Every successful modern business can attest to the importance of an effective online presence. Following the widespread adoption of the internet and development in mobile technology, customers are more likely to search online for a company, product, or service. Even brick-and-mortar businesses require a digital presence to breach the gap between them and their customers.
Modern marketing entails using internet-based technology to reach and engage users online. However, not all business owners can generate significant traffic to their company's website. Therefore, entrepreneurs must recognize the critical link between quality content and online traffic to optimize a business's online presence.
What is online visibility?
In digital marketing, online visibility refers to online attention or awareness a business has. It ranks how accessible your brand is when someone goes online and searches for a product or service you offer.
Businesses with high online visibility are the go-to resource when conducting a relevant search, and their information is extensively shared across the internet. Good digital marketing strategies have entirely transformed businesses, and in the current economic climate, the success or failure of a business depends mainly on successful marketing campaigns that improve online presence. One way of staying up to date with the latest marketing strategies is by studying a course like the online programs offered at Aston University.
Regarding digital marketing, two significant aspects create a platform for online visibility: search engines and content.
Search engines
These commonly used internet-based applications make up most of the global internet traffic. They help define and rank the resources and information users find when they search for a brand, product, or service online.
The search visibility score attributed to a brand's website represents how much traffic the website achieves through organic results. Numerous intricate processes calculate the search visibility score, all of which act on one underlying aspect: content.
Content
Online content, whether on a website, blog, or social media application, can be a powerful tool for business. It is the only way for brands to connect with customers and spread the word about what they offer. Therefore, your brand's online visibility depends on how well-constructed your content is.
Each search engine has a list of high-ranking keywords representing some of the most searched terms. These keywords are identified based on how frequently users have searched for them over the past 12 months. Search engines also use a metric called click-through rate (CTR). This represents the number of clicks an ad or search engine result receives divided by the number of times it shows up.
Therefore, for a brand website to have an impressive visibility score, it needs to feature high-ranking keywords as frequently and naturally as possible and enjoy a reasonable click-through rate. The following processes are used in calculating the search visibility of a brand;
- The rankings for all keywords in a brand's content are determined.
- The CTR is applied based on the keyword rankings to ensure higher-ranking keywords receive more priority in determining the overall visibility score.
- Finally, all CTR results are summed up and divided by the total number of keywords ranked throughout the content.
This illustrates how much a brand's online visibility can affect its content. Typically, the visibility score lies between 0% and 100%, with a 0% score indicating a brand is not present in any of the top 50 spots of the search engine result pages. A 100% score implies all content keywords rank highly across the major search engine platforms.
Naturally, a drop in content ranking affects online visibility. There are several reasons a brand could experience a drop in ranking and reduce its online presence:
- A quantifiable decline in the content's click-through rate
- Recent changes in top-ranking keywords
- Updates and changes to the search engine algorithm
- Brand website issues, such as hosting problems
Improving online visibility
There are two main underlying causes of low online visibility. First, brands can resolve a low online presence caused by website issues with more efficient, user-friendly websites. A web page's loading time also directly impacts visibility as users tend to give up on web pages that take a while to load.
However, when it comes to content, online visibility can only be improved by putting out quality content with on-page SEO. On-page SEO is a way of optimizing web pages to improve a website's search engine rankings and earn organic traffic.
Including on-page SEO ensures relevant and quality content is published by optimizing headlines, HTML tags (title, meta, and header), and images. Here are some critical features of content that help determine online visibility.
- Meta tag: Meta tags are a descriptive summary added to a website's header section. A high-quality and optimized meta tag is an effective way to get your brand and content noticed by a search engine.
- Headline: Your content header should be comprehensive enough to describe the content and attract interest among readers. Brands should generate headlines with the content and user search behavior in mind.
- Title tag: The title or heading tag is relevant to how your brand is perceived online. The title tag could help create relevant content valued by both users and search engine platforms.
- Keyword research: Online presence revolves around highly rated keywords. Therefore, crafting highly optimized keyword content is an effective way to improve site ranking and online presence. There are always top-ranked keywords on any subject, so you need to carry out research to identify them and use them in your content.
- Keyword cannibalization: Although you want to use highly ranked keywords, you should also avoid using a single keyword multiple times on different pages. Keyword cannibalism leads to competition between your brand's pages and adversely affects online visibility.
Research shows that lengthy content produces a higher ranking on search engines. However, this goes beyond using fluff words to increase word count. The information should also be relevant and useful to the reader. Quality content should address what the user is looking for and be supported by the right keywords. Brands can also appeal to a wider audience and generate more traffic by including strong backlinks to their content.
Thank you for reading!