How to Increase Website Visibility

Sep 23

Elise is a Squarespace web designer & Circle member from Baltimore, MD.

Fun Fact: Three new websites are built every second, with 252,000 new websites created every day (Forbes)

So, crafting a website strategy that ultimately increases your site’s visibility and where it ranks in search engines is necessary. While this is not a post on the various types of website strategies available, I wanted to briefly share the approaches you can take to give you an idea of the thought that should go into your website BEFORE purchasing a domain.

What is a website strategy?

A website strategy defines your plan for reaching your specific goals and objectives using your website.

Every website has a purpose. In business, websites typically aim to create leads or increase sales. Meanwhile, non-profit and political sites may focus on promoting an idea or raising awareness. No matter the specific intent, all websites have clear objectives and desired outcomes that validate their existence.

For example, if you sell a product, your website strategy will likely focus on competitive advantage. How are you different or better than your competitors who offer the same or similar products? To do this effectively, you could focus on collecting customer feedback via testimonials, surveys, etc, to get an idea of what customers like about your brand and how you can continue to improve it. This strategy can also help you discover any gaps in your market to fill.

Ideally, your chosen strategy will determine how well your website is discovered. This step is important and typically occurs during the site's creation.

However, if you already have a website and want to begin working on increasing its visibility immediately, are there any ways to do this? Yes!

Ways to increase website visibility

A website serves as your digital storefront, making it easier for potential customers to discover you online. By implementing effective search engine optimization (SEO) strategies, your site can achieve higher rankings in search results, ultimately attracting more visitors to your business.

There are many ways to increase visibility, but here are some that you can do today:

Integrate Optimized Multimedia in Your Content

Using multimedia such as images, videos, and infographics in your content can be an effective way to improve your website’s visibility. Not only do multimedia elements help to break up text and make your content more visually appealing, but they also provide additional information that can help search engines understand the content on your website. Do this by incorporating relevant keywords (short description of the image) into your images' file names and alt text. This practice will help search engines better understand your site, making it easier for them to improve your ranking in search results.

Connect to Social Media Platforms

Social media is a great way to improve SEO visibility because it can help increase awareness about your brand by bringing visitors to various pages on your website. Many brands will link essential pages, such as a contact or sales page, to bring visitors directly to their website, thus providing another way to increase traffic. This can be a game changer when you first launch. The increased surges in traffic alert search engines that your site exists. To maintain this attention, update links to your socials and alert your followers each time.

Evaluate Your Website's Mobile Compatibility

As the number of people using mobile devices to browse the internet continues to rise, ensuring that your website is optimized for mobile is crucial. Be sure to check your site’s loading speed. Streamline navigation, adding an intuitive menu for a seamless mobile experience. Focus on key content and consider limiting screen space. Conduct device testing to verify compatibility across different screen sizes and operating systems. This can be as simple as browsing your website on a mobile phone.

Add Your Website to Online Directories

Submit your website to relevant directories, including business networking platforms. This step will assist search engines in finding your site, which helps improve its ranking in search results. Additionally, listing your website in directories can help create backlinks, further boosting your website's SEO rankings.

Generate an XML sitemap and submit it to Google

Creating an XML sitemap is a fantastic way to help search engines crawl and index your website's content effectively. This file includes a comprehensive list of all the URLs on your site, allowing search engines to quickly find and index new material. After you’ve generated your XML sitemap, remember to submit it to both Google and Bing.

Create a Google Business Profile Page

Establishing a Google Business profile page is an excellent strategy to enhance your website's visibility and connect with potential customers. By setting up this profile, you can provide essential details about your business, including operating hours, contact information, customer reviews, and updates. Furthermore, having a business profile helps you appear in local search results, which can significantly improve your website's SEO rankings.

Keep Yourself Informed on the Latest SEO Best Practices

SEO best practices continually evolve, making it essential to keep abreast of the latest trends and techniques. Regularly reviewing SEO guidelines will enhance your understanding of search engines and facilitate higher rankings for your website in search results.

Monitoring your website’s performance is crucial to enhancing your SEO visibility. Use tools like Google Analytics and Search Console to assess how well your site is performing in search results. This will allow you to pinpoint areas that require improvement and simplify the process of optimizing your website for better SEO visibility.