Five Common Mistakes Business Owners Make With Their Online Presence

U.S. shoppers’ buying and payments habits continue to adapt. According to the December Digital Economy Payments Report by Pymnts.com, while 73% of U.S. consumers reported shopping in physical stores in December, nearly one-third of all $556 billion worth of purchases were made online. As retail sales grow at their fastest pace in 17 years, consumers’ habits have significantly shifted online. With 32% of U.S. consumers making retail purchases online, it’s more important than ever to have a fresh, up-to-date online presence.

Today, there is indeed more of a need than ever for small businesses to be visible. And there are simple tools that can be used to achieve the proper level of visibility for success on a website and with search engines. In my book, Small Business Revolution: How Owners and Entrepreneurs Can Succeed, I outline common mistakes business owners make with their online presence. There are five mistakes, as well as two big visibility boosters, you can employ to build your business or get through slow times.

Mistake One: Not Having A Website, To Begin With

While the world lives in this pandemic-induced time of social distancing, there is no path to ultimate success without being online. Businesses cannot rely solely on their social media presence but must have their own website and use social media as a supplemental platform.

Mistake Two: Not Arranging Things To Make Updates A Breeze

Sites get ancient when updating them becomes a pain. As simple as it is to update social media with last-minute closures and recent news, making basic updates to your website should be just as simple.

Whether you designate someone responsible for keeping the website updated or get your site on an easily updateable platform, this is a critical component to your business and should be taken seriously.

Mistake Three: Your Site Is Broken, As Far As Many Visitors Are Concerned

Websites are just a stream of instructions. What turns that alphabet soup of numbers and letters into your pretty website is the web browser. Unfortunately, there is no one to regulate how a browser must do its job, resulting in the same page looking different based on the browser.

Check how your site looks on different browsers; it’s a simple task and should be done at no extra cost.

Mistake Four: Your Site Looks Awful On Mobile Devices

It’s possible to avoid mistake three, but still forget to adapt the pages to be viewed on a small screen. By creating a “responsive site” for mobile users, the text enlarges when the page width is narrower and longer.

This is a primary focus for Google, so if you don’t create a good visitor experience on mobile, Google can ding your site and rank it lower.

Mistake Five: You Do Not Keep Your Website Or Computer Updated

This advice may seem eye-rollingly obvious, but it is one of the main ways businesses get hacked. When a weakness is identified in a software, the software company issues a patch to fix the problem. But because many businesses are slow to react, hackers are ready and waiting to jump in.

Patching is free and quick to implement. It’s every bit as important as locking the door to your business.

Two Big Visibility Boosters

Organic Search: “Organic search” describes traffic that comes to your website based on its natural ranking in search engines. The term is fitting when you think of it referring to things you build and grow from the ground up, organically, versus buying them ready-made. When it’s done right, it can mean a steady flow of visitors to your site and customers to your business.

The internet is full of people searching for funny cat videos, symptoms of illness and plumber recommendations. Companies like Google put an enormous amount of time and money into creating quality matches for all concerned.

By continuously “crawling” or analyzing websites, Google tries to match the intent of the person searching with the intent or theme of a particular website.

Here are a few tips to increase your searchability and drive more traffic to your site:

Google loves to see “authoritative” content. If site A has a paragraph comparing electric lawnmowers and site B has separate pages with good details on each electric lawnmower, then Google will favor site B.

Sites that do not have terms of service and privacy policies are downgraded.

Websites that load very slowly will be downgraded.

Google measures visitor engagement. If people arrive at your site and immediately leave, they must not have found the site interesting or maybe the page was broken. Then again, if they find your material engaging and stick around, Google figures that this site should rank highly, and they’ll maybe even rank you higher in the future.

Paid Search: When you hear terms like “paid search,” “search engine marketing” and “pay per click,” they all pretty much mean the same thing: you pay for more eyeballs on your content.

Lots of paid-search sites will be happy to take your money, like Google, Microsoft Ads, Facebook and so on. Below are the main moving parts with paid search.

• You decide what terms or “keywords” you want to be found for.

• You decide where you want your ads shown.

• You decide how much you’re willing to pay for this visibility.

• You create little ads that either have just a few lines of text or include images.

• If people click on your ad, you need to decide where they should be taken.

With more than 2.14 billion people reported to have made purchases online in 2021, there is no time to delay in putting yourself and your business in the best position possible. To help with that, you now have one more arrow in your quiver—one more capability that separates you from competitors.

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