Written by Sherlock Holmes
These are strange times. We hope everyone is and stays healthy, that’s the most important thing! It is inevitable that COVID-19 and the measures taken will have an impact on daily life and within business. We hope the impact is not too bad and that we all get through the period well. We want to give everyone a heart to heart and therefore provide some tips that can be applied to online activities.
Website content
Get to work on your website. Write informative content and thus expand the website. Don’t know what to write about? Then Google your services/products and look at the very bottom for “related searches.” Another good tip is to go to trends.google.com and enter some search terms. See if there is an increase over the last period or just a decrease, you can also find related terms. Or find out what questions are asked the most by (potential) customers and write information about them. New pages and additional informative content contribute to findability. Do pay attention to quality and make sure the content is useful to your ideal visitor.
If your content is optimal, check if the website has issues such as broken links, missing titles, descriptions and so much more. Can’t figure it out? We at Sherlock are happy to help. On average, websites that make the changes see a nice increase in Google results.
Links
Have you ever worked on your links? Links are important to Google. Do you work in an industry where the visual is important? Then start a Pinterest account and pin photos from your website. Pinterest sends your SEO authority through each pin to your website. Businesses such as coaches, beauty salons, hairdressers and fitness centers as well as gardeners benefit. Do you often work with a number of regular partners? Then reward them by mentioning them on your website with a link to their website (and ask for a link back), this is called link exchange.
Online advertising
Are you advertising online already? Stopping campaigns altogether is often not necessary, this obviously depends on your business. Keep monitoring the campaigns, especially during this period, and make immediate adjustments as needed. For each campaign, see what the revenues are and adjust campaign budgets accordingly. Are you seeing an increase in traffic (and associated costs) and are sales also increasing? Then consider increasing budgets. However, if you see more traffic with more costs but fewer sales, reduce your budgets (temporarily) and/or pause certain portions of campaigns. If there are changes that directly affect (potential) customers, adjust the ads accordingly. Consider mentioning modified opening hours, certain precautions or how contact takes place (by phone rather than face to face)
Reviews
Are you active in retail or e-commerce? Then call or e-mail all your customers and ask for a recommendation for your products or services. Of course, all companies can ask their customers for references. You can do this in forums, on your own website or through websites such as 2ndhand, marketplace and Ebay. But don’t forget Facebook and Google, either. Ask your customers to write a recommendation for your business on Google My Business or Facebook. There is also “online reputation software” that will take all the manual work off your hands.
Google My Business
Don’t have a Google My Business page yet? Or is it not filled in properly? Then this is the time to do something about it. Create and/or complete a Google My Business page as completely as possible. As described above, ask customers for reviews since these can also become visible again in the search engine.
Hopefully the above advice will help you move forward during this difficult time and we will all get through this together. Do you need advice or would like to talk about the above tips? Sherlock is open as usual and we are available by phone and digitally. We are happy to help you.
