5 Things to do to make your website more visible to your target audience 

5 things to do to make your website more visible to your target audience

5 Things to do to make your website more visible to your target audience examines the next steps you need to take after building your personal, professional or business website. To build a good looking website that fits your business offering is one thing and getting it in front of your target audience is another.

So what more then? The truth is that, you still have few things to do, few of them you need to do more consistently to make your website visible to your target audience. Below we will examine just 5 of those.

 

5 Things to do to make your website more visible to your target audience

1) Optimize it for search engine:

Optimizing your website pages for search engine ought to be part of the website building process and not an afterthought or after website design activity.

Let’s say you’re into real estate, fashion or you’re simply a blogger. before getting started with your site you already know the themes and phrases that go along with your business and some of the questions users are likely to ask if they are searching for your business on/offline.

Now see yourself as the user, if you’re to search for what you offer how will you go about it and what will you search for?

As a real estate company based in Lagos and in Nigeria, you will definitely want to appear in search when users search for

“Real estate companies in Lagos or real estate companies in Nigeria”

 

Or maybe you have houses for rent or for sale in Lekki or Ajah and you will naturally want to be returned in search when users search for

“Houses/properties for sale in ajah”

 

The same thing goes for those in Fashion, Event Management, Travel, Health, Education among other businesses. Having your business website pages returned in search when users search for keywords/phrases that relate to your business products and services are the work of search engine optimization done right.

A good and well-done SEO gives your website the needed free organic traffic and you need to grab it.

While this write up is not about SEO, I will highlight below the basic steps you need to take to get your website pages optimized for search engine.

Optimize your Website for Search engine

– Write down the keywords and phrases that represent your business niche:

If you’re into Real estate, construction, hotels and hospitality industry, fashion, education, health etc what and what are your users likely to search with when searching for your business products and services? If you’re the user what and what will you search for?.

Understanding users intent in how search works are important so that you can get the right keywords and its related phrases and use them to rank your site pages appropriately. So note those keywords/phrases and write them all down.

Do simply research on those keywords and phrases:

After writing them down, the next thing is to find out what they are made of, who and who ranked for them and what they did to rank for them. from your findings

  • What can you do better? (maybe they used images, infographic and you can use videos etc )
  • What are the related phrases/terms and long-tail specific version of those keywords?.

Paying attention to the above will enable you to do better and possibly beat them in their own game.

 

Assign each keyword to different pages of your site.

This is simply called keyword mapping all you’re doing is to assign specific keywords to the right pages on your website based on the keyword research above. Every page on your site should target a specific keyword Your Home page keyword, page title and description shouldn’t be the same with About us page or services likewise your site blog articles.

 

Perform all the needed OnPage SEO duties on your site pages

By this I mean make sure your pages/posts URL, title tag, meta description tag, headers <h1> and <h2>, and the images (name and alt tag) links (the link anchor text) both internal and external links are all optimized for search engine using Onpage SEO techniques and best practices.

 

Read AlsoWhy Every Nigerian Business Needs SEO

 

 Create an XML sitemap for your site and submit them to search engines like Google and Bing.

You want the search engines to see your website right? of course on their own, they will do this without you bordering them, but then as a new website owner, you want to make sure that the search engines are aware of your website and are not missing out on anything and that is were XML Sitemaps comes in.

XML Sitemaps unlike their HTML counterpart, are meant for search engine crawlers to crawl and index your website pages/posts and others. It also contains unique information’s that will enable search engines to understand your website better.

 

Read AlsoHow to create an XML sitemap for your website

 

Check on your robots.txt file

This is a simple protocol text file publicly available ( www.yourwebsitename.com/robots.txt ) and used to pass instructions to the search engine robots on how to crawl your website pages. You can specify which and which of your site pages should be left alone, how the search engine robots should crawl your site and much more.

Good knowledge of this file also ensures that you know about possible obstacles that may be preventing the search engine robots from doing their work on your site which you can then fix to enable the robots to do their job.

 

Read AlsoHow to find out if your website is indexed by search engines

 

Now sit down with your website designer or developer and find out if they have done any of these and if not, get them to do so.

 

SEO - Search Engine Optimization Services

 

2) Don’t ignore Local SEO.

At the end of the day, everything is localized. Your business is in a particular location (Victoria Island Lagos or Upper iweka road Onitsha) and it’s important to claim this for your business and that’s where local SEO comes in. Below I will highlight a few local SEO tactics you need to consider.

Local SEO Best practices

Start with your page title and description tag

This is simply, aside your page/post targeted keyword that ought to come in at the very beginning of your page title, ensure also you reflect your business locality/area of your business operation in there. Let’s examine the example image below

Local SEO Best Practices

 

In the above image about “Event planner in Lagos” search for Lagos, you can see how the returned result mentioned both Lagos in its page title and meta description, emphasizing the locality in both. So in writing your page titles and description, try as much to claim your business locality as shown in the above example.

 

– Claim your local spaces both online/offline

in the example image we used earlier, you will notice that the returned result is from a local business directory and more of the results below for that particular search “event planner in Lagos” are all from the local business directory listing.

Having your business name, address and phone numbers on these directories is very vital and important as they can drive huge traffic to the website and also provide a consistent signal to the search engines about your business.

Some of the popular listings in this part of the world are

And depending on your business products/services you can also search for industry-related sites like

And the rest of them and actively list your products and services on those platforms.

Aside from the above, one of the most important spaces you need to claim online is Google My Business.  Its very important for you to claim and verify Google My Business for your business as google normally promote such businesses in the search result especially when such searches are locality driven as you can see from the example below.

Local SEO Best practices Google my Business

In the above image, the user searched for “IVF centres in Lagos” with part of the returned result been GMB listings showing things like ranting, phone numbers, website and directions.

You will have to follow a few steps which include a verification process of you receiving a postcard at your business claimed address for you to have a verified GMB listing. after which you have to properly optimized it making sure you provide all necessary details about your business as required.

 

3) Create Awareness and promote your site:

Now you have done your SEO and claimed your spaces online, you still need to do more to get your website out there on the faces of your target audience by creating sufficient awareness for it and promoting it through both online and offline activities.

One of the ways of creating awareness and buzz around your website to your target niche is by having a pre-launch plan for your website (for those who have not launched their site yet)

all you need do is

  • Create a special offering like a downloadable e-book on any subject around your niche that you have expertise on.
  • Create a landing page for that offering and then invite your targeted audience through your social media channels and influencer marketing to download it for free.
  • As they do, collect their emails and build your list through that.

Through the list, you can constantly remind them of new development and happenings around your business, invite them back to your website over and over, build a relationship with them and finally convert them to paying customers.

Those with existing websites can also use this method to draw traffic to their site by creating special promos/giveaways to both their existing and prospective customers, build a relationship and finally convert them to paying customers.

 

Read Also – Why Every Nigerian Business Needs SEO

 

4) Make use of your social media channels

You can also create awareness for your website through active and optimized social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc ).

From your social media channels cover, profile picture,  posts and activities constantly lead your audience to your website. Doing this is simply

  • When you change some of your handle cover photo’s like Facebook, make sure it comes with an important activity around your business, including a vivid description of what your business is about.
  • Always make a post on your social media handles with links back to your website.
  • Promote regularly on platforms like Facebook and Instagram and with links back to your website

But don’t just promote randomly, find out where your audience is,  which platform and promote to them if they are on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, build up that platform and promote to them there. The best way to do this though is to find out what successful brands in your niche are doing using their social media channels and come up with your own plan.

 

 5) Show Your Expertise By Blogging Regularly

Blog regularly on relevant topics that serve the needs of your niche. let your niche sees the value that you offer and by so doing, build a royal and active audience for your website.

  • Share your blog posts across your different social media channels
  • Send it out to your list, both old and prospective clients
  • Get your friends and others within your niche to promote your valuable posts
  • Make it shareable. as readers land on your post are they able to share it if they find it valuable?

3 thoughts on “5 Things to do to make your website more visible to your target audience 

  1. Pingback: 7 Important Features Every Website Should Have To Be Effective - Brainnews Radio

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