Top Ten ‘Things To Do’ in January to control your brand online
Here are our top ten most important ‘housekeeping’ items for you to check are in place or update. A little effort up front at the beginning of the year will improve brand name search listings, how your primary information is displayed, how your site ranks and ultimately user experience.
It’s all about getting your business name on other sites that already rank well, so that when someone searches for you or your key words, these popular sites linking to you will feature in the first search results page. And therefore you will dominate the SERPs, and not any competitors or less relevant information…
These are all simple things you can set up and manage yourself with a little effort but big rewards:
1) Facebook and Twitter accounts.
From a business point of view these are the two most important and popular social media sites to be present on. So follow the simple online instructions to setting up an account and then make a note to post and reply to comments as regularly as you can.
2) LinkedIn company pages and employee pages.
As a social media site for connecting professionals LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to add much more company, product and service information than other social sites. So upload detailed company information and ask employees to set up their own pages and add as much company and job profile information as possible.
3) Google + account.
Another social media service, not as popular as Facebook and Twitter, but as it is a Google product it shouldn’t be ignored. Post on Google+ regularly and add images and detailed company information to improve your rankings and display listings.
4) Google Places and Bing Places.
Important for getting the best listing displays and user experience for local searches. Once these are done you won’t need to update unless you have new information to add. For more information you can read our blogs on how to set up Google Places and Bing Places.
5) Instagram account.
Instagram is a photo and video social network service. At a basic level you can just put up some company photos and then share these with your Facebook and Twitter accounts.
6) Pinterest account.
Very similar to Instagram as a photo sharing website. Set up one or two ‘boards’ with your company photos on for a basic account and presence.
7) YouTube or Vimeo videos.
Make a basic company video – even if it is just a 30 second long amalgamation of your main company images – post on YouTube and embed a link somewhere from your own pages.
8) Wikipedia entry.
If you work for a company that has a notable history you might be able to get a factual company page listed in Wikipedia. You may have to make a few attempts and rewrites as Wikipedia is in no way interested in promoting businesses but it is worth a try as your Wikipedia entry will be high in any search engine rankings and/or a link to your pages would be link gold.
9) Slideshow account.
Similar to the other business social media but here you can upload and share powerpoint presentations. If you don’t have a relevant powerpoint that you can upload then just create a simple one using the same company images and information used in any of the items above.
10) Industry Directories.
Compile a list of the most popular online directories listing companies like yours and add yourself to them. You can usually create basic listings for free and then monitor to see if it would be worth paying their fees for enhancement features.
It does look like a lot of work! But, you will find that a lot of information you need to input is repeated and once you have set up one account you can sign into other services using the same information. It is a good idea if you have the following information pre-prepared and make sure that you always use the same business location and contact details across all entries:
- Business contact address, email, phone numbers, opening hours and other basic information.
- Brief company description (100 – 150 words).
- Full company description (300 – 500 words).
- Individual products or services brief descriptions (100 – 150 words).
- Selection of corporate web logos, images and videos if you have them.
- Choose who will be the main contacts and administrators for the above accounts and keep a list of all login and passwords set up.
For any more information on these and other things you can do to control brand name search results and improve your listing displays please give us a call on 01225 863047.
