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5 Ways to Improve your Web Presence (while isolated and wearing pyjamas)

Not wanting to make light of the potential devastation of Covid-19, here are some tips for simple things you can do on your business site if you find you have some time up your sleeve while self-isolating.

Imagine the joy of ticking tasks off your list – here’s an easy guide to doing your best while the world is taking a breath. Its a best practice list for admin tasks, virus or no-virus, so keep this list handy and you can administer monthly, or as often as you can.

Set up (or update) Google my business

Google likes you to play in their sandpit, so, if you’ve not done so already, set up a Google My Business page and fill it out like a demon:

  1. List out your services
  2. Add photos to catch attention
  3. Get your clients and customers to add reviews (Google My Business gives you an easy link you can send to clients – their reviews go straight onto your page and feature in your search results) – it’s as easy as GMB.

Here’s our guide to setting up a google my business page

BOOSTING LOCAL SEARCH
Google My Business is great for local search – you’ll be ready next time someone types in ‘tap dance classes near me’ / ‘aerial yoga studio near me’ GMB feeds more information into your google maps listing. It’s essential for retail or eCommerce, but just as important for all businesses as you’re posting information direct to google.

Google yourself

The best way to see how you’re doing digitally is to open an incognito window* on a browser and google yourself
(*using an incognito window, or clearing your browser history should be a fresh new search on google, not clouding the results with your search history or location)

SERPs: Search Engine Results Pages
Take a look at the SERPs – the search engine results pages and look at it with these things in mind:

  1. Are you your best-self online?
  2. Are your services showing as they should?
  3. Are you telling the right story?
  4. What else is in the results area when you google your own business name/ your name / your favourite keyword?
  5. Are those other entities direct competition?
  6. What are they doing differently?
  7. How can you use this information to your benefit?

GOOGLE SUGGESTS:
As you type into the Google search bar, you’ll see suggested keyword phrases trying to guess your intention – these are phrases that are used regularly, and, are a good way of prompting new thoughts about your keywords.

What other terms are suggested as you type yourself or your services into the google search bar? Are these suggested keywords that are relevant to your service or business which you can work into your content?

LINKEDIN PROFILE:
Googling yourself will most likely bring up your LI profile first as it is such a large entity with enormous ‘Domain Authority’ (it’s big, well used, well linked-to, and has been around since Adam wore short pants and posted a selfie about it). Get to work on your LinkedIn profile:

  1. Make sure it’s is up to date
  2. Post to LinkedIn – upload the juiciest excerpts from your blog posts and link back to your site.
  3. Spend some time on it, update it, play in their sandbox for a while. LinkedIn preferences people who use it alot. Even logging in every day pushes you up in the preference stakes.

REVIEWS – Bring back that loving feeling…

I mentioned in the google my business paragraphs above that GMB have a great link for adding reviews. Why not write a blog post about how fantastic are reviews for all of us: they help other people find services that you’ve found immensely helpful.

Ask your clients and customers to please take a moment to write out the following:

  1. What was the problem they had before using your service / buying your product
  2. How did your product / service help them
  3. How is life now?

This simple template helps other people recognise their own experience in the solution you’ve provided. They get a full narrative of before, during and the glowing afterglow.

Send them your google my business review link and even offer them an incentive – tell them why reviews are valuable, and suggest they ask their customers and clients to do the same.

Productise your services

WHAT DO YOU DO OVER AND OVER THAT CAN BE SOLD AS A PRODUCT?

Time away from the coalface is a great thinking opportunity – Are there some solutions you provide for your customers or clients that you do over and over, that can be written out as a process and sold as a product?

A great way to do this:

  1. Map out the service, step by step.
  2. Think up the special sauce that makes your service unique – the tips and tricks that are a great value add, specific to your clients and specific to you.
  3. FRUIT OF THE LOOM: Use the chrome tool ‘Loom’ to record yourself as you step through the service so your customers and clients can DIY.
    Another screen recording software, ‘Snag-It is free until June
  4. Sell this through ECommerce on your site or as a product on FaceBook.
  5. If you have gravity forms plugin, get the addon that allows you to add a checkout button on the form, so you can take a cash payment without additional eCommerce.
  6. Write a blog about the new product, add it to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Insta.
  7. Email your clients to say you’ve built this great service and they can buy it to have and to hold from this day forth. – give them a discount if they review it!

It’s the little things

Take some small steps at first – update your email signature with current social links, your website and a pithy subhead about your best services or your latest post. My email signature has my email address on it only. – Don’t. Be.Me!

Set up a whereby account for easy online meetings – you can personalise your room, and there’s no time limit, unlike (a free account with) Zoom

Write a schedule of blog posts about your best services – listing is delicious and easy and once you’ve got the topic, the rest is a doddle. Use another version of the simple reviews template above to write your blog:

  • What is the product or service?
  • Who benefits?
  • What was their life like before your product or service?
  • What is their life like since your product or service?
  • Pithy call to action

OUTSOURCE THE HEAVY LIFTING

Get a site evaluation from Love Communications. We’ll take a look under the hood and tell you:

  • Is your site working as well as it can?
  • Is your navigation reflecting all of your services
  • Are you making the most of keywords?
  • Is your site small and efficient or could it downsize a little because you’ve uploaded those HUUUUUGE photos direct from your camera!

We’ll look at your home page your navigation, to ensure your site is fully representing your services and talking to your audience. We’ll talk with you about who that is, where you are in your top keyword ranking and give you advice on how your site is presenting to the world and how you might do things better.

Our technical tests pinpoint ways to improve your site’s tech performance – its speed and size, its visibility to search engines and how easy it is for customers to use (the User Experience).

We give you fixes for these technical and user experience issues that you can choose to do yourself, hand over to us for some loving, shop it out, or send to your own tech team.  

Take Care and Be Kind

Mostly, though, the power of self-isolating is taking time out to take care: of yourself and of others. It’s staying well to be strong enough to get through this virus and caring for those who aren’t that fortunate.

It’s seeing the lighter side and smelling the roses – Imagine the reduction in emissions with fewer cars on the roads, the reduction in stress when people have enough loo roll and aren’t fighting for parking spaces. Rest and replenish, and use this list if you have the time and energy.

My labrador and I have been self-isolating for some time, so we know the drill – out of your pyjamas and make a good strong list whose items you can easily tick off… after one more cup of tea!

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