In the perpetually growing internet world are countless businesses. To say that the web is a competitive marketplace would be to severely belittle the situation. Even the most unique businesses have competition, here. Sufficed to say, you must find a way to stand out on the web. Whether you are selling cars or maid service, advertising on the internet boils down to how high on the list your company is when entered into a search engine. The average person tends to pick the top listing, because most believe the first picks are the businesses with the most traffic and thus, assume this denotes the best quality business. So, here are three ways you can make sure your company is on the top of that list.
Eliminate Broken Links
Have you ever been in a hurry to find vital information about a particular topic only to be met with a 404 error (can’t find page) message? It’s frustrating, to say the least. Many nights at a computer trying to find information for research papers, a local plumber, car shopping, and many other endeavors have been stalled out by this irritating inconvenience.
Make sure that, not only the main link to your homepage works, but that all the outbound links leading off your page work, as well. As a side note, it is also a good idea to shorten your page load speed in any way you can. Giving attention to these two aspects boosts your page’s usability. The easier a page is to use, the more hits it receives and the higher on the search engine list it appears.
K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Silly)
Visiting some pages can mean a trip to the library for a dictionary or at least a lot of “define – _____” in the Google search bar. When writing the text for your business page, here are a couple things to remember. The last thing a lot of us want to run into when we are shopping online is a sea of text. Keep it simple. Say what you mean and get to the point of the matter. Unless your customers thrive on the adventures of property management, cleaning cars, or whatever your business may be about, they are not there to read a book.
Second, not all of us went to college, and even if we did, the majority of people do not relish going on to a site and having to use all their brainpower to figure out your anomalistic approach to helping them find a parsimonious alternative to what you need to purchase and if you are being facetious (see, not simple) about it or not. You don’t have to speak to people as if they are 4, but make your text short and easy to understand. It saves your customer time and they are more likely to return if they don’t have to search through tons of PhD material to find what they are looking for.
Multimedia
There are not many things more boring than going to a web page of a business, or any type for that matter, and seeing nothing but text and maybe a few pictures. Most people are visual and, these days, either don’t like to read or need to be able to multitask for the sake of time. Be creative with your page. Include an array of multimedia. Post appropriate pictures that accentuate your company, videos that summarize what your business is about, for the customer in a hurry, and maybe videos that read the text to the customer.
This will help those of us that have to be able to wash clothes, watch the kids, and search for a plumber online at the same time. If appropriate to your business, you can even include interactive media, as well. For example, if you run a home interior business, develop and apply an app that your customers can use to see what their house might look like with certain colors of paint on their walls.
In the end, simpler is going to mean easier and anything easier will be used more often sending your online business to the top of the search engine lists.
Originally posted on September 1, 2017 @ 9:11 am