10 ways to promote and advertise your business

According to a 2019 SEO research report from BrightEdge, 53% of all website traffic comes from organic search results. What’s more, Ahrefs found that 91% of pages get no organic Google search traffic.

These data points demonstrate how successful well-optimized content is at capturing large portions of targeted organic traffic. They also show how many websites are producing content and seeing zero results—all due to ineffective SEO.

To capture high-quality organic traffic, it’s important to invest in targeted and updated SEO techniques. On a basic level, this means starting with keyword research and on-page SEO. Here are some essential steps to get you started:

• Identify target keywords. Use keyword research tools like Google Ads’ Keyword Planner to find keywords you can target to drive customers to your website. Evaluate based on relevance, competition, and search volume.

  
  

• Prioritize keywords. Select keywords that have high demand, have low to medium difficulty, and match user search intent.

  
  

• Analyze search engine results pages (SERPs). Manually review the SERPs to see what sites are ranking for your main keywords and identify how they structure their content.

  
  

• Create a content calendar. Put together a calendar to write content for each of your keywords.

  
  

• Write SEO briefs. Create a separate SEO brief for each keyword you want to target. Include the primary keyword, on-page SEO guidance, and an outline based on what you learned from your manual SERP analysis.

  
  

• Implement on-page SEO tactics. Use your keywords in the title, meta description, headers, URL, and content.

While creating content around your primary keywords is essential to achieve search engine rankings, it’s only half the battle. SEO also includes off-site and technical tactics. Once you’re ready to dive deeper into SEO strategy, follow the steps in The Beginner’s Guide to SEO from Moz.

While organic search is an excellent investment, it’s also a long-term play. It often takes months of posting quality content to produce results. If you’re looking to get in front of your target audience immediately, consider a Google Ads campaign.

According to WordStream’s 2023 Search Advertising Benchmarks report, the average click-through rate for paid campaigns across 23 of the most common verticals is 6%. For restaurants and food, the click-through rate is almost 9%. This shows that consumers with specific search intent click on Google’s paid advertising listings.

When starting a Google Ads campaign, Google offers several features to help you maximize your ad spending for optimal results. For example, you can set parameters to target specific customers and demographics and filter out those you don’t want to see your ads.

You also have full control over when your ads run, your keyword bid price, and your total budget, and you pay only when someone clicks on your ad. Other helpful features to review include frequency capping to prevent overexposure to ads, content targeting for increased relevance, and metric monitoring like conversion tracking for quality control.

Social media users move fast. If you don’t hook your audience within the first one to 2 seconds of your post, video, or caption, potential customers will scroll on. TikTok’s Creative Center reinforces the idea that the first 2 seconds of a video are critical and can make or break an ad.

When planning your social media content, pay special attention to the hook and give viewers an incentive to keep watching. Make sure it’s undeniably interesting. Create multiple hooks. Test your hooks. Take the time to learn what interests your viewers, then lean into your findings.

Achieving organic reach on any social media platform is a dream come true. You can take your content further in several ways with paid opportunities across social platforms.

The social media platform where you choose to advertise most will largely depend on your target audience. If you’re comfortable and familiar with creating video content, TikTok is worth exploring further.

A 2021 TikTok and Neurons global study found that 99% of the time, users are fixated on their devices when a TikTok ad is playing, and that they are fixated only 76% of the time when watching ads on other platforms.

One reason for this may be because of TikTok’s unique Spark Ads option. Spark Ads let brands boost organic posts made by other creators. In other words, Spark Ads are paid promotions of user-generated content (real customers talking about something like a cool new product, restaurant, or store). A 2023 TINT report found that consumers rank authentic user-generated content as the most trustworthy content, especially compared with staged user-generated content and branded content.

As mentioned earlier and confirmed by Google’s Raghavan, consumers are turning to social media platforms more and more to search for product recommendations, local restaurants, and cool stores near them.

Social media platforms are also leaning heavily toward improving their search capabilities. TikTok, for example, recently expanded the maximum caption length to 2,200 characters to allow users to optimize for search. Instagram’s caption length is also 2,200.

When posting a picture or video to your profile, you should also always create a full, descriptive, and compelling caption that includes your top keywords and relevant hashtags.

A 2021 Milestone Research report found that 23% of all digital traffic comes from local search. That’s a hefty number, considering there are 8.5 billion searches a day on Google, according to 2022 tracking from Internet Live Stats.

Local consumers search every day for recommendations on where to eat, where to get groceries, and what local products to buy. Investing in local SEO is an excellent way for small business owners to capture new customers and edge out competitors.

For example, a local coffee shop in Austin, Texas, could optimize its content to drive more local foot traffic by first ensuring that it has a complete and accurate Google Business Profile. This coffee shop could also optimize for local search by targeting keywords like “coffee shop in Austin” or “Austin coffee shop” in their website content, meta tags, and descriptions. Additionally, the coffee shop owners could encourage satisfied customers to leave positive reviews on their Google Business Profile listing, as positive reviews help boost visibility in search results.

While it’s essential to optimize your website and Google profile for local search, it’s also wise to target your social ads to a local audience.

Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok have all recently updated their ad platforms to include local targeting options. This means that when you run a social media ad, you can opt for it to appear only to prospective customers who either reside in your area or are currently visiting your community.

Not only does local targeting help drive foot traffic to your store, but targeting local patrons through social media advertising is also more cost-effective. Instead of advertising to everyone, you’re paying only for ads to be served to people who can feasibly visit your store.