Starting a digital journey without having a strong online foundation is like starting a car without any fuel; you just won’t be able to drive.
And if you have fuel, but it’s not available in adequate quantity and quality you cannot drive as smoothly or for as long as you have to. Ultimately, you will fail to reach your destination.
So rather than taking risks and wasting time doing so many mistakes, and missing good opportunities, and maybe even drowning your business, allow me to share some knowledge about all the elements that are required to build a strong online foundation for your business.
A strong online foundation consists of all the essential software-based platforms and digital technologies you need to use to meet your desired business goals.
In simple words, an online foundation is a base structure that supports and boosts every aspect of your online presence and launches your digital marketing plans.
Each part of the foundation should be carefully created in a specific order and then strategically tied together so that together the parts can support each other.
This approach ensures a solid online presence from start and one where all marketing efforts always funnel back toward your goals.
What Is Needed To Build A Strong Online Foundation
Nowadays an online foundation is necessary for every kind of business, but how can we build it? What is needed to build a strong online foundation which allows for a thriving online as well as offline business?
Here you will get the answer to every question. The following are the critical building blocks to a strong online foundation.
- Website designing
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
- Social Media Marketing (SMM)
- Email Marketing
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Web Analytics
Website Designing
In this heavily digitalized world, everyone is connected to the World Wide Web in one way or the other to satisfy needs such as research, education, entertainment, and consumers’ needs.
The popularity of the internet and digital platforms necessitates businesses to have an online presence at the very least in the form of a website.
When it comes to website online success, first of all, hinges on a highly optimized website. The website is the nerve center for all modes of marketing communication.
Most consumers go online to research whenever they need to purchase any product or services, which means that if you have a website it allows you to appear prominently in search results so that the customer can spot you easily, visit your website and decide to purchase your products or services.
A website can be used as an ideal platform to showcase your products and services and ideally it should be the front-end where all social media, advertising, and public relations activity is pointed towards.
A well-presented website also increases your brand online authority and promotes your value and generates higher profit.
Unfortunately, everyone does not realize the importance of having a website development. They take it as irrelevant and costly and that’s why they do not want to waste their investment on having one.
With those people in mind, let’s discuss the benefits of having a website.
Benefits Of A Well-Designed Website
In the digital age, a website is like a flagship virtual storefront for a business. It is as important for a business as having a shop, office, or contact address.
Customers expect to be able to access information on a brand online and consider it as a necessary element that contributes to building trust in a business.
There are a number of benefits of having a website of your business that you may not have been aware of. Let’s learn a bit about what these benefits are:
Cost-Effect Marketing
Online marketing and advertisement of your brand or business are highly cost-effective as compared to the age-old techniques of mass marketing and advertising.
Precise Demographic Reach
Your website can be marketed internationally and be accessed from anywhere around the world. Thus, it breaks all the geographical barriers to reach customers.
Business Creditibilty
A professional, good-looking, and user-friendly website influences the consumer to provide your business much higher credibility over other companies which do not have a website.
24/7 Online Presence
Customers can find you anytime, anywhere through the website, something which is usually not possible in a purely brick and mortar business model. Not only can customers access information, but they may also be able to securely transact regardless of time and location.
Uninterrupted Exchange of Information
A website makes it simple and easy to communicate with consumers and exchange information between buyers and sellers. You can list your products, services, opening or closing times, locations, promotions, videos, images, or any other information through your website.
Marketing & Sales Analysis
Digital technologies provide analytical tools that are connected to your website. The tools provide a vast database of vital information regarding your customers. It helps you to recognize your potential customers or leads and can help you understand your target market.
This can help you optimize your conversion ratio and increase revenue and profits. You can get information about each and every, minor or major function of your business through user analytics which is not possible through traditional means.
Tools provided by services like Google Adwords or Facebook Advertising helps you to find accurate and relevant customers which are not easily possible in offline marketing.
Well-managed digital marketing increases traffic, brand awareness, and sales velocity, DRAWING CUSTOMERS TO YOUR PHYSICAL SHOP.
A website not just good for online presence and eCommerce, it is also helpful in bringing your desired leads and customers to your physical shop or office.
This increases the probability of converting them to loyal patrons of your business.
SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING (SEM)
Search engine marketing SEM is another effective way for building a strong foundation for business success.
It is a way to promote goods or services you are offering in an extremely cost-effective and highly targeted manner.
Search engine marketing advertises your business using a paid advertising method also known as PPC or pay-per-click ads. You can see this advertised business on top of the organic results on the search engine result page (SERP).
These advertisements are based on keyword research and adding the correctly curated and matched type of keywords as well as negative keywords (keywords irrelevant to your niche).
So, when the search engine user on Google, Bing, or any other search engine, types a string of keywords for searching desired goods or services, the advertiser gets a chance to get their ads to appear prominently in the results.
These ads can be designed and delivered in various formats. They can be text-based or visually illustrated like shopping ads which give vital marketing information about product prices and reviews at a glance.
You can set a precise target audience for these advertisements so that you can find highly intent, relevant customers who are ready to convert to your brand.
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING (SMM)
Just like a website, social media is an important aspect of digital marketing in building a strong foundation online providing incredible benefits that help businesses reach out to millions of social media users around the world.
Relevant audiences and communities can be tapped by advertising your business or brand on social media. This is called SMM or social media marketing.
In order to command attention, capture interest, create desire and generate action, you need to develop consistent branding and good quality content.
The first step towards SMM is creating a branded social media profile for your business which is followed by building a strong network and an involved community.
Good communication and engagement win customer interest and allows you to reach a wider audience for your brand.
IMPROVE SEARCH ENGINE RANKING
While social media by itself does not directly increase or improve search engine ranking but it provides numerous indirect benefits.
By sending traffic to your website, social media mentions and shares boost your domain authority and increase leads and conversions. Search engine algorithms assess these trends positively and automatically boost ranking.
EMAIL MARKETING
Email marketing is also one of the key elements to build a strong online foundation.
Email marketing allows you to connect directly to a targeted set of customers by sending emails. It is easy and can be started at little or no cost without heavy reliance on new and difficult to master technologies.
Using email is very simple, once you set your account you just need to compose, send and receive your messages.
It controls customer churn and allows easy access to information and leads or remarket to customers.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)
search engine optimization (SEO) is a process of improving your website traffic and its visibility on relevant searches organically without spending any money on paid advertising.
It is the most important factor to strengthen your business foundation. Detailed working on SEO helps your website rank higher than your competition.
If you really want to rank high organically, you have to work perfectly on all types of SEO.
ON-PAGE SEO
On-page SEO includes these things in it they are:
- Technical SEO
- Content Optimization
- Keyword Research
- Search Queries
Technical SEO
Technical SEO makes your site friendly to search engines. It helps Google or any other search engine crawl certain elements of your website to understand the site.
These elements include title, sub-headings, meta titles, XML site map, internal links, image alt tags, robot text, meta robot tags, and canonical tags.
All of these elements can be addressed with plugins like Yoast or Rank Math etc.
CONTENT OPTIMIZATION
Content optimization performs a very important role in on-page SEO. Unique and good quality content works as oxygen for your site. Content optimization includes.
KEYWORD RESEARCH
It is an important aspect while writing content because without good keyword research you cannot deliver good content. Keyword research must be relevant, with searches not less than 100, and competition or keyword difficulty should be less than 20 at least for a new website.
SEARCH QUERIES
It means that your content should satisfy every aspect of the user search intention.
OFF-PAGE SEO
Building the popularity of your website is considered off-page SEO. It mainly includes using backlinks to your website. There are two types of backlinks:
DO FOLLOW BACKLINKS
They are followed by search engine and are beneficial in ranking.
NO FOLLOW BACKLINKS
They are not followed by search engines and are not beneficial for organic ranking.
WEB ANALYTICS
Web analytics help you build a successful and strong online foundation. It is the process of measuring website performance, traffic, and user behavior on a website.
From these analytics, you can optimize how the user is interacting with and responding to your website and also what might be the user’s latent interests.
By getting this vital data and detailed reports regarding consumers you can take better decisions to improve your website to gain a business advantage.
This concludes details on all elements that come together to build a strong foundation for online success. If you want to find out more you can contact us
Build A Strong Online Foundation with DigiTroopers
DigiTroopers, which is a boutique digital marketing company that can deliver exceptional and tailor-made services to help you gain an advantage over your competitors and grow your business on the strongest possible foundations. Contact us now and get your work start today.