Module 4-Establishing Your Digital Presence Final LK

3. Search Engine Optimisation

When one speaks of a search engine Google immediately comes to mind and for good reason too. More than 70% of the world’s searches take place on Google. If so many billions of searches are taking place every day, how are people going to find our small website: https://solarlights966442987.wordpress.com/

Let us now take the two key words “solar lights” and search for them in the Google search engine: how many results do we get?

About 138 000 000 results ( in 0,70 seconds)

We can narrow the search down to South Africa only but this still gives you 10 pages of search results.

So you can appreciate how difficult it must be to appear at the top of the Google search engine on Page 1. How do companies like Lighting Warehouse, Builders Warehouse, Leroy Merlin and Takealot appear right at the top of the first page from the 138 000 000 results? The answer is : Search Engine Optimisation(SEO) and paid advertising. However getting to the top of a search page takes much time and effort and requires a budget for marketing.

For our purposes we will be concentrating on a few key features which will make us more visible and searchable:

Making your site distinctive

Getting others to link to your site

3.1 Making your site distinctive

Use very descriptive language when you write website content. Google values regular content updates and instead of using “solar lights” we can rather use “energy- saving” solar lights. The more you post on your social media sites and your blog the easier it becomes to find you. It is therefore a good idea to include a blog section in your website that should be updated regularly.

3.2 Getting others to link to your site

The more you are referred to, the more popular you become. Google rewards this popularity by placing your site higher up in the search engine results. If your tweet is retweeted or your Facebook post is shared and liked this adds to your site’s popularity which in turn places your site higher in the search engine results.

4. Devise an Online Sales Strategy

Online sales is no different from face to face sales. Customers have particular needs or wants and we try to meet these with enticing products and services. Customers will only buy from somebody or a website that they can trust. It is therefore important to remember that sales is about relationship building and selling online is about relationship building too. But how do you build a relationship with your customers online?

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