Just as in the offline world, online – first impressions count so it’s important that you make a good one. Just as importantly is that the online presence you project is consistent – in style, tone, branding and customer service.

From your website, email signatures, online brochures to social media platforms, your online offering needs to offer a cohesion image to your audience – these are both your suppliers, your staff, your customers and your potential customers, staff and suppliers.

Getting readers to your website is just the first step; now you need to keep them there. The longer someone spends on your site the more likely they are to engage and convert into a paying customer but do you understand why people may be clicking off your website?

While SEO works to get people to land on your website, from there it’s the website’s job to get them to navigate through the pages, read blog posts, and complete a form (request a quote, contact us etc).

If you are just starting out in business or just getting your established business online, building your online presence is very important as well as time consuming and a little frustrating. Your online presence is how people in today’s market will find, interact with and build a trusting relationship with your business.

For many small businesses, social media can seem a bit overwhelming and it is. Knowing the ins and outs of all the platforms, understanding the dos and don’ts of promotions, the extra time and money to stay on top of it all, and the list goes on and on. The Website Design Centre team have collated their top 10 social media tips for small businesses to help you determine what you should be doing to leverage social media for your business.

Why would you spend time and money on a Facebook Fan Page when it’s not an online shopping network, and perhaps your business doesn’t even sell online? It’s all about engagement! Facebook is a social network that allows your business to reach wider, build relationships and really engage with your target audience.

Here are the top 9 ways that your business can utilise the benefits of Facebook:

1. Facebook acts like another branch of your business

Your Fan Page can be another branch of your business that’s open 24/7 where customers, potential customers, potential employees, suppliers, networkers, partners and even the media can connect. A Fan Page is public facing by default so anyone can access it regardless of whether or not they are even logged into Facebook – this means that practically everyone on the Internet has access to the information you post here.

2. Facebook drives traffic to your website

Rather than restrict website traffic from your Facebook Fan Page to your business’ website, Facebook actually encourages it – there are no restriction of driving traffic from Facebook to your site.

Perhaps you’ve heard some of the hype surrounding the statement that ‘SEO is dead’. In actual fact, nothing is further from the truth – it’s just changed, that’s all. The fact is that many companies, large and small, have renewed their investment in SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and here’s why:

SEO still works – despite changes to SEO algorithms the techniques employed to improve your SEO still work. The techniques we have all been applying remain sound.

SEO isn’t going to stop working soon – From the way in which search engines are developing, search engine optimisation is unlikely to stop being effective in any time soon. Traditional text-based content and even video and audio searches all still rely on keywords. And while that link between keywords and searches remains then so too does the success of SEO techniques.

If you have just joined us – welcome and please feel free to catch up on our other Top Tips for Online Success by clicking here. If joining us to continue with our top tips – welcome back!

6. Keep calm and SEO
We’re sure many of you have heard the term ‘SEO’ or ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ many, many times now. And while designing your website and writing content with the aim to rank higher in search engine results is admirable, don’t go overboard. Keyword ‘stuff’, engage in black hat SEO practices and you run the risk that your site will evaluated as spam and be demoted or banned altogether. Optimising pages is fantastic, over-optimising pages makes them unlikeable, unreadable and unengaging to real people and this is something that search engines are finally taking into account when assigning rankings.

7. Linking up…
Search engines such as Google will evaluate the number of backlinks to your website as part of the way that they determine your search engine ranking. Because of this many website owners have rushed to get as many links as possible but we urge caution. In many cases of paid link sites they are considered bad links or ‘bad neighbourhoods’ by the search engines – in a nutshell they are ‘spammy sites’ and will only do your site harm. Focus on quality over quantity and ensure that any links on your site are functioning (not dead or broken links) and relevant to the products and services you provide.