7 Ways to Improve Online Presence Amidst Crisis

The coronavirus pandemic has undoubtedly sparked fear and uncertainly throughout the country. Unfortunately, many business owners have had to drastically change their day-to-day business to adapt to new social-distancing protocols, adding more apprehension to the economic fall outs of the virus. We at Local Business First are dedicated to helping your business succeed during this unprecedented time, and would like to offer 7 quick tips for how you can help your online presence and business during this time.

These are unprecedented times. Most restaurants and bars are take-out-only, corporate offices are closed and working remotely, and almost all non-essential businesses have closed their doors. Unfortunately, as foot traffic has come to a screeching halt, cash-flow likely has as well. A great way to combat this sudden change is by offering gift cards and E-certificates online for future customers to purchase now and use later. This will allow you to actively generate revenue in the interim until you are able to re-open your doors. Here are two pages we updated for our clients:  Massage Therapy Business,  Local Businesses Gift Cards Offerings.

Now more than ever, it is important to stay in constant communication with your customers so that they can remain updated on adjusted hours, policies, and services. First and foremost, we advise you’ll need to put your list of contacts together. Take advantage of this time to finally collate your pile of business cards, LinkedIn connections, former customers, and so on to make a master-database of contacts.

As things continue to change reach out to these contacts regularly to keep them up to date on evolving changes or new services. Better yet, now might be the time for you to start implementing a monthly or quarterly newsletter. Or if you already have an e-newsletter, perhaps this is your chance to give it a little facelift!  Many of our affiliates offer a discount at this time and some email marketing platforms are absolutely free.  Email us if you need help selecting an email marketing platform.

Take advantage of the incredible technology that we have in today’s age by encouraging your customers to make online appointments or calls in lieu of face to face meetings. Applications like Zoom and Skype easily allow you to host virtual meetings with multiple users. If you think that an online scheduling application will be helpful for your business, make this a focal point in your website. Either put a “Schedule Appointment” button in your header or on each page so that users are consistently encouraged to click and engage with you. Some of the free online scheduling application include Calendly and Setmore.

Now might be the time to put some extra effort into finally optimizing your website’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is constantly changing, and should be something that you keep up with regularly to ensure that your website is among the top results after a web search. In fact, Google ranks each and every page of a website to determine the top hits, so it is important for you to go through and ensure that each page is optimized accordingly.  Read our blog:  Ten Steps for Optimizing Your Blog Post for SEO.

When it comes to local search, Google and other search engines use the following criteria for ranking: prominence, distance, and relevance - in that order! Optimizing Google My Business (GMB) and other local listings is crucial to coming up first in local searches! Review your Google listing today by following this short blog: How to Optimize Your Google Business Listing.

You’ve probably heard how important backlinks are for SEO. Getting quality inbound links take a lot of effort and time. One of best way to earn quality links is through creating great content. Check out our blog:  How to Create Website Inbound Links.

This slow economic time could be an excellent opportunity for you as a small business owner to either to create,  touch-up or totally transform your website to make sure that you make an excellent impression for first-time visitors or potential clients.  COVID-related content is of extreme importance.