9+ Essential Guides To Increase Search Visibility For Businesses Online.

Well done – you have done it! You have put time, effort and resources into getting your business up and running online. But where are your customers?

They should be flocking to your new website and buzzing to contact you based on your online presence? If you are not seeing the results you hoped for then you may be lacking search visibility.

Search visibility is absolutely important if you want to make sure your customers and target audiences are actually finding you online.

In this article – we will help you build your search visibility and get more customers by uncovering the following:

What is search visibility?
How is search visibility calculated?
How can I check my search visibility score?
What is good search visibility?
Why is search visibility important?
How do you improve search visibility?

By the time you reach the end of this article – you will have everything you need to elevate your business to a whole new level in the digital marketing world.

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What Is Search Visibility?

If you were looking for a business or a company online – how would you go about it?

The chances are that you do not have their homepage URL memorised hence you are off to the search engines like Google, Bing or Yahoo to look them up.

In short – search visibility also known as search engine visibility or SEO visibility is a way to gauge how easy it is for people to find your business on search engines.

Search visibility is the purpose behind Search Engine Optimisation – SEO.

SEO is all the marketing tactics you implement to appease the search engine algorithms so that they may show your business organically for free on the search engine results page – SERP.

Further Reading: How to Write a Good Meta Description for SEO

How Is Search Visibility Calculated?

When it comes to Google – no expert is entirely sure exactly what goes into your search visibility calculation or how each factor impacts your score.

However in general – search visibility is a percentage based on the following:

1. How You Rank For Your Targeted Keywords

This means if you did show for the right keywords then you have targeted your keywords through your web content and how high up were you on the SERP?

For instance – the first organic result ranks number one and so on.

2. Estimated Number Of Impressions

The search engine’s way of asking – of all the times you could be showing organically for your keywords – how often did someone actually see your listing on the SERP?

Impressions only count if they are seen by the user or enquirer therefore you first need to rank in order to gain any impression.

3. Expected Click Through Rate – CTR For Your Keywords

This is the search engine’s estimation of how often someone clicks on your organic result.

It is one thing to rank and get an impression but the final leg of the search visibility race is pulling in that free click.

For instance – if your search visibility score is 0% – this means none of your pages rank high on the SERPs – the top 50 spots.

If your search visibility score is 100% then you own all the ranking positions for your keywords.

Although this score is pretty much impossible but we will get into the search visibility score you should target for further on.

Further Reading: Get Traffic to Your Website Fast

How Can I Check My Search Visibility Score?

Just imagine how complex the calculation gets since you have to measure different keywords, terms and keyword phrases all with different levels of ranks, impressions and clicks. Yes – a massive Headache!

Fortunately – the math is done for us by the search engines. You can check your search visibility score using free tools like Google Search Console or paid platforms like Ahrefs.

What Is Good Search Visibility For Your Small Business?

The best part is there is no real benchmark guide for search visibility because it varies by industry and individual cases.

What we do know is that Google, Bing, and other search giants run a tight ship.

In fact – research have found that it is rare to see a business with a search visibility score above 40%.

So if you start off with a score of 10% then your business is still doing pretty amazing.

Our recommendation would be – to have an open mind about starting low, track your performance as you go and as you improve over time – you will have a better idea of what is realistic for your specific business.

Why Is Search Visibility Important?

Other than making sure people actually see your business on the search engines – search visibility plays a major role in the success of your business both on and offline.

Have a look at these statistics that explain why search visibility is important for any business:

61% of businesses say improving SEO and growing their organic presence is their number one marketing priority.
Nearly 90% of consumers search online before making a purchase either online or in-store.
On average- organic search contributes up to 53% of a business’s overall website traffic.
75% of searchers never move on to the second page of search results.

When you focus on search visibility – not only are you ensuring your presence on the SERP to keep up with the competition but more importantly to rank higher and catch those target audiences with shortened patience and an ever-changing search results page.

Further Reading:Create Engaging Content for Social Media

Why Did My Search Visibility Drop?

If there is a drop in search visibility then it could be the result of a number of factors making it a bit difficult to diagnose but here are a few possible causes:

Your ranking has dropped.
An algorithm change occurred in the search engines.
You added or removed some targeted keywords from a Campaign.
You migrated to a new domain – including migrating from HTTP to HTTPS
You changed, added or removed a search engine from a Campaign.

Essential Guides To Improve Search Visibility

Now you know why you must increase the search engine visibility for your business. And with so many factors playing into your search visibility – it can be daunting to know where to begin.

We have prioritised these essential tips to guide you through the process. They are in no order of importance since all of them are equally important to ensure maximum search visibility for your business.

1. Start With SEO

There is no secret that SEO plays the most major role in your search visibility. You do not have to be an SEO expert to get a head start on optimisation for your web content that will catch the attention of the search engines’ algorithms.

Here are a few things a platform like Google or Bing would look for when it comes to your SEO performance:

Your website is mobile-friendly or responsive.
You have the relevant keywords on your web pages.
Your webpages load at a speedy rate for a great user experience—regardless of the device used by them.
You have high quality images and/or engaging videos that also load fast.
You are a reputable business.

There are plenty of free online keyword research tools that will help identify what words you should include on your pages but we will get into that later.

According to Google announcement that – their page experience signals in ranking was rolled out in May 2021. The new page experience signals combine Core Web Vitals with their existing search signals including mobile-friendliness, HTTPS-security, and intrusive interstitial guidelines.

To start off – try a free landing page analyser to get insights on aspects like load time and mobile friendliness.

Next thing to do is to check that your images and/or videos are not blurry or buffering too long and make a note that smaller the file size the faster it will load.

As far as your website being reputable – that will be a SEO component called domain authority. In order to build domain authority – you need to keep consistent, accurate information flowing on your website with reputable sources linked.

Further Reading: How to Write Good Title Tags for SEO

2. Create Keyword Rich Web Content

When you have blog posts, articles, landing pages, studies, guides, FAQs and more positioned around your core keywords then this helps build your domain authority and provides more opportunities for search engines to index your site on the results pages for relevant searches.

This also projects your business as thought leader which can help you rank for terms outside of just your direct products and services.

Conduct a thorough keyword research and be sure to include popular keywords on all your website’s pages—from your homepage to the contact page.

Do not go crazy or force these keywords since that would be known as keyword stuffing which will hurt rather than help your search visibility.

Since Google crawls your site for relevancy to searches therefore try to include your keywords naturally as part of your web content to help give your search visibility a leg up.

A good way to start is by publishing one blog article per week that is centred on an individual target keyword. Each blog’s keyword can connect back to your business’s overall purpose.

For example – if your business does kitchen remodelling then you might write a blog centred on replacing sinks – the next one installing new kitchen tops etc.

3. Build A Social Media Presence

If people can find you on social media then they will expect to find you on the search engines as well.

Social media is a great way to connect to new target audience since you can post for free.

You may be able to access new customers who may not be active on search engines but find you on social media to later look you up on a search engine.

If everyone knew your brand name off the top of their head that would be too easy hence that is why leveraging social media posts to spark organic searches later is another hack for increasing your search visibility.

4. Create Your Google My Business – GMB Listing

Search visibility goes beyond the plain, old search results. You can also have organic listings pop up on map views or in the local business listing sections.

Setting up and optimising your Google My Business- GMB profile will allow you to show on these additional listings hence boosting your visibility.

We know that 64% of consumers use Google My Business to find contact details for a local business therefore getting listed here increases your chances of pulling in those high-value leads.

It is free, easy and only takes a few minutes to get going on Google My Business.

Further Reading: How To Optimise Images for SEO

5. Add Schema To Your Content

Schema allows the users and search engines to have a better understanding of what your page is about thus giving Google a great relevancy signal.

When Google fully understands your page and its contents then it will be able to match that page to the appropriate queries.

Adding schema to your pages is a simple way to increase search visibility and click through rates – CTR.

The FAQ schema presents answers to questions directly on the SERP which draws the user’s eye and the clicks.

6. Structure Your Content Appropriately

Having users to stay on your website longer can translate to higher rankings because of the relevancy factor therefore it is important to have a logical structure to your content.

Consumers do not want to stay on a page that is not pleasing to the eye or where information cannot be found easily.

To offer a good user experience – always structure your content with the appropriate H1 and H2 headings that give a page a clear format. Consider adding anchor text or a navigation menu to make it easier to navigate a long webpage.

Although these tweaks would not have a direct impact on your search visibility but it would have an impact on how the user behaves on your site.

This is a huge trigger for Google and other search engines about which site deserve the higher ranking for a query.

7. Improve Mobile Readability

Despite of a strong push toward delivering an immense mobile and device friendly experience, marketers are still creating text as if the user is reading it on a desktop.

We set it in small fonts, there are insufficient spaces between lines and we write sentences that are too long. All of these things make the content look uninviting on a small screen.

And in the age of social media presence where content is constantly being shared across mobile devices – it is imperative your content is optimised to be mobile and device friendly.

Given how much importance Google puts on the mobile UX, improving mobile optimisation can only benefit your rankings.

Here are some ideas on how to do it:

Increase the legibility of your content. Set it up so that users do not have to pinch to read it and ensure they can scroll and still get the gist of the information.
Improve mobile page speed.
And display all content without hiding any information behind accordions or other scripts.

Further Reading: How to Increase Conversion Rate and Reduce Bounce Rate on Website

8. Create Links And Earn Backlinks

Backlinks are a great way to demonstrate your authority and increase your search visibility. Backlinks are an indicator that other web pages find your site valuable enough to link to it.

Although earning backlinks is outside of your direct control because it is up to the discretion of another website’s SEO or editor but there are ways to monitor mentions of your brand online that can clue you in on backlink opportunities.

Google Alerts allows you to monitor key phrases that appear on the web and will notify you when that phrase or name has been mentioned.

If you set up an alert for your brand name – you can easily monitor when people write about your company.

If there is a mention but no link attached then you can reach out to the editor and ask for a link back to your site.

This simple gesture can go a long way in demonstrating your authority on a topic and driving your online search visibility.

Another way to ensure backlinks is by creating high-quality, authoritative content. Others will start to see the value of your work and link to your site. There are ways to tweak your content to demonstrate your authority.

9. Optimise Your Images

More goes into content than text. Multimedia is useful to break up long blocks of text and it helps to explain a concept in another way which provides value to the user.

Images are great additions to any web page but it is also important to optimise them. When you upload an image – make sure to pay attention to the names and formats of the image. Some content management systems will use the image name as the alt text by default.

Alt text is a detailed description of a picture that is useful for those with visual impairments and search engines that are trying to learn all they can about a page.

This small tweak will give your site a relevance boost. If your CMS does not use the file name as the alt text then ensure to add this on.

Adding a caption under your image can also provide value since it is another place to add a detailed explanation of the image to provide context to the user.

File format is important to ensure the page can load the images correctly. Large files can slow down page load times which can increase bounce rate if consumers have to wait too long.

10. Manage Online Reviews

90% of people read reviews before making a decision to buy or purchase plus reviews account for about 15% of the method Google uses to rank local businesses.

Therefore you want to be encouraging your customers to leave reviews and manage your reviews as they flow in either positive or negative.

First you could offer a referral program to encourage reviews. Next consumers spend nearly 50% more with businesses that respond to their reviews.

Therefore to grow and respond to your online reviews will help boost your search visibility efficiently.

Further Reading: How To Increase Conversion Using Video Content Marketing

11. Run A PPC Campaign

It is no secret that PPC works hand in hand with SEO and when you run a PPC campaign you are ensuring that your business shows up on the SERP via a paid ad.

From here consumers will see your business then search your brand name or look for that same search later on.

The odds are that your target audience is not going to convert right away off the first search they do. This is because consumers need to see information about a business at least seven times before taking any action.

Therefore as you try and grow your SEO visibility – running a PPC campaign can act as a safeguard to ensure you show one way or another for every search thus increasing your overall search visibility.

12. Take Your Search Visibility Initiatives Offline

Do you like the idea above then you want to spark an interest that starts an offline and eventually moves onto SERPs.

Leverage print ads to increase your brand awareness so that consumers will search for you later.

Another low-cost idea is to host events or partake in planned events in your community to get your name out to the public and onto SERPs’.

Diving head first into offline marketing tactics will trigger people to search for you later thus growing your search visibility.

Get Started With Your Increased Search Visibility And Be Seen On Search Engine Report Pages.

The beauty of search visibility is that you can take these low-cost ideas to yield increased ROI and you will be driving traffic to your website for free through organic listings.

Search visibility is not about a nice to have marketing tactic but a need to have for many small businesses and business owners in today’s world.

Now let’s get started and put these essential guides to the test and see your search visibility increase and reap the results on Search Engine Report Pages – SERPs’.

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