Every day I work to find new ways to be discovered online. For nine years,  I have created many online products. Being in the business of helping others to increase his/her web presence enables me to learn new ways to increase mine.

One of my favorite social media blogs, Social Media Today, generally has thoughtful and easy solutions to getting myself out there.

Gregory Brey wrote the following post:  “Increase Your Web Presence: Five Things You Can Do Today”:

“There’s only so much time in a day to get things done.  You must pick your shots in order to increase your web presence.  Here are five challenges that can take minimal time out of your day.

Claim or creat your Google Places account.  Google Places or Google Local is constantly changing.  Once your place is claimed, make sure to enter in your company description.   In your description, Google allows you to link to anything.  Make sure your company description is using keywords that link back to your site.  Challenge: Add three images or claim your business listing and link your Place to your Google Plus page.  Many companies forget this step.

Create a Google Plus page.  There are a lot of people who have created a Google Plus page, but they don’t actually use it or create a page that works.  Much like the Google Places page, Google Plus allows you to link to your site as well.  This is a big step to help increase your web presence.  If you create a following on Google Plus, it can affect Google searches.  Everyone who has a Gmail account has a Google Plus account (whether they know it or not).  In a nutshell, Google wants to tailor search results to the interests and likes of individuals.  For example, pretend person X follows your company, and is friends with person Y.  Person Y will be more likely to see your company on a Google search because they are connected indirectly to your business through person X.  Challenge: Create a Google Plus page that represents your company and directs visitors to media that you want them to see.  Link back to your site.  If you have a page already, share a blog post on a relevant community page.  This will help increase your +1’s.  (Some argue that Google’s evil plan is to take over the internet

Pre-schedule posts on your social media sites.  Do you have a content calendar?  Do you know what events you will be attending?  Or even news that you have read that pertains to your company?  Get those posts scheduled out.  There are tools such as Hootsuite that do this very well.  Pre scheduling posts can save lots of time, but don’t sound automated.  Challenge:Schedule one week’s worth of Facebook/Twitter/Google Plus posts.  Depending upon how many channels you are on, it could take about an hour to do this.

Like or follow a new business.  Open up the local newspaper or magazine.  Find a company that is doing great things, and like their page.  You never know what can come from liking or sharing another companies’ social media content.  After all, Facebook is considered the new word-of-mouth marketing.  Try to find companies that aren’t competitors but might share the same fan base.  This is especially important for Facebook, as posts are visible to the public. Challenge: Write on another business page congratulating them on recent work, or an award they won.

Optimize your site’s content.  Make sure you have search engine optimization tools set up on your site.  Sit down and pick a page to optimize.  Link to your other relevant pages with keywords.  Challenge: Pick one page to optimize per day, including the Title and Meta tags.  Do this once a day, and before you know it your whole site will be optimized.  This is a big step to help your web presence.

Each of these can take less than ten minutes to accomplish if you have a good plan lined up.  Numbers three and five might take more time depending upon how in-depth you would like to go.  They all sound fairly basic to do, but sometimes you need to break things down to simple tasks to accomplish the bigger picture.  Try the challenges identified and over time you will increase your web presence.”

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