Promotion of a corporate website

A corporate website is the face of a company on the Internet and performs several functions at once:

• Attracting customers through advertising and search engine optimization.
• Building and maintaining reputation.
• Communication with the media, delivering information to partners, investors and clients.

In order for the site to perform its functions correctly, it must be visible to network users, look presentable, contain high-quality and relevant content. For this, it is necessary to promote corporate sites.

The service of promoting corporate sites is in demand among individual entrepreneurs, large and small companies, popular and new brands. In this article we will tell you about the features of search engine promotion and optimization of company websites.

Features of the promotion of corporate sites

The site is the face of your company on the Internet. Outdated designs from the 90s, lack of unique information, broken links, or confusing menu structures can negatively impact your bottom line. Therefore, the content, design and promotion of the resource must be approached with all seriousness.

The general work plan is always the same:

• Collecting semantics and clustering (semantics correctly distributed across clusters is the basis of promotion).
• Correction of technical errors (broken pages, duplicates, cumbersome code).
• Solving problems with indexing (setting up robots.txt and sitemap, searching for mirrors, removing from imposed filters and sanctions).
• Working with the structure and navigation of the site and improving the overall usability of the site (take a look at the Cartier site – they have an absolutely inconvenient and complex menu).
• Editing texts and meta tags, optimizing content for keywords.
• Building up the link mass.
• Redesign if necessary.

When promoting, the sites of companies have their own characteristics:

• Your backbone of promotion is content. To post it on the site, there must be a corporate blog. And the blog needs to be filled with content – unique, interesting, readable. The texts should be written by a professional who understands the specifics of your products / services. The same requirements apply to photo and video content.
• The most complete information about the company is a guarantee of the trust of your partners, investors and clients. Add everything: addresses of your stores / offices, phone numbers, mail, directions, working hours on weekdays / weekends / holidays, details, history of the formation and development of your company, certificates, diplomas, gratitude, list of clients.

  Having a photo with a brief information to employees increases confidence. It is much easier for you to go to have a tooth treated if you are met not by a dentist wearing a mask, but by Petr Semenovich, an experienced dentist with 15 years of experience.

• External promotion consists in communicating and posting links on thematic forums of your industry, review sites, interviews, data for publication in the media. It is important for established companies to maintain customer confidence and respond quickly to negative mentions.

SEO promotion of a corporate website

It is divided into two stages: internal and external optimization.

Internal optimization of a corporate website

Adjusting the structure, improving the usability of the site by visitors (usability), writing and placing high-quality texts, introducing meta tags, checking the resource for viruses, broken links and duplicate pages, optimizing the code, correct layout, compiling a semantic core – these and other operations are concluded is the concept of internal optimization of a company’s website. Why is this so important? Let’s figure it out now.

• Before starting work on optimization, you should carefully work out the semantic core and select the most relevant search queries, on the basis of which the integrated promotion of the Internet resource will be organized (that is, the structure of the future site will be formed).
• All keywords should be in a readable form in all significant places on the site – in title, headers h1-h6, description. Include keywords in Alt tags of images.
• Don’t create complex structures. There should be no more than three clicks to any page of your resource.
• The site must be displayed correctly on any device and in any browser. This is called cross-browser and cross-platform layout. Today, consumers start browsing your site on one device, continue on another, and buy on a third. You must take care of the correct display of your resource on any platform and device.
• On each page it is useful to have special icons of social resources (Twitter, Vkontakte, Facebook, Google+, Moi Mir, LiveJournal and others) so that visitors can add any material they like to bookmarks or share via social networks.
• Content. Post only useful content on your corporate blog. Remember that users will not want to share the news that your accountant Nina Ivanovna is retiring or celebrating her birthday. But the fact that you have served a millionth client or are launching a new workshop will interest your partners, both existing and potential ones.

  In addition to being interesting, keep an eye out for uniqueness. Uniqueness less than 60% is a signal for search robots that the content is not copyright (you will definitely not be rewarded for this) The recommended uniqueness value is from 90%.

  We recommended that keywords and phrases be included in the texts. Remember that there should not be too many of them – otherwise it will be perceived as overspam, which can threaten with sanctions in relation to your site. The density of keywords should not exceed 7-10% of the total volume of the text.

• The presence of “broken” links that lead to nonexistent sections of the site and the absence or illiterate internal linking. These factors can also negatively affect the promotion.

  Clear your site of broken pages or create a “creative 404 page” so users won’t think the site isn’t working and will just go to the homepage or use search.

  Internal linking will allow you to keep the visitor on the site with other interesting materials and will gradually prepare your future client for sale. The presence of internal linking will have a positive effect on SEO, because it will increase the time spent on the site by the visitor, this shows the search engines that your resource is interesting).

External optimization of a corporate website

It consists in building up the link mass of your resource. To date, links are still taking part in the promotion. It’s just that today it’s not enough to buy 1000 links and add to this placement in 500 directories of organizations. Today it is much more valuable to get 10 organic links (than 1000 purchased ones) and be placed in 1, but good directory. External optimization today begins to enter our lexicon under the term “link building”. Let’s take a closer look at what it includes:

• Placement of the site in catalogs and ratings. Previously, such a service was popular – placement in 1000 site directories. Today you need to play not on quantity, but on quality. Place yourself in large catalogs and geoservices (Google Maps, Yandex.Maps, Yandex.Navigator, Yandex Directory, Google My Business, 2Gis). Placing and optimizing there will provide you with new clients.
• Getting eternal links from thematic sites. You can buy these links if quality resources will sell them. And you can get it for free. This method is called “guest blogging”. Choose a site for your topic and invite the blog author to write an article for him in exchange for a link to your site. 3-4 out of 10 will agree and this is a very good result.

  Remember that if your site is new, then in no case should you abuse the purchase of links on exchanges (moreover, in the case of a young site, it is better to abandon them completely). Search engines can impose sanctions for this.

• Interaction with users on social networks. Start a group for your business on a social network and gain subscribers. Most importantly, remember to post quality content and communicate openly with your audience. Place links to your site in the description, status or in the texts of posts. Search bots today value links from social networks.
• Working with negativity and reviews. Collect and respond to feedback from your customers in a timely manner. If you are praised and thanked, then do something nice in return for your customers. This makes them “brand advocates” – your strongest advocates against all ills.

  Negativity cannot be ignored. You almost never know who is leaving you negative feedback on social media or in the comments on the site. If you do not work it out, then the conflict can spill out beyond the zone under your control and play into the hands of your competitors. Remember the scandals with Aeroflot and the fat cat, or Aeroflot and the Megafon top manager. Here is an example of unspent negativity and going beyond the company’s social media.

The cost

The cost of services can be different. Plays a role: team experience, competition, region, site age and other factors. So, the cost of promoting a corporate website in Moscow can cost from 65,000 rubles per month of work. In the regions it is cheaper. It’s even cheaper to order from freelancers. But, the cheaper, the less chance of success. Remember that the main factor in pricing is the experience of the contractor. A good performer won’t come cheap.

Outcome

Promotion of a corporate website is needed to get more clients, build and maintain the company’s reputation, and open communication with partners. It is much easier to solve these problems with an optimized and correctly working website.