All roads lead to Rome. But how many roads lead to your sites?
No matter how far you are from Rome, you’ll find a road to get there, because you know you want to go there. But your brand is probably not as evocative as Rome is, so people don’t necessarily know who you are and if they want to find you.
Obviously you want to take advantage of all the roads available online; you just have to make sure they lead to your website and that they show clear signage. Create a map for that, make it easy to follow, and online users will find the X that marks your spot.
Put yourself in the mindset of your possible customer. They are browsing the net because they are looking for something. They are almost in a treasure-hunting mode.
Now, open the paths that will lead them to your brand:
Know your audience
Be sure to have a marketing plan in place detailing your target audience and goals.
Is your target audience Internet savvy? Is your audience comfortable with search engines? What are their preferred social media outlets? Do they tend to have a Facebook profile? A LinkedIn profile? Do they Tweet? Are they video buffs? Are they trendsetters or just looking for information?
Find where your possible customers hang out, and be sure you’re there too, and engage in conversation with them. Give them information about what they are looking for.
Be sure to research Psychographic trends and online Demographics.
Optimize your site for search engines
Create a detailed, SEO keyword-database based on extensive research regarding your industry, competition, location, products, and services.
Be sure to write your content in the terms your customers are actually using online to find what they need.
Have the appropriate keyword coding on your Website. Use different titles and descriptions on each page written in a way that stresses benefits and not features.
Build Links
Build links by getting external pages to link to a page on your website. You can work on local link building and/or industry based link building. It’s one of the many SEO tactics.
Search engines such as Google read quality links as ‘votes’ from external sources as indicators of website popularity. Moreover quality links can drive a lot of traffic to your site just by being referred by already popular websites.
Leverage review sites
Never underestimate Yelp and other online review sites and local business search services.
They are important not only because of the word of mouth recommendation that is vital for your brand, but also because they are a fantastic tool for you to be aware of negative reviews. Whether you agree with the critique or not, negative reviews are a great opportunity for engagement.
Send out press releases
A Web press release is a valuable tool to help your brand obtain reach and publicity on the web across search engines, blogs, and websites. There are many Web press release services that will help you spread the word about your brand.
Keep your content alive.
Update often and got to Google hot searches or other search engines to find topics to write about and increase the chances of appearing in searches. Of course what you write needs to be relevant to your brand. But you’d be surprised how many topics may be relevant to your audience if cleverly written.
Always a work in progress
According to Search Engine Watch, billions of searches are conducted each day on popular search engines and social networking websites by people all around the world. Your brand has to be at the right place at the right time. New tools come up all the time to help you get customers on your doorstep. Be sure to always keep your roadmap up to date.