What is a Complete Digital Footprint for business?

byNick Burrage/November 26, 2023/inDigital Marketing

All of your digital marketing rests on the foundation that is your complete digital footprint – elements such as your website and your social media accounts make up this network and if it is not perfect, everything you do online will be far less effective.

What makes up your complete digital footprint?

Your digital footprint is your business’s connection to Google and, when set up correctly, is totally visible to Google. The diagram below shows the key elements that must be linked together faultlessly for Google to recognise and reward you.

Google maps is the app that Google uses to verify you as a business and this must then be connected with Google My Business.

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Error-free is the key for a complete digital footprint

Different opening hours on your website and Google My Business? – Google will spot any inconsistencies and punish your business. Apart from all the technical links, Google is also looking for consistent information across all your touchpoints and Google will indeed spot different versions of your logo on website and Facebook. Yes – that’s correct – an out of date logo makes it look like you don’t care and Google doesn;t like to send people to companies that don’t care.

Separate SEO and Web Agency? Be careful!

Working on standalone elements used to be possible in digital marketing, but changes over the years, particularly 2020 onwards with Google, have meant that Google’s bots are no longer happy with a keyword-stuffed article here and a nice Google My Business page there. Everything must be coordinated and carefully linked up at the start and optimised in sync over time.

Get it right and digital marketing success will be easier than you might expect – here are our results after 12 weeks.

At the beginning of 2022 we totally re-launched our business under a new name, a new website and the complete digital footprint that it is part of. With our expert team helping the far-from-expert business owner (me) we have worked tirelessly to get the perfect complete digital footprint (and follow our golden rule: 3 new blogs every week!)

We’ve a long way to go, of course, but for 12 weeks, it’s pretty good going. Oh and we’ve not spent any money on paid advertising at all.

Ok, ready to start on your complete digital footprint? First get all your login credentials.

Before doing any digital marketing, it’s essential to make sure you can access all of your digital information, including any usernames and passwords associated with your accounts.

Here is a checklist to get you started:

Google Manager Account

Google Search Console / Data Studio

Website CMS

Domain

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

Any Third-Party Integration or Re-seller Platforms

CRM e.g, Hubspot

Amazon

LinkedIn (not part of your CDF but useful!)

Some points to note as you work through your set-up.

Website – check full integration with GBM and all Google Tag Manager snippets in place.

Contact forms – check your contact forms are all working and sending to your email.

Tracking – Setting up your tracking will not only allow you to measure your success but provide Google with access to all your data.

You need one manageable Google account and all of the sections need to be opened up. Then, your Facebook pixels need to be fed into your Google account. All of your tracking, your social, your address, telephone numbers, opening hours etc., need to be set up on your website.

If using HubSpot, then check you have it set up correctly and that you’ll be able to measure which pages on your site are generating the most dwell time and responses.

Social Media – Certainly for me with our business – a coaching and digital marketing agency, the idea of using social media marketing seemed a bit silly – ‘does anyone hire an agency on facebook?’, I asked the team.

They explained that not only would interactions by people on those platforms be visible to Google and help our domain authority, they also believed that we may get direct enquiries.

Astonishingly ( to me, not them) our first serious enquiry was from a significant business – and it came via Facebook!

So do try to include facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. Currently Tik-Tok is fashionable but does not form part of the Complete Digital Footprint that Google wants to see.

Linkedin is not vital for your Google rank but obviously is very important for many BtoB services – probably less so if, for example, you are a fashion e Commerce brand!

Implementing a complete digital footprint strategy and linking everything together, ensures that you:

Have the lowest cost when running adwords
Have the lowest cost when running social paid ads
Grow organically beyond your expectations

Here at The Ambitions Agency we specialise in setting up complete digital footprints and optimising them continually. You don’t need to be a client to benefit from our knowledge – our mission is to help so just be in touch using our contact form with your questions.

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