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Five Must-Do tasks to help grow your online business.

How to start your digital marketing journey to help increase traffic and sales.

Launching a new website is a great journey for any new or existing business owner. It’s a memorable and exciting time, especially seeing all your products and services looking fantastic for awaiting customers. However, after a few months of your website being established online, you may notice no sales or enquiries are being produced from your digital presence. 

It’s a dilemma that baffles many business owners because it is challenging to know where to start and what to do with all the advice about digital marketing.

To give you a better understanding of where to start and how to build traffic to your domain, here are five habits you need to implement today!

1. Keyword Research

Before you start any type of content marketing strategy, it’s a wise idea to understand two imperative questions about your online business;

1. What are potential customers typing in search engines to find my products and services?

2. Who are my most significant competitors, and what keywords do they rank high in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs)? 

Think of your keyword strategy as the ingredients for baking a cake. Producing the desired results needs research, time, energy and strategy. To get started, let's look at a few free online tools you can take advantage of, including:

Ubersuggest - https://app.neilpatel.com/

Put your domain name into the Ubersuggest search bar and view all the results. For instance, check what keywords your domain is already ranking for. Alternatively, type in your competitor's domain name and revise their keywords. What are they ranking for? Start creating a keyword list for your website.  

Google Trends - https://trends.google.com/trends

Google Trends is an innovative online tool that lets you get an insight into what people are searching for now! Type in a search term or topic that's relevant to your business and view the results. Compare topics, review interests over time and look at related topics. You should be able to map out more keywords and subjects for your keyword research list.

Google Search - https://www.google.co.uk/

The Google search bar comes with plenty of benefits for keyword strategy ideas. Type a topic, service or product into Google Search, scroll to the bottom of the page, and look for the heading Related Searches. Google will show you a selection of alternative user searchers for keyword research. Jot these phrases, subjects, services and alternative products on your list. Google is potentially showing you more accessible search terms and keywords to rank high for.  

Google Keyword Planner - https://ads.google.com/

The Google keyword planner allows you to search and plan keywords for your targeted industry sector. You can discover new keywords or look at search volume forecasts for an expected return on investment (ROI). The best feature of the Google keyword planner is that it shows you how much each keyword is worth through pay-per-click campaigns (PPC). If you’re targeting organic traffic for your website, it might be a good idea to start with keywords that have a low value. Targeting inexpensive keywords will increase the odds of ranking higher with your new content creation. 

By now, you should have all the correct ingredients (keywords, subjects, topics and ideas) to help you rank your website through search.   

2. Content Strategy

Looking at the keyword list, you have researched and created, you should have a better understanding of what you want to rank for through user search. Your website can rank high for organic search if developed correctly. Here are a few examples;

1. Proactively write considered articles for your blog or news feed. These articles need to be helpful, educational, engaging, inspirational, original, and better than the existing content online. 

2. Write FAQ pages to cover important topics where questions are more likely asked in search results than open-ended stements. e.g

   • What is the size of my ring? How do I clean 18ct Gold?

   • Where is the best place to get insurance for my high-value items?

   • When is the best time to buy an engagement ring?

   • How do I measure the size of my ring for my finger?

3. Use the keyword strategy within your content creation or write articles around researched subjects, products and services. 

4. Try and make the top-level pages of your business website helpful and easy for customers to understand.  

5. Add infographics, eye-catching imagery, graphics, and video for users to enjoy and learn from. 

6. Write cluster articles around each search term you wish to rank high in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). For example, creating a wealth of original articles under one category or subject can show search engines that users will find your website favorable.

When planning content, always try and have a strategy. There needs to be a reason for each article, video, or infographic. Search engines tend to rank web pages high on SERPs if they are helpful for users trying to search for the correct information. 

3. On-Page SEO 

On-page SEO refers to the optimisation of the source code for each webpage. As over 1 billion live websites are on the net, it’s become essential to understand the importance of on-page SEO. Moreover, technical SEO doesn't have to be difficult to understand. You just need to follow a few rules;

1. Map out any articles with your keyword strategy. Avoid keyword stuffing (the keyword or phrase is littered throughout the text). Always add the keyword(s) in the title, heading, and first paragraph.   

2. If you can edit your content's metadata (title and description), try and optimise the text to drill down on why the article is helpful for searchers. In addition, add your targeted keyword to the metadata description. 

3. When creating cluster articles or having already produced relative copy about the same subject, hyperlink an internal link to that content. Internal link building is essential because it shows search engines you have important information on your website about a particular subject. 

4. If the blog post or article is product or service related, link back (hyperlink some text that mentions the product or service) to that top-level page. 

5. If you have researched your content and need to use external links to tell users about a fact or offer up more information, always link to the source and offer this in the form of an external link. Search engines like websites with plenty of external links pointing to relevant information.      

Most websites have content management systems (CMS) that allow for a source code and visual editor view. The source code will show basic HTML code read by search engines. If you don’t understand HTML code, stick to the visual editor and use the editor tools to structure your article. 

Technical SEO should be revised and optimised over six months. In addition, this allows your Digital Marketer time for research, content production, analysis, revision, and edits. Sometimes, search engines will take note of the content and internal link-building strategy for a website and rank a product or service page high through search, not the actual blog post or article you have created. 

4. Off-Page SEO 

Mastering the art of off-site SEO can be a little tricky, especially when trying to gain page rank using a range of techniques. However, if you persevere, put in the time, and give yourself small targets, you might be surprised with the result you can achieve.  

What you need to be doing;

1. Create fantastic content where other website owners link to your content. These are called natural links. 

2. Ask customers and other business owners to link to your website content. This activity is called manually built links and should be used with caution. Abuse of this tactic could result in Google penalising your domain.

3. You can leave comments, add your business to relevant directories, link on chat forums, and produce press release information for other websites. Self-created links should also be implemented with caution.  

Always follow Google's guidelines for gaining backlinks to your domain. Never pay for links, exchange links or use any service where links are not gained naturally.  

Having relevant links to your website can signal search engines to increase your website's position through organic search. 

A favourable strategy used by many companies to gain leverage with off-page SEO is to focus on brand awareness. Furthermore, to gain authority in your business sector, you need to offer value, and trust, gain positive reviews and feedback or have happy customers sharing your products and services. 

To build your brand and gain trust with your products or services, try the following;

• Social media marketing

• Guest blogging

• Linked and unlinked brand mentions

• Influencer marketing.

5. Revise The User Experience (UX) Design

Sometimes, business owners have plenty of traffic pushing through to their domain. However, the conversion for sales or services is unexpectedly low. For example, there could be several reasons for customers disappearing and not returning to your online brand.

1. The website is on a slow server, or the web pages have not been optimised for speed. Moreover, slow websites can leave customers disappointed, and they could leave quickly. 

2. A website's navigation can sometimes be challenging. Revise the user flow charts in the Google Analytics app. Check where customers are entering and exiting the website. Run through the process and get externals to revise the website. 

3. As all design is subjective, people may be put off by the colour or the website's layout. For instance, does your website need a redesign?  

4. The website is not optimised for mobile phones. Trying to navigate a desktop website on a mobile phone can cause users to leave any domain out of frustration. 

5. The brand may not be reputable or have substantial authority in the industry. 

6. Product or service price points may be too high or too cheap.

7. The product page may be challenging to use, with drop-down options not being clear. 

8. There could be coding errors on the website, causing the website to break. 

9. Is the payment Application Programming Interface (API) set up correctly, and can customers make a purchase? 

10. The top-level navigation may be too heavy (loaded with products or services), or unnecessary pages are in the wrong place. Place terms, policy, sitemaps, legal and cookies in the footer. 

11. Offer discount codes or a reason for customers to be loyal. 

Creating an online business comes with many challenges. Moreover, actions need to be implemented daily to make your website successful. For example, if you devise a habit for content marketing and implement a robust digital marketing strategy, time will start pushing your efforts to the top of search results. 

About Lionsorbet

Lionsorbet is a digital design agency, founded by Steve Irvine in 2007. His passion and expertise in design, technology, and the luxury goods market over the last 20 years have steered the business into the position of a leading Shopify website design agency.

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