Running a business nowadays is pretty different to a few decades ago, when the best way to sell to people was on a face to face basis in a brick and mortar store. E-commerce has been on the rise for a few years now and the coronavirus and Covid-19 pandemic has only served to solidify its popularity, making this business model pretty future proof. Chances are, by now, you’ve created some sort of website for your equine business. But this isn’t the end of your journey. You’re still going to have to work hard to direct people to your business. Here are a couple of steps that can help you to achieve this.
SEO
One of the most important steps you should take when it comes to maximising traffic to your website is focusing on SEO. Chances are, you’ve heard this term thrown around a lot, but when it comes down to it, not a whole lot of people even know what SEO stands for or what use it is to a small business. To help with this, let’s start out by defining this term. “SEO” stands for “search engine optimization”. It is a common and popular business practice that works to optimise your website for search engine results pages. If you’ve done any online shopping yourself, you’ll be well aware of the process buyers generally go through to purchase an item. Generally, people will put a few keywords describing what they’re looking for into a search engine – most commonly Google. Google will then show the results that it deems most relevant for them. SEO will help to show Google what products you offer and ensure that your page is one of the first results to pop up on potential buyers’ screens. For an equine business, you can use SEO to ensure that your website is one of the first to appear when potential buyers type things like “horse shampoo”, jodhpurs, hay masks or anything else you might sell. The purpose of this? Well, when people shop online, they tend to click one of the first links shown to them and to make purchases with these sites. By missing out on the top three positions, you can lose your customers to competitors who are in the top three positions. The best way to carry out SEO within your business is to use a specialist SEO agency who can carry out the work on your behalf.
PPC
PPC stands for “pay per click” and is a form of paid marketing that countless business owners, large and small, engage with. Put simply, adverts for your website and products will appear in places you choose and you only pay for them each time someone clicks them. If you choose for your ads to appear in searches for “hay bails”, your website is likely to appear as the top link in paid search and you may generate more sales.
These are just a couple of options to take into consideration when you first start out with online operations. Each can direct a lot of traffic to your site and make you a lot of money! So, they’re more than worth investing in.
