4 Ways to make your business more visible

If you want people to buy your products or services, they need to know you exist. But considering how competitive the HR market is, it’s not just enough to be seen, you need to stand out from the crowd.

To be truly visible, you want more traffic for your website, more engagement on your social channels, and for people to recognise your company as an expert in its field.

Here’s four ways you can get that deserved attention for your business...

1. Enhance your SEO

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is all about improving your website rankings in search engine results, with the aim of increasing traffic to your site.

Sites that appear on the first page of search engine results, on average, get 95% of the traffic. So ranking as high as possible for specific search terms is important for improving your company’s visibility online.

There’s lots of components to tackle when it comes to SEO - but here’s a few simple ways to enhance your website’s rankings...

Focus on keywords

Find keywords that are both relevant to your company and are phrases that your target customers are likely to search for online. Use these words tactfully on website pages, in titles, subheadings, bodies of text and in image captions to help search engines and readers identify what your page is about.

But remember - don’t over saturate your content with keywords as it will make your copy sound unnatural. Google will recognise this as an attempt to rank higher online and not actually help your audience so it can have negative effects on your SEO.

Break up your text

Having walls of text across your site makes it harder for people to read. This means that people won’t spend much time on your website and your SEO ranking may endure some damage.

Breaking up your text with headings, images, videos, etc. will make your pages far more user friendly and will encourage people to stay longer, enhancing visibility online.

Add alt text to your images

Alt text describes an image. It’s the words that are displayed in the place of an image if the image cannot load.

For SEO purposes, it helps google understand what’s in an image and how it connects to the surrounding text. Ultimately this helps search engines locate your page.

When adding in alt text, its best practise to describe the image and its context in detail. Use keywords where appropriate, but as always - don’t overuse them.

Here’s an example of what good alt text looks like…

Alt text: SEO expert types on laptop

2. Produce regular content 

Another great way to boost SEO is to regularly create content for your website, full of keyword-rich copy and relevant images. 

Not only does this improve your search engine rankings, it’s also a great way to keep audiences engaged, present your company as an expert in its field and provide shareable content for social media. All in all, it’s great for boosting your visibility.

So what sort of content could you make?

• Blog posts

• Infographics

• Reports

• White papers

• ‘How-to’ Guides

• Ebooks

• Checklists

• Case Studies

When making your content, remember that Google likes longer amounts of text. So if you want to enhance your SEO, try to dig deep into your content topic and explain all the little details.

However, never let readability suffer for the sake of SEO. Making sure your content is accessible and engaging for audiences should be your number one aim.

Because of this, don’t write for the sake of writing - making sure your content is truly helpful for your target audiences. Use short paragraphs so readers are not overwhelmed and display your content in a simple format using an easy to read font. 

3. Get news coverage

When your company is mentioned in an article, this information will be visible to a whole host of new people.

This is perfect, not just for being seen but for gaining a reputation as a trustworthy source and expert in your niche. After all, if the journalists trust what you have to say, their audiences are more likely to as well.

Do some research and find the relevant publications that your target audience reads and make sure you pitch your stories to relevant journalists as well. Luckily, we’ve created a whole blog on how to impress HR and workplace journalists, so you’ll know exactly how to get some great coverage for your business.

Once you get your coverage, if you can get the journalist to add in a backlink to your website, this will help boost your traffic and SEO rankings. The more people that link to your site, the more Google will understand you as an authority in your field. 

Having said this, companies should never expect journalists to provide them with a backlink – especially the HR market when this is seen as a revenue support. It’s really useful but it’s never a given. Getting coverage, alone, is a great way to boost visibility - backlinks are a bonus.

4. Establish a social media presence

Establishing a strong social media presence can increase brand awareness for your company on a variety of platforms. It can be a place for you to network, share news, launch new content and create discussions with your target audience, helping you to establish some great relationships online.

To make sure your presence is as strong as possible, you should:

Keep your company profile up to date 

Update profile pictures, banners and your ‘about us’ section with relevant and eye-catching content so users get a good feel for your company and what you’re all about.

Post regularly

Share relevant news, updates and industry insights a few times a week to keep a solid stream of visibility for your company. How regularly you should post varies depending on what platform you’re using… on LinkedIn, for example, we recommend twice a week, but for Twitter, you can post several times a day to see engagement.

Vary your posts

To really make the most out of social media, you should post a range of content - images, videos and text posts. And mixing up the kind of content you post will make your social media pages more interesting for others. 

Different kinds of posts will also attract different kinds of attention. Images, for example, can be more attention grabbing than text posts. If people hear something, on average, they’ll only remember 10% of that information three days later. But, if a corresponding image is coupled with some information, people will usually be able to recall 65% of the information three days later.

Or, sharing videos is an increasingly effective way to get attention. Since a third of online activity is now spent watching videos, this kind of content will tap into the interests of social media users.

Use relevant hashtags

Make sure your posts are accompanied by some relevant hashtags that your target audience is likely to follow. Doing this means that your content is more likely to appear in their feeds and be seen by your target customers. 

For a HR audience, for instance, #HR or #DisruptHR are great tags to use.

Engage with others

To really make yourself visible on social media, don’t just post and wait for responses. Stay active and make an effort to engage with others. Like other user’s content, take part in relevant conversations and add useful advice in comment sections. 

Want customised steps that will help improve your business’ visibility? Sign up for your free PR audit and we’ll provide you with some recommendations on how you can increase your brand awareness moving forward. Find out more here.