Tactics to Enhance Online Visibility in the Technology Field

In 2023, the digital age, your online visibility is key to securing traffic to your website. Creating a sustaiable online presence is heavily reliant on producing a high-quality, well-optimised website. You rarely discover a company or organisation that does not have one or a basic one.

Previously, TV and print advertising or traditional brick-and-mortar stores were classic ways of targeting consumers at various sales funnel stages. But, for the everyday consumer, who spends on average 399.5 minutes every day online, a subpar online presence cannot compete anymore; you can’t just match your competitors; you need to outdo them.

What is Your Online Visibility?

Online visibility is sometimes called an ‘online presence’. It involves how a business or brand exposes itself to potential customers online. The aim is to be discoverable, not hidden, to people who have a strong interest in your products or services. 

Your online visibility should be supported and actioned through a dedicated search engine marketing strategy. This would consist of strategic SEO and targeted PPC solutions. These two strategies aim to develop and regularly polish your online presence. 

When someone mentions your online presence, they refer to your website. No stone should remain unturned visually and technically on your site. It should combine engaging, concise content with a tactful technical strategy.

Critical website factors to consider when developing an outstanding online presence:

• Your website should be well-designed and functional. To maximise your online visibility, you should remember that your website reflects your company and brand, including its products and services. 

• Remember, your website appears on both desktop and mobile search engines. A whopping 56.96% of all time spent online is done on mobile devices, and a website inaccessible to mobile users will disgruntle many potential consumers. This could have dramatic implications for your business and sales.

• Content matters and can significantly affect how your website appears on SERPs (search engine results pages). Focus on creating quality, relevant, original, helpful content through blog posts and news articles covering the latest within the industry and closely related areas. Ensure these pieces are supported by keyword research and SEO best practices. This includes optimising your body text, titles, meta descriptions, alt text, and internal and external linking. If you’re not creating content, you’re falling behind. 73% of B2B marketers and 70% of B2C marketers use content marketing as part of their overall marketing strategy.

Dave Davies, Co-founder of Beanstalk Internet Marketing, says, “Content is what the search engines use to fulfil user intent.”

• • Technical factors are just as important, even though you can’t necessarily see them. Website speed, functionality and accessibility can affect whether a user stays on your website or not. It can also affect whether they decide to return and give your site a second chance. Websites should typically load within 3 seconds as 40% of visitors will leave a website if it takes longer which will effect your websites bounce rate. Functionality and accessibility are huge technical factors that effect your online visibility. Although not a direct ranking factor, improving things like your website content including headings, titles, alt text, readability, and how your website can be navigated by abso;lutley anyone no matter their needs make your site more functional and accessible. This provides a better user experience and increases the time a user spends on your website. 

   

  • Provide easy-to-understand contact and location information. In many cases, you will build remote relationships with clients and customers across the globe. In some scenarios, your location/s is necessary. An online user should never struggle to contact your business; make it easy for them to get to you. 

   

  • Optimise for search, research your audience’s online behaviour and become everything they need. This involves stepping into the shoes of your target audience and being the solution to whatever challenge, pain point or need they are facing. Perform thorough keyword and search term research to identify your audience’s common search behaviours—research who is already visiting your website, perform competitor analysis and look at social media insights to support your online campaign. 

   

  The Benefits of a Strong Online Visibility

  Many believe your online presence or visibility means a visually impressive website that looks great with flashy graphics. That’s lovely to look at, but what does it achieve? Other than a few oohs and ahhs from someone who may not even require your services?

   

  A strong presence or visibility on search results will work towards your business goals: 

  • Your online visibility produces an opportunity to increase your website traffic and grow your business. Through a killer SEM (search engine marketing) strategy utilising a combination of organic and paid search, your website and brand can become completely accessible and locatable.

   

  The key to increasing online traffic is being found on SERPs. It’s critical to be in the right place online, and appearing on page one of SERPs is the ultimate goal. This is because 75% of people will never scroll past the first page. 

   

  • Your online channels, SERP position and visibility, provide an indirect testimonial to your potential customers by showing off your reputation and authority. However, search engines like Google consider your website authority through different metrics directly affecting your SERP ranking. These metrics include backlinks; the backlinks from trusted, good quality websites that you have, the better your website authority will be.

   

  A successful backlink strategy can then result in an increase or SERP position. A page one (or even better, page one and position #1 result which secures 33% of all website traffic) shows total and utter domination of the search engine. This creates the idea that you are the number one source for information, products, or services relating to your industry – thus solidifying a positive online reputation.

   

  • It would be ignorant to avoid acknowledging that the online landscape is ever-changing, particularly in advertising. You should consider creating and optimising personal ads through Paid Search, Display, Video and even Social Media.

   

  Although social media is not directly related to your online presence, it can support your marketing efforts and ensure you are targeting the right people. PPC and social media ads target audiences through certain demographic factors. These include things like device usage, how they behave online, and the time of day they are most active. 

   

  • Improving the visibility of your business online can inform your future strategy designed to provide a faultless user experience. This is done in a few different ways.

   

  First, you can collect data on customer satisfaction levels led by behaviour patterns on your website. Then you can consider the overall intuitiveness of your website and team. This requires researching how the user behaviour patterns indicate the thoughts and emotions a user is experiencing whilst on your site.

  Using this data, you can update and improve your user experience, providing a seamless encounter with your site. A YouGov summarised study found that 94% of users no longer trust outdated sites.

   

  SEM Strategies in the Technology Field

  The technology sector is a complex, constantly evolving industry. It requires a well-thought-out and strategic search engine marketing strategy to improve online visibility.

  The common theme between technology companies and organisations is urgency and drive. The majority hope to become an enterprise-level business with accelerated company growth. If you’re hoping to disrupt the current technology industry and make a mark with your business, it will require a comprehensive technology marketing strategy.

   

  Search Engine Marketing

  SEM is a wider online marketing strategy encompassing organic and paid strategies. It aims to improve a businesses online presence and create better sales opportunities through increased traffic and authority.

  The technology industry is highly competitive. It’s unlikely that a startup or enterprise just taking the reigns of its marketing strategy will see any positive online performance without SEM.

  SEO (search engine optimisation) is an organic search strategy that is earned. PPC (pay-per-click) requires a budget to compete in Google Ads auctions. These auctions determine which paid advertisements appear for related search terms. 

  These strategies have completely different traits, results, and requirements but ultimately work towards similar goals. 

  Your technology firm must undergo critical website analysis to unlock a great PPC or SEO strategy that can create results. This includes fully auditing your website. A website audit is used to identify and highlight the parts of your website that require improvement and the parts that are or have the potential to perform well online. 

  You can also thoroughly audit your Google Ads (paid search/PPC ads). This will highlight things such as incorrect targeting and where you may be missing the mark within your ad copy, demographic targetting, scheduling, and geo-targeting.

  After auditing your website and existing PPC strategy (if any), you can begin the quick fixes, webpages without meta descriptions, incorrectly filled alt text, and meaningless ad copy. But, the real work comes after when it’s time to really discover who your audience is and their online traits.. 

  Many marketing professionals understand that marketing is about connecting with humans. Recite this, and your marketing mindset will naturally change and shift. 

Marketing is about connecting with humans.

Understand humans first, then platforms and technology.

— Daniel Murray (@Dmurr68) February 11, 2021

This should reflect within your content creation, product design and, critically, your paid advertisements (text ads, shopping ads, display ads etc.). Use your research time to understand how your audience behaves online and how they conduct searches. Use this to optimise both organic and paid strategies. These strategies, when used in a tangent, can dominate the sponsored search engine results and climb up the organic. 

For more information on SEM and, in particular, working with a SEM agency like ROAR, download your free guide here.

Crisis Management

Any technology organisation or business should have a set-in-stone strategy for crisis and reputation management. This aims to erase or minimise the fallout from forces beyond your technology organisation’s control. Scandals or lack of performance could see implications such as negative feedback, which can affect your reputation. Many crisis management teams find it beneficial to think of crisis management as a when not an if. 

When a crisis arrives, a team must be ready to tackle it head-on. They should provide relevant solutions and consider how to respond both publicly and to stakeholders. They should also consider the steps that will be taken to avoid a related future crisis. However, it’s just as important to be aware of the steps that will be taken to nurture and look after your customers after a crisis and as you and your customers move forward.

Brand Communication Strategy

Create a compelling brand communication strategy for your audience. The brand is the face of any business or organisation. When it comes to communication success, it lies in the opinion and impression left on a customer. 

To achieve this, your technology company must establish strict brand guidelines for creating a website, email, social media and company assets. This can include a brand palette, font, logos and how to use them. Details like this may seem like futile creative work to some. However, when focusing on ROI and visual results, it’s crucial to remember that your brand plays a prominent role in the long-term business game.

Using your brand palette will make your business recognisable to your customers. By using colour palettes, logos and messaging, your audience will associate your business with these. Once you have your palette, you can begin a communications strategy. This involves making visual assets for your brand’s social media, email marketing strategy and blogs. 

Are you stuck for ideas? Google and its search data are free; you just need to know where to find it; as PR professional Carrie Rose explains below, finding content ideas isn’t too tricky online.

The problem with social media marketing is content is being put in front of people not knowing if thats what people want to see.

Tip: use search data. People are LITERALLY searching for what they want to know/see

Type any keyword into google, scroll to “people also ask” and… pic.twitter.com/2Wyn6rgpfE

— Carrie Rose (@CarrieRosePR) July 24, 2023

PR

Marketing through tactical PR allows your business to have some control over how news outlets speak about your brand. 

This is considered third-party input into your marketing strategy. It plays a crucial role in further developing the awareness of your brand and increasing authority. PR is not only low cost but significantly increases the credibility of your brand. This is because PR is typically driven by honest opinions and reviews from people outside of your organisation. 

Since these are not direct from your company, many see them as a wholly unbiased reflection of your products or services. Research shows that 81% of consumers need to trust a brand before they consider making a purchase. Your business’s PR contributes to a positive, honest dialogue between yourself and your consumers, supporting your credibility. 

Amongst credibility, many PR pieces regularly feature a backlink from the content to your website. Backlinks are a pretty good indicator to search engines like Google that you are making waves online. This can result in them ranking your website higher. 

Functional Site

Losing customer retention on your website is a no-go for a technology company. The everyday internet user is not searching the web for a lengthy search process. They want and almost demand a quick, seamless experience. 

This includes a responsive website that performs just as well on mobile as on desktop. It should be easy to navigate, appear for the correct search queries, and provide unique value to users. Your website should undergo regular evaluation and maintenance. This ensures it performs well and produces an experience worthy of a conversion from your customer. 

3 Simple Hidden Gem Tactics to Begin Improving Online Visibility

Backlinks

Backlink strategy has many effects on SEO in general through increasing domain authority and credibility. Creating content is the best way to go about this. Some marketers use tactics commonly known as ‘backlink begging’ which is when marketers send out emails and communications asking for backlinks. Although, Justin Welsh has shown that this is not the only way to secure backlinks. 

We don’t talk enough about the SEO impact of creating content.

I’ve gone from 23 backlinks to 726 in 2 years with zero “backlink begging”.

The result has been a massive increase in my domain rating from 14 to 62.

If you don’t have a personal website, please build one. pic.twitter.com/I3LKUDssno

— Justin Welsh (@thejustinwelsh) August 9, 2023

Through 60 different keywords and briefs dedicated to one piece of content each. He achieved an increase in organic traffic by over 150%. The production of this content resulted in 723 additional backlinks, for which he began with 23

Helen Pollitt, Lead SEO at Arrows Up, says that “The best source of a link is a website that is both considered authoritative and relevant to your website.”  This means that ideally, backlinks should come from websites within your niche or with a high authority score themselves. For more on backlinks, check out our quick start guide to SEO backlinks.

Analytics and Tracking

Tracking and analytics should be your organisation’s best friend. However, implementing a robust tracking and analytics strategy to monitor your data and performance may initially seem too much work. You should consider the time (and budget) it will save you in the long run. Analytics and tracking are critical to avoid overspending in unnecessary areas and tracking the success or failure of your online marketing efforts, producing the results in black and white. 

Regular monitoring and reporting will help your organisation identify which areas of your digital strategy work and how to adapt to improve. Companies like Netflix are a great example of using website (and app) analytics to their advantage. By securing data from accounts, Netflix informs their personalised yet automated email marketing strategy. This is through suggesting new shows or movies to users and better informing the ‘recommended for you’ section. 

For more on website tracking and analytics, see our blog, accurate tracking and analytics in 2023.

Spy On Your Competitors

Spy on your competitors; when we say spy, we mean every take in every inch of their marketing strategy. In the digital marketing world, it’s easy for any business to spread itself too thin, whether you’re a technology bizz or within a completely different niche.

You should spy a little on your competitors instead of attempting to cover absolutely everything. Many marketing tools and software, such as SEMRush and Ahrefs, offer competitor analysis tools. These tools allow you to see what competitors are doing, when they are most active and how consistent they are. 

It’s important to note the old saying, quality over quantity. Sometimes the best strategy or course of action is small yet mighty. Take research, for example; visiting their website and reading their news or blog for insights can give your business many ideas to skate ahead of them online.

Our helpful blog, ‘outrank your competitors easily on Google in 2023’, details six tips for outranking your competitors. 

Our tailored and results-driven search engine marketing strategy has helped clients within technology, recruitment, fintech, insurance, and more grow their businesses and drastically improve online visibility. One of our clients has even seen an increase in quality leads of 211% thanks to our targeted PPC campaign strategy and an increase in organic traffic of 34.6% thanks to our highly focused, high-intent SEO strategy.

If these sound like the results you’re looking for, contact one of our digital specialists today to begin your online visibility journey.