargeting campaigns allow you to show ads on Google, Facebook and other platforms to people who visited your website but didn’t buy from you. You can personalize the advertisements so that, for example, the ad contains the product or service someone was viewing last time they were on your site.

Compared with the average cost per click of standard pay per click campaigns, retargeting campaigns are a lot cheaper at between $0.63 and $1.23 per click. Fifty-four percent of marketers report that retargeting campaigns provide the highest return on investment.

15. Produce engaging video content.

The average American spends about 48 minutes per day on YouTube, according to Statista. They’ll also watch more videos on their Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X newsfeeds. The ability of video to capture and keep attention is clear.

The types of videos you might consider creating to engage customers includes:

• Customer testimonials: Build trust and credibility among viewers by showing real customers talking about their positive experience with your company.
• Behind-the-scenes footage: People are curious to know what goes on in the factories and offices of the businesses they buy from.
• Before/after videos: If you’re in a visually driven industry like fitness, beauty or home improvement, show the positive impact of your products and services by highlighting how they transform customers’ lives.
• How-to guides: How-to guides are great ways of showing customers how to get the most out of your products and services. You could also offer “expert level” videos to show off some of the lesser known use cases. How-to guides position your company as helpful and customer-centered.

As with your blogging, be consistent and regular with uploading videos. This way your audience stays engaged — and keeps coming back for more. To make your videos more visible, remember to optimize title, tags and descriptions.

The importance of a strong online presence

There are four main reasons you should build a powerful platform for your business on the internet:

It creates community.

No matter the size of your business or the industry of your brand, it is vital to become and remain visible to your prospects, engage them in an ongoing dialogue, share valuable information and news about your company, ask and answer questions, collect and analyze feedback, and adjust your marketing approach as needed. 

To build good customer relationships, you need a solid online presence. An online presence is your brand’s visibility on the web. It is the culmination of your exposure on whatever channels you use to promote your company online, including your website, social media, niche directories, email, contributor platforms, forums, Q/A resources and other channels. 

It increases your visibility.

A strong online presence means that when prospects search for the products or services you offer, your website and promotional channels float to the top of the search. A strong web presence increases your chances of being noticed by customers and chosen over your competitors. 

It makes your business seem trustworthy.

In addition to providing visibility, a strong online presence promotes trust. Customers tend to prefer brands that appear open and responsive. They want to feel cared for and confident that their needs will be met.

A strong online presence demonstrates that your brand has gone to great efforts to build your company’s reputation, brick by brick. A more prominent brand is unlikely to risk its good reputation by deceiving customers or ignoring their complaints. They are more likely to value customer feedback and provide outstanding customer service. 

It promotes company growth.

Despite challenges, the energy, time and money you devote to establishing your online presence will eventually pay off with increased customer loyalty, respect from your competitors and recognition of your brand as a niche leader. 

Once your presence and brand image are established, you need to make ongoing efforts to maintain it on multiple platforms. Continually thinking about your online image and working to improve it should become a routine part of your business lifestyle. Building online awareness for your brand in a systematic way will dramatically improve your engagement, traffic and conversion indicators. 

Of course, building a strong online image across multiple popular channels takes time and hard work. You have to analyze each channel to understand its characteristics and purpose, and also study and leverage the best practices used by your competitors. Once you do the footwork, you can add your own ideas and create something unique to your brand.

 Sergey Grybniak and Jennifer Post contributed to this article.