Being a member of Haslemere Chamber of Commerce gives you benefits that you might not realise. The Chamber is investing more in its website to improve the benefit to all of its members, but what does that really mean for you.
Benefits of the Member Directory to You
Having a complete and detailed membership listing helps your own business being found online and it helps your own website being found for what you do compared to others. A detailed and full description of your business on the Haslemere Chamber site will mean that if people search for you they will find your website and your listing on the Haslemere Chamber. The more listings in the Google search results page you have the further down your competitors will be pushed and less likely to be seen by your customers. Yes Google does put related businesses in the search results for a company!
The Power of Links for Google
Having a full and detailed listing including a link to your website also gives you an additional external link to your own website. This is really important in Google’s eyes as it ranks websites based on factors including how many other websites link to your website. Importantly the quality and relevance of those sites is taken into consideration by Google. The more relevant and the more links the other website has that links to you the most benefit you get. The Haslemere Chamber website is both very relevant to your business, as it talks about Haslemere and your business is in Haslemere, and it has a lot of inbound links and domain authority. This means that by having the link on your directory page to your site you will appear higher in the search results on Google for what your customers are searching for.
What you need to do to update your directory listing
Updating your listing is very simple. You have your own log in on this page – https://haslemerechamber.co.uk/login/ – so you can do it yourself when it is convenient to you. Simply log in with the email address that Chamber has for you (the one that The Bugle email newsletter get’s sent to) and if you can’t remember your password click the forgotten password link to reset it. More information on how to do this can be found here – https://haslemerechamber.co.uk/help-topics/
Remember to add your company logo and an image relevant to your business. This might be a photo of your premises, but it could just as well be a banner with your key marketing messages. If you have a social media profile on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook you could use the same banner you use on these accounts. When you are adding the text make sure you make it as informative as possible. Include all of your products and services and remember to add information about why people should choose to do business with you. Sell yourself!
How to get event more out of the Chamber website
The directory listing is important for your business visibility online but there are some other things that you can do, which don’t take much time but will help you and your business.
Post Events, Offers & Jobs on the website
Got an event coming up. Post it on the Chamber website. Again you can do this yourself by logging in. Its really quick and easy and you will get more people being aware of it. It could even be promoted in the email newsletter. Offers and Jobs work in the same way. You put the information up yourself and people can then find them on the Chamber site. Crucially also there is another link to your website from these pages. This again enhances your search engine optimisation. Why would you not do it?
Write a blog post
Writing a blog post for the Chamber website is an even better way of improving your online presence. You are an expert in what you do whether it be in helping people write a good will, choose the right pet food, by the right gift for a loved one; you know your business. By writing a blog post that helps your customers and posting it on the Haslemere Chamber website you will not only get at least one if not more additional links from the site, (and from a page which is about what you do so super-relevant), but you could see this blog post ranking on Google in its own right because of the Chamber’s domain authority.
We want to encourage all members to write blog posts / articles that will be helpful to their customers for posting on the Chamber website. Remember behind all those member companies are people just waiting to become your customer. If you need any help with coming up with blog post ideas for your business digital marketing experts Innovation Visual have offered to help members choose good blog titles.
What are you waiting for?
Many websites now charge for links or for posting your content. Being a member of the chamber means that you get all of this for free. It takes less time than you think to improve your directory listing and do some of these extra things like write a blog post. The benefit of doing these things last for a very long time so a small time investment now will help you a lot. With more and more people turning to search engines for answers to their needs every business owner should have improving their digital footprint high on the priority list.