When it comes to online and digital marketing, strengthening the online presence of a small business is essential to keeping a competitive edge and consistently producing profits. Creating and maintaining a well-established Internet presence offers a lucrative solution for selling, marketing and advertising a company’s products, services and goods. Because of that, many business owners and entrepreneurs use proven tactics to capture targeted online audiences by writing blogs and updating web content that optimizes their ROI (return on investment).
While it is important for an online business to maintain a web presence to gain access to a huge pool of potential customers, it is crucial for brick-and-mortar stores too. Numerous tracking studies show that 97 out of every 100 consumers in the U.S. search online for services and products offered by local businesses before ever making an important purchase.
Many companies miss opportunities to capture more customers because they only maintain a simple website that lists basics such as their contact information and hours of business. Alternatively, companies that routinely update their content with relevant information often reap the rewards of heavy online traffic, new customers, repeat business and increased profits.
Why Updating Content Is Important
Potential customers typically use search engine queries to look for products and services in a local environment or at online stores. The consumer usually types in specific keywords on major search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and others.
The search engine result page (SERP) from the consumer’s query displays the highest-ranking results based on the information it found through directories and algorithms. Exactly how search engines determine what sites rank highest in an SERP is crucial for a business to understand. Why? Because understanding the logic being used to determine the top 10 results of an online search provides information to make adjustments to build a stronger online presence.
Like all other companies, search engine sites such as Google and others must satisfy their consumers’ needs to stay in business. Because of that, these companies go to great lengths to ensure each customer is satisfied every time they type keywords into a search engine query. Years ago when Google, Yahoo and others were lax in how they detected, identified and categorized information, many businesses used “black hat” tactics to fool the search engine to rank their site higher. Those days are gone and now any site that uses “black hat” tricks is penalized when ranked. But so are sites with stale and outdated content.
Alternatively, successful companies that rank high in online searches utilize the best “white hat” strategies to reach the top of Internet search results. These businesses understand that the filters and algorithms used by search engines to collect and categorize information favor websites and blog sites that contain new and updated content. Because of that, many highly profitable companies implement proven SEO (search engine optimization) strategies to ensure the best results.
Keeping the Site Active
Regularly updating the website or blog with fresh content pertinent to the site keeps it active, or easily found, by major search engines. How is the content found? Search engine use “bots,” “spiders” or “crawlers” to scour the Internet trolling for new information. Along with other various tactics, these bots seek out relevant, fresh and engaging content to satisfy the online search query consumer.
Successful businesses understand the ranking process and routinely update their site to meet the needs of their targeted audience seeking the exact products, services, goods or information their company’s provides. In addition to adding fresh content to their site, they also add relevant content to sites that support their main website or blog. This often involves creating and maintaining fresh content on social media sites that link directly to the main site.
Adding relevant content to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, YouTube and other social media platforms utilizes Social SEO. The content must be high quality and relevant to the main site, and have a “back link” directed toward the main site. When search engines detect updated material and back links on social media sites, it uses the relevant information to support the main site, pushing the company site higher to the top of search engine ranking results.
A Gold Mine for Business
Well-written original relevant information is valuable. The newly updated fresh content can be a gold mine for any company doing business on the Internet or not. It keeps the customer engaged by providing the pertinent information they seek.
Routine updates need not involve complex search engine optimization strategies. Well-written original content designed to engage the reader is often enough to provide a high return on investment. If your company is not actively updating its existing online content or building social platforms to support your existing site, more than likely your competitors are.