Your web presence is necessary to your survival online, but what is web presence?
Your web presence is your businesses complete presence online, this includes local listings, reviews, organic search results, paid inclusions, social media, blogs, and much more. A true web presence is graded by your ability to be found in as many places as possible online. The graph below shows some of the places a full web presence will allow your business to be found. Making sure people are finding your business regardless of how their looking provide a winning online result for you.
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Anatomy of a search engine results page.
Search engine results pages (SERPs) have 4 locations that you want to be located. 1. Paid or sponsored results (top of page or down right side) 2. Map listings (2nd area on SERPs) 3. Video section (not available on all searches) 4.Organically (lower part of page). It is always best to have your business located in as many places on any give SERP as you can because this will lessen the amount of places for your competitors to be placed on that page.
The more places you are found, the more likely you are to engage the searcher, and the more likely you are to gain that customers business.
This process can be very time consuming, and frustrating. Where do you start?
Start with calling Chris at 720.427.3707. He will be more than happy to work with you through this process, do it for you, or contract out the work to professionals in each field.
[gradient_divider]The Process
If you are determined to do this on your own, read this entire page before you start the process. If this looks like to much work, or you don’t completely understand the outline material, please call a professional like Chris.
- Search for all places that your business is listed, conduct the search on Google, Yahoo, MSN / Bing, Superpages, Dexknows, City Search, Yelp, Manta, BBB, etc. Make note of all listings that you need to update information on. In this step we are looking for your natural website listing, not an aggregation site.
- Now search the main engines for your business name and add “reviews” to the end of the search string. Keep track of all negative reviews about your business. This is going to take some time.
- Look for your business in the “maps” “places” or “local” areas, note inaccurate or unclaimed listings
- Conduct searches for your products and services. Looking for your business in results. Note all places that you are not showing up that you would like to, look as deep as 10 pages. Repeat for all search engines.
- Complete a full website conversion based analysis to make sure that your website will convert at the highest rate possible for all work you are about to do.
The work begins
We have done most of the research, and performed the initial steps, lets create a plan of action to decide where we need to spend our time first. If you have carefully performed all the above steps, you are about 5 hours into the process. This is where the time consuming part starts.
- Lets start with the listings. All data collected in the 1st step above needs to be addressed. Call or use the website of the listing site to make changes to each listing. Complete all profiles fully.
- Formulate a plan to combat all, if any negative business reviews. Write a rebuttal, contact the customer to work out some way to have them retract the statement, etc.
- Claim all your free listings on major engines, this data is available on this site. Completely fill out all data points that are relevant to your business.
- Create content for your Facebook page.
- Create content for your Twitter feed.
- Create content for publication to your blog.
- Create content for your YouTube channel.
- Make changes to your website to make sure that the site will convert traffic you are about to drive into it.
- Build a business Facebook page.
- Build a business Twitter page.
- Build a business blog.
- Build a business YouTube channel.
- Open a Google analytics account and install the code to your website.
- Start to SEO your website based on the keywords you wanted to be found under. This will include all tags, alts, page names, meta descriptions, removal of tables, etc. (if you don’t understand code, you might get help with this – YOU CAN MESS UP YOUR WEBSITE).
- Start creating relevant back links to your site.
- Open an Adwords account, build out campaign completely. (I wouldn’t do this on your own, it will get expensive fast. A Google Adwords specialist, like Chris, will save you a lot of money in trial and error)
- Open an Overture account, build out campaign completely. (I wouldn’t do this on your own, it will get expensive fast. A Yahoo Ambassador, like Chris, will save you a lot of money in trial and error).
Maintance
Now we have reached the 50-100 hours invested check point.
- Analytics account needs to be checked daily to perform changes to the next step.
- Adwords & Overture accounts need to be checked daily.
- Twitter should be updated every 2 or 3 days.
- Facebook should be updated weekly.
- Blog content should be added weekly.
If you would like to have a professional consult with you about your businesses web presence please call Chris at 720.427.3707. He will be happy to help you through this process.