Visitor Approval Required for Branding Success

You can have a website with all the bells and whistles, the best looking visuals and user-friendly design, but without one key ingredient, it is lacking impact. That one secret ingredient is visitors. Without them, your website is pretty much a visual paperweight - it looks nice, but there is no big function. Your website needs visitors, and frequently, in order to be successful. While paid search methods are a great idea, don’t forget about what comes for free. There are several ways in which you can market your brand online in order to make it highly appealing to search engines. The more appealing you can make your website to search engines, the better chances you have of higher rankings and increased traffic.

Test Those Title and Description Tags

First things first, don’t forget to test and try out different options. Google Webmaster Tools is a great tool that you will want to take advantage of. You will be able to see which keyword searches your website is appearing in. You can also see the amount of clicks you’re getting because of these placements. This will allow you to know which keywords are important for your website to be placed in title and description tags. This is often where many businesses fail to see the bigger picture. Your title and description tags are basically your call to action. You don’t want to put any old mumbo jumbo in your description. This is where you can really market your business. Play around with different phrases and keywords to see how your messages perform with search audiences.  Finding just the right message to entice customers will help you improve your click through rate and increase your visibility.

Keep Your Visitors Engaged

You don’t want to have a visitor come to your site, read your content quickly and then leave. Search engines use bounce rate metrics as a ranking signal, so you need to keep a close eye on what visitors are doing on your site. When creating content, think about adding links to related content placed prominently at the end of the article or you can place in-content links where visitors can further read on a subject that has interest. Perhaps you have a blog and want feedback. Comments are a great way to add additional engagement. And, as always, make sure your site is loading quickly. If people have to wait for your pages to load, they’ll click off and go elsewhere, which will increase your bounce rate. 

Link to Trusted Sites

When search engines take a look at your site and see that you are linking to external content and that those links see high volume from visitors, they recognize your site as a trusted source. Thus, up your rankings go. Linking to other high-quality sites gives your own website authority and trustworthiness. Plus, it keeps your visitors happy as they can have more information to their particular search just a click away. A word of caution: link wisely and carefully. You want to make sure the sites you are linking to are authoritative and trustworthy as well. A few key links here and there is all you really need. 

These are three great ways to boost your brand online and help drive and keep traffic on your site. And don’t forget about social media. This is a great way to market your brand and link back to your site. The more activities you can do such as blogs, interviews, community outreach, etc. will help increase visibility and boost your SEO efforts. A word of advice. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Take in the bigger picture and build your business the right way. By following the points above and any other SEO techniques you have under your hat, you will steadily grow your brand’s success online and build a great reputation for your business.