Posted on April 17, 2014

Become Found

Building an eye catching, user friendly website is just the start when it comes to being found on the internet. You’ve spent all this time, money and resources to make your website engaging to visitors, but now you’re simply leaving it alone and hoping people stumble across it. It’s time to become found.

There are quite a few different factors that Google looks at in order to rank and display your website. Content is key, as the saying goes, and original content even more so, which is why organic SEO is extremely important and the most commonly known aspect of SEO. It can often take weeks or even months to show up near the first search page and far, far longer if you leave your website alone in the wilds of the internet.

To help strengthen your SEO results and get you to the first page of search results sooner, it is critical to branch out into other avenues of online marketing to help people find you and your brand. Two often overlooked areas are local search and social media. Tying all of these aspects back to your website boosts your page rank significantly and gives you a wider more unified online presence. Local search ties your business to an actual physical location and allows searchers to find the localized business they are searching for. Well known for the little red balloon that draws the eye to the address and phone number of a business, this feature of Google has been swallowing up phone books ever since its inception. About 54% (January 2013 Techshu.com article) of the population has scrapped their local phone book and now heavily relies on local search for this information.

Social media is a no brainer, particularly if you are marketing to a younger generation. The social media experience has become expected from the consumers of today. Reports show that 1 in 5 minutes a day are spent interacting with social media websites (November 2013 rheumatologynetwork.com). Not only is social media a good way to engage and interact with your consumers, it also gives them a reason to come back again and again. Additionally, Google is now looking at the social signals your brand is involved in. The more likes, shares and comments your Facebook page and Google+ business page contain, the greater effect it will have on your page rank for your practice’s website. These aspects of SEO are necessary to get you to the first page of search engine results and keep you there.

So sure, you understand the importance of local search and social media, but you want your website to have value and be found right now. What can you do to get found instantly as you are building this SEO powerhouse of a website? One way to guarantee you show up is to run a paid search campaign. These are the searches at the top of Google with a yellow box that literally says “ad”. AdWords campaigns are a fantastic way to get you instantly noticed because you are paying to be found. True, once you stop paying for your campaign you will no longer be at the very top of the AdWords section of search, but hopefully you’ve built up your local search and social media campaigns so you’re on the first page for many of the terms you wish to be found for.

Additionally, paid search gives you the benefit of showing up for places you aren’t physically located in or to reach a bigger audience with your marketing campaign and compliment your ongoing SEO and social media efforts.

All in all if you can do a structured and strategic mix of these different items, you will eventually find your website climbing its way to the top of search engines’ results.