Search for:
Online business growth

Online Business Growth

Online presence of a business has now become a necessity. If one wants business growth, online marketing or digital marketing gives hosts of opportunities. Online or internet marketing is the medium that business need to cash upon to reach new heights. SEO helps the business grow online more speedily and profitably. 

 

This blog article intends to document the step-by-step journey for business growth through Digital marketing. So lets start and help build business online.

Know the Customer and Product:

Business is a profession to serve and satisfy needs of the user in exchange of some service or money. Thus, a business or a service which knows its customer and product the best, is bound to succeed in its endeavor to reach at the top.

Who is the Customer?

Assume yourself as a customer and try to figure out how the product or service is going to help you?

      • Who would be requiring the product?
      • Check for if the product or the service is going to serve some particular segment?
      • How it is meeting the user needs?

How the Product is going to serve the user?

      • What features a user would be looking for and what is the USP of the product?
      • How the product is different from the competitors?
      • What features of the product makes it a unique composition? 

Once one knows the product or service inside out, better the position he/she is in to judge and know the target audience. It would help build a clear view of the future business plan and marketing strategies for business growth

Current state of the Business operations and its management:

Before one gets down to have online marketing plan for the business, it is very critical to know the current functioning of the business operations.

    • What all processes are being followed to get the desired business results?
    • Are their any different entities involved in running the business operations? 
    • Did the business apply any traditional marketing practices for the promotion of the business?
    • How effective were the marketing strategies if any applied in the past? What were the results of such promotions?
    • Where the customers for the business are coming from? Does the  business pitches in new offers and promotions to its customer base?
    • What is the brand & perception value of the business?

Online Business Growth Plan & Digital Marketing Strategy Framework:

Once we know the current state of the business, now is the time to look for expansion and growth of business through digital marketing. One need to make good use of the following steps to achieve the success. Here is the step wise journey to the business growth plan –

Phase 1: Initial setup

    1. Look for the domain name and its availability on the internet. Domain name should clearly signify the business and what it is for.
    2. Search for the highly relevant keywords for the business which one wants the site to rank upon. Keywords should absolutely resonate with the customer and product / service being offered.
    3. Create business site & use high-quality content in terms of text, images, info-graphics and videos to showcase the business. 
    4. Optimize the website content as per search engine requirements (SEO) to see it rank and come on top of the search engine result page (SERP).
    5. Businesses which are already set up, riding on the traditional marketing strategies and have healthy customer base should make use of –
      1. Testimonials given by users.
      2. Customer reviews and feedback for the business.
      3. Display media in the form of customer images and videos work wonders for the business. 

Phase 2: Business setup

    1. Registering business with Google Business listings which allows it to be found more easily on Google searches. It is considered as a first step towards Online Business Growth.
    2. List the business on Local directories so that whenever user or customer searches for alike services, the business shines on top of the search engine result pages. 
    3. Set up Google Search Console and Google Analytics Tools to keep track of the website traffic and audience.

Phase 3: Recurring setup

    1. Create a blog posting schedule and regularly update the website & social media platforms with the latest news & offers by the business. Keep the audience engaging with the business and gain loyal customers for it.
    2. Regularly research for new keywords which are relevant to the business and more likely to get converted. Keep on updating the  content and stay abreast with the changing digital marketing situations. 

Phase 4: Advanced setup

Social Media setup:

      • Check if the customers are already available online and on which platforms? Use appropriate social media platform and create accounts on them. Feed target audience with the latest updates about the business and keep them engaging.
      • Make use of viral memes (if suitable) or any other trending topic that will resonate with the audience.

Paid Ads setup:

      • Start advertising online using Google Adwords, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest etc. One should have a well thought out strategy for paid ads and online advertisements to achieve Online Business Growth. More importantly, ads also help you retain users / buyers / customers using retargeting.
      • Google Ads:

It gives host of features to target customer in multiple ways. Target customers using highly relevant keywords to the business. Place call buttons, location information, brand features on the ad itself which takes the business a step closer to the potential customers. Add site-link extensions, links to specific parts of the website, additional text and more. Make good use of Google ads extensions to improve Google Adwords’ performance.

Google offers you multiple free tools that can help build products online, manage them, track their performance – Google Search console, Google Analytics, Google Merchant center.

      • Facebook ads or other Social Media ads:

Social Media ads provide a different perspective to the business. Here customer targeting is more towards the intent of the customers or its search behavior. Primarily display content is more used in Social Media advertising.

Stay tuned to my Social Media Channels to know more: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Quora

Setting up Google Search Console

How to submit Sitemaps?

Submit sitemaps to help search engines search about pages on your sites. SEO helps grow business and website traffic but sitemap makes site searchable on search engines and thus complement results. Sitemap is an XML file which stores links to all your pages, blogs, images and all contents of your website that are available for crawling. It is an easy way to help robots to crawl all listed web-pages and index them within search engine.

Google Search Console or Google Webmaster is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search results. It helps you understand and improve how Google sees your site. Submitting Sitemap is what makes your site and its content searchable on Google. Below are the point-wise steps on how to submit sitemaps in Google Webmaster or Search console.

    1. Open Google Webmaster or Search Console.
    2. Click on Sign in.
    3. Login to your Webmaster login.
    4. Go to Sitemap.
    5. Open a new tab and type in your domain name. Append
      1. “sitemap_index.xml”: if your site is made in wordpress and Yoast SEO is installed as a plugin. Yoast SEO helps create sitemap file for the site.
      2. “sitemap.xml”: if your site is made through an shopify site.
        For example:
        WordPress site: https://www.domainname.com/sitemap_index.xml
        Shopify site: https://www.domainname.com/sitemap.xml”
    6. You will get a sitemap xml file displayed in your browser.
    7. Paste “sitemap_index.xml”  for  the wordpress site or “sitemap.xml” for the shopify site against the domainname in search console ( “Enter Sitemap URL”)
    8. Click on submit.
    9. Search console would show success in setting up of sitemap within few minutes.
What is Sitemap?

What is a Sitemap?

What is a Sitemap of the website?

A sitemap is a file providing information about the pages, videos and other files on your site and the relationships between them. It helps Google and other search engines crawl and map website. A sitemap tells the crawler which files you think are important in your site.  

It also provides valuable information about the files, for example –

  • Information about the pages.
  • When the page was last updated.
  • How often the page is changed.
  • Alternate language versions of a page.

Sitemaps are mainly used to improve the index process of your website by search engines, they can be used to provide accessibility to certain pages as well. It does not affect the normal way crawler bots index your page – it just extends the visibility and accessibility of your content.

Search engines like Google always try to display the most relevant results  to people for any given search query. In order do this effectively, they use site crawlers to read, organize and index information on the Internet.

XML sitemaps make it easier for search engine crawlers to read the content on your site and index the pages accordingly. As a result, this increases chances of improving the SEO ranking of the website.

Submitting a sitemap is very critical in SEO rank of your website. Click to know: How to submit sitemap for the website so that it be indexed by Google and other search engines in an intelligent manner.

Do remember to share your feedback in the comment section. Please refer to sitemaps.org for further updates.