9 Simple Tips to Market Your Coworking Space Online
Most coworking business owners find marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) activities daunting. It's difficult to blame them as we are usually scared of the things we don't know. Running a business is troublesome, so coworking space managers simply don't have time to learn marketing and SEO. Though, this knowledge is crucial if you are not ready to pay professionals for promotion.
This article reveals simple, yet quick and affordable coworking space marketing tips and strategies you may start to implement straight away to get the first positive results shortly.
Tips & Tricks of Marketing Your Coworking Space Online
Let's make sure that you have a bare minimum for the start.
- First of all your coworking space is beautifully designed, up and running.
- You have a live website that tells the story of your brand. Think of your Unique Value Proposition (UVP), coworking brand positioning. What differentiates you from the competitors and show this to the visitors. Everyone who lands on your web page should instantly understand the advantages of working with you and the value they get by becoming a member.
- You have installed these or similar tools: Google Analytics—along with getting heaps of statistical data on your resource behavior you will understand what pages are most/least popular. With this data, you will be able to make necessary improvements on time, while they didn't affect the overall website performance. Search Console—the tool helps to understand what keywords people use to find you, so you can double down on them in your ad campaigns and optimize your pages. Intercom (or similar app)—to capture lead information with messages and convert them instantly into customers.
How to Optimize a Coworking Space Website for Search Engines
Well, you are ready to proceed. Now make sure that Google knows of your website's existence. You can check this via Google Search Console or search bar (put site:yourwebsite.com.)
Not indexed? Help Google find your website and start to rank.
1. Intelligible Navigation
I will tell you nothing new here. The point is pretty obvious. Your website should be easy to navigate, your homepage should contain easy-to-find links to the most important pages of your website (About, Locations, Solutions, Contacts).
Many coworking sites make the same mistake, they make the user think which leads them straight to the back button. Leave clear prompts, tell the customer where to go next, guide them through the pages and you will reduce your bounce and site abandonment rate.
Please refer to the steps to a Google-friendly site article and don't be like the guys featured in such sort of showcases Breaking Bad: 21 Bad Website Examples (Upd: May, 2019).
2. Get Rid of the Broken Pages and Links
No coworking site can benefit from broken pages and links. They are the reason for poor user experience and search engine optimization. As you know Google has no mercy to stuff that disappoints the user.
It's normal to have 404 Not Found errors, yet you must fix (reinstate dead page, redirect dead page to appropriate alternative) the errors for the most important pages—the ones linked to by other sites, older URLs you had in your sitemap and have since deleted, misspelled URLs for important pages, or URLs of popular pages that no longer exist on your site, outbound links.
The takeaway is—you'd better arrange spring cleaning regularly to keep visitors and Google happy. Keeping your site error-free facilitates easy access of the essential information by Google and visitors.
3. Meta Title & Meta Description for Every Page
A lot of coworking websites underestimate the role of meta titles and meta descriptions and write them negligently (if write at all.) These attributes are actually ads displayed on Google. But the sweetest thing is that you don't pay a cent for promotion. Now answer yourself a question— is it wise to miss this brilliant opportunity? Most probably you will want to use it to the fullest.
Here are simple guides to follow:
- Don't exceed the maximum length at which Google starts to truncate meta in search results (55.09 characters for title and 164.44 characters for description on average).
- Allure users and search engines to click to your site.
- Include your target keyword, which is optional but strongly recommended.
- Check your meta title and meta description on serpsim.com.
4. Polish Your Writing
You present your flexible workspace and its amenities with the help of text. A writing copy plays a significant role in digital marketing for coworking space. Here are some applicable SEO rules to follow if you want Google to consider your webpage a good fit for a particular query:
- Each page of your website should include at least 100–200 words of text.
- Use one H1 tag as the heading of each page. The heading is often used as a meta title.
- Create a clear hierarchy on your pages using H2-H6 tags for subheadings.
- Avoid keyword stuffing. Include target keywords only where they are relevant.
- Thoroughly spell-check your copy. Make sure it is free from errors. Spelling and grammar on your site must be on point.
5. Get Cited in the Relevant Places
The next point in the marketing plan for coworking space is getting online mentions (citations) of your business. Such mentions usually include your business name, address, and phone number. Why is it important? When Google determines where to rank your site, not only on-page SEO factors but also off-page ones are considered. Citations are one of those factors.
We recommend you to start with Google My Business then try to get listed on other directories relevant to the coworking niche.
6. Ask Members & Partners for Backlinks
You have surely heard about link building as one of the mandatory coworking space marketing strategies. It may seem confusing at the beginning but backlinks are one of the three major ranking factors according to Google, so you'd better start building them.
Before choosing the primary keywords to link to your site, decide on the keywords themselves. The Google Trends tool can assist you in identifying and selecting the proper words. However, this is a time-consuming and difficult procedure, and if you want to analyze a lot of words, you can save time and do virtually all the work for you by using the Google Trends API.
If you are not ready to launch a full-fledged link-building campaign right now, I advise you to start small. Ask your existing partners and members for links. And don't forget about testimonials sections available on the websites of your existing relationships. Leave a nice one with a link to your site. The practice is favorable both to your partner and you.
7. Your Website Must Load Fast
Most of the users surf the web using their mobile devices. Your members are not the exception either. Statistical data says that 53% of users browsing your website from smartphones will abandon the page if it loads longer than three seconds.
Do you want to improve your website speed? The fastest loading time of a webpage is the most critical factor for a great user experience. Quickly loaded pages increase page views and help you enhance your search engine ranking.
The first thing you need to do is check how fast is your web page. Here is a couple of awesome tools for this purpose:
Many things like plugins, slow web hosting like GoDaddy, and bloated HTML may slow down your web page. Take a look at what can be improved here.
Video by SEO link builder Julian Goldie
BTW, did you hear anything about the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)? We at andcards utilize the technology which allows us to create better, faster experiences on the mobile web. You can also consider using the framework and get a better ranking on Google.
8. Add Schema Markup
What can schema markup do for your business? It helps Google to better understand your website. It can even change the way your web page appears in search results. Everybody likes those review stars and additional information like working hours showing up right under the meta title. This is what schema markup can do for you.
We recommend you to opt for LocalBusiness markup as it is more suitable for businesses having physical locations, like coworking spaces.
9. Run a Blog
Community building is one of the key goals of every coworking hub. A nice blog will help you achieve it efficiently. What's more, a popular blog containing fresh and valuable information is one of the sources of new business opportunities and leads. You are not going to leave money on the table, aren't you? Ok, then start to generate share-worthy content and actively promote it wherever possible.
Several ways of blog content promotion:
- Facebook ads, Twitter & LinkedIn followers
- Social media sharing buttons, newsletter subscription
- Ask question platforms (Quora, Reddit)
- Email list (Newsletter)
- In-app notifications
- Outreach
- Promotion in relevant communities
- Re-purpose content for different media (videos, podcasts, etc.)
Takeaways
You have just learned some working online marketing tips for coworking business websites. We hope now phrases digital marketing and search engine optimization don't sound similar to curse words to you anymore. As you see, marketing your coworking space is not that complicated.
For small coworking businesses following these basic strategies may be enough to get ahead of the competition. However, you might want to check out more ways to promote your coworking space online and on social networks.
