Online visibility refers to how easy or difficult it is for people to find you, your product, or your company online. The more visible you are, the more traffic you get, which can lead to more sales and other opportunities. The idea is to get noticed, from appearing at the top of peoples’ search engine results to showing up in their Instagram feeds. The more people who discover you, the more potential customers, clients, gigs, partnerships, and more you can access.
The rules for visibility are changing, though: using the right keywords used to be enough to drive traffic for your site. Now, it takes a much more nuanced and comprehensive plan of attack in order to succeed. From a detailed content strategy to advanced data analytics, winning brands, creators, and others need to tackle all angles. Here’s how you can boost your visibility, with five surefire tactics to get you seen.
1. Get Press
You know the sayings: “all press is good press” and “there’s no such thing as bad publicity.” There’s a tiny bit of truth to this, in so far as getting written about means more fame and more web traffic going your way. But in an era where everything you do is traceable online, bad press can quickly get you canceled, or worse. That’s why it’s important to have a well-considered strategy for building your publicity through media placements.
To get articles, blog posts, and other content written about your brand, take advantage of networking and relationships. Reach out to your contacts, and see if you know someone who knows someone who’d be interested in covering you. If you don’t have the reach or the time, consider working with a reputable digital PR agency. They may be able to get you or your brand placements in relevant industry or general publications.
2. Create Content
While it’s important to show up in other peoples’ content, it’s just as vital to start publishing your own. Credible onsite and email content is one of the best ways to build brand visibility, awareness, and audience engagement. Content can also help drive SEO and SGE traffic to your website (see more on that, below). The bottom line is that, to be found online, you want to cover more surface area — and that means more content.
Still, you can’t publish just anything and expect your target audience to find you overnight. You need to think strategically about what your audience wants and what you have to give them that’s of value. Publish helpful blog posts on relevant topics most likely to appeal to your ideal followers and fans. For instance, if you run a bookshop, try blogging or emailing interviews with authors and reviews of new releases.
3. Optimize Your Website
Your website is more likely to show up in search results if it’s optimized to meet certain search engine guidelines. On Google, for instance, using the right keywords — without keyword stuffing — matters. But just as important are things like producing high quality content, which includes proper spelling and grammar. You also need to structure data properly, follow best practices for internal linking, and optimize for mobile.
One aspect of visibility many people seem to overlook is the importance of page load speed in search engine rankings. Google will penalize your site if it’s too slow to load, by pushing it further down the list of results. Most users will leave a site that takes too long to load too, so it’s crucial to get your page running properly anyway. You may need a new web host, or to make some tweaks to images, site elements, and plugins.
4. Build a Social Media Following
Another critical tool for becoming more visible online is growing your presence on social media. The loyal followers watching your Reels or viewing your stories are more likely to head over to your page or become your customers. Growing a social media following can be a lot trickier and more complex than other discoverability tactics. It’s also a lot easier to get wrong, since one small screwup can damage your reputation and credibility forever.
Social media also tends to have a symbiotic relationship with other content you create, like blog posts and podcasts. In other words, to earn social media traffic, you need website traffic, and vice versa. Your brand also needs to be consistent, with all of your sites and profiles updated and in tip top shape. You don’t want to rack up a million followers only to link them to a site you haven’t updated since Obama was president.
Be There, and Get Real
To win at visibility, you have to be on everything, everywhere, to everyone, all the time, all at once. Your best customers and loyal fans want to find you, but they can’t if you don’t make yourself as available as possible. Yes, there are some cases where a company probably shouldn’t be on every form of social media (see: funeral homes, TikTok). But consider where your presence is desirable, and make sure you have a presence in all of those places.
Just being there isn’t enough, though. You need to make sure your online presence is authentic, wherever it shows up. People can see through it, intuitively, if you’re disingenuous about your messaging or your values. Instead, be your true self, and proudly share your true mission and values. The right people will know where to look for you and will organically want to connect with you and your brand.
Discover more about this fascinating topic when you check out our comprehensive article.
