So you’ve decided to try selling your products online. Congrats! The world of eCommerce is becoming more and more accessible to small businesses, like yours. When it comes to online marketing in Cleveland, however, things aren’t quite as simple. The following is an in-depth guide to help you succeed in your online marketing efforts in Cleveland.

1. Create a Great Web Site

When it comes to creating an effective online presence, many businesses think that having a functional website is enough. While having a functional website is certainly important, having a sleek, attractive website is also important. According to HubSpot Blogs’ research, having a great-looking website will increase your conversion rates by 41%.

Think about your audience when creating your website. What do they need to know about your company? What do they want to learn about your company? The answers to these questions will help you build a website that is both functional and attractive.

2. Optimize For The Search Engines

Did you know that Google is the most visited website in the world, followed by YouTube and Amazon? YouTube has over a billion users, and Google gets about 5.6 billion searches per day. For search engine optimization (SEO) purposes, you need to make sure that the content on your website is relevant to users’ search queries and that your website is structured in a way that search engines can easily find and index your content. This means that you should use keywords throughout your writing, and you should make sure that your website’s pages are well-linked to one another.

You also need to make sure that your online marketing efforts are mobile-friendly. Since 2016, Google has prioritized mobile search over desktop search. In 2018, 56.2% of Google searches took place on mobile phones. That’s a clear indication that people are starting to rely more heavily on their phones for search queries rather than desktop computers. To put it simply, if your website isn’t mobile-friendly, your SEO will suffer.

3. Get A Domain Name And Launch Website

Did you know that having a domain name is pretty important for your website’s SEO? According to SEO Sherpa, having a professional-looking domain name will increase your conversion rates by 23% and having a.com domain name will add another 9% to your conversion rates.

The advantage of having a.com domain name is that it’s easily recognizable and memorable. If someone is searching for your product and finds it difficult to remember the exact name of the company, they may click on a word or phrase to find the exact website they’re looking for. For example, if ShoeBiz.com is a shoe website and you are also running a shoe company, but you don’t have a website, someone searching for’shoes’ might click on your company name to find your website.

If someone types in the address bar of their browser what they’re looking for, they’ll see a website’s URL (Uniform Resource Locator). This is the same as a phone number with a leading 1 hung off the end. For example, if your website is www.MyCompany.com, when someone clicks on the link in their browser’s address bar it will take them to www.MyCompany.com.

This is important for two reasons. First, it lets your website’s visitors find your website quickly and easily. Second, it helps search engines correctly understand your websites’s content. If you’ve ever shopped online, you’ve likely noticed that some websites will pop up when you search for a product. These websites usually have the “google seal” of approval due to their impressive SEO.

4. Build Links

Did you know that a backlink is a link from one website to another? Backlinks are important for SEO purposes because when a webmaster finds your website in the search results, it means that other websites have recognized your website as being relevant and important. When other websites link to you, it’s called “link building.”

There are two primary ways to gain backlinks. One is to create useful and informative content for other websites. For example, if your business specialises in software and you’ve established yourself as an authority in your field, you could write an article for a popular news website explaining the importance of having a robust office suite for effective document management. Or if you’re an eCommerce store, you could write an article on the benefits of being able to track purchases from multiple devices.

The second way to gain backlinks is to participate in online discussions about relevant topics. For example, if you sell shoes and you want to gain backlinks, you could start a blog post series discussing different types of shoe-related topics. You could also join discussion forums related to your business or industry and start contributing the articles. Doing this gives you the opportunity to expose your expertise and establish yourself as an expert in your industry.

5. Set Up Email Marketing

Did you know that around 40% of American adults use some type of social media platform? That’s a fairly large chunk of the population. With that many people potentially available to reach, you could start an email marketing campaign to grow your business.

Unlike social media platforms, such as Twitter and LinkedIn, email marketing is a bit more personal. You can send out an email to a smaller group of people (such as those who have signed up for your email list) with a special offer or with information about your product that may be of interest to them. This is a perfect opportunity to get someone to do a trial run of your product or service without the pressure of having to sell it to a large audience. You can also use email marketing to follow up with someone who has expressed interest in your product but didn’t make a purchase right away.

6. Measure The Results Of Your Online Campaign

Now it’s important to measure the results of your online marketing efforts. To start, you could use google analytics to track the number of new visitors to your website and the demographic information of those visitors. You can also use Hootsuite to track the results of your social media marketing and analyse the activity on your behalf. Finally, you can use Salesforce to track the results of your email marketing campaigns.

Measuring the results of your online marketing efforts is important because it allows you to determine what’s working and what needs to be changed. If you don’t measure them, it’s difficult to tell whether or not your efforts are paying off. Once you do start seeing positive results, it’s time to celebrate!

7. Continue To Improve

Once you’ve started seeing some positive results from your online marketing efforts, it’s important to continue to improve. Sometimes, businesses will see a spike in traffic or engagement and then it will gradually drop off. To prevent this, you need to continue to implement new strategies and track the results of your efforts. The important thing to keep in mind is that you’re not going to reach perfection quickly. It’s a continuous process of trying new things and measuring the results of your efforts to continually improve your performance. That’s why the job title of “online marketer” can be rather ambiguous. In most cases, it’s a combination of SEO, content strategist, and project manager rolled into one.

8. Be Proactive In Your Online Marketing

Proactive engagement is important in all aspects of life, but especially in online marketing. You need to be constantly thinking about new ways to connect with your audience. If you’ve been doing SEO correctly, you’ll already have a significant audience that is specifically looking for your product or service. However, that audience may not know how to find you. To get the most out of your SEO efforts, you need to be actively involved in growing your business and connecting with your audience through various channels. This includes:

• Creating more content (blog posts, articles, etc.)
• Participating in online communities (i.e. forums, Reddit, etc.)
• Monitoring SEO performance and making changes as needed
• Adding keywords to your content
• and so much more

By taking an active role in your business’ online marketing, you’ll be able to ensure that your SEO is working hard for your business, and not just for marketing purposes.

9. Make Sure You Follow The Right Channels

Did you know that some SEO channels are more effective than others? For example, video content is extremely effective when it comes to getting attention and engaging audiences. According to HubSpot Blogs’ research, videos increase click-through rates by 72% and landing page conversions by 55%. That’s a massive uptick!