Simple Tips To Help You With Small Business Online Marketing

Online Marketing Strategy Tip 1: Create a Website

While starting a successful website might seem like a huge task, knowing a few handy hints can help any business get started in the process of small business online marketing. You will want to consider four points to determine the right action to take to get the most out of the new site. Consider purpose, content, useablility and design in order to create a site the is most likely to succedd.

Purpose

The first step to creating a new website should be to consider one's purpose in starting the new site. A site for personal use will be different than one for business. The goals in creating the site should also be considered. A site that is designed for leads will differ from one designed for sales or to showcase products and services. In addition, a site designed to provide additional information to customers about products or services will also differ. A clearly defined purpose makes it easier to create content which is relevant and drives the desired traffic to the site.

Content

The written and visual content of the site can often determine whether a client follows through, so make sure that your content appeals to the right market. Your home page is often the most difficult to create appropriate content. Remember, you only have ten seconds to convince people to visit the rest of the site or lose them. The home page is not the place to brag or place volumes of information about products. The home page should be about the customers and their needs and wants. Be sure to consider the latest SEO ideas as content is written.

Useability

The new site should be easy to use, offer quick load times and provide user interaction. If the site offers too many menus and is difficult to navigate, potential clients will give up and find your competitor's site. Slow loading pages can also lose potential clients. Limit file sizes for optimal loading times.

Design

Designs should be modern and attractive to both you and your target market. The design should have a professional look and needs to stay up to date with current trends. A good designer can help in these areas. The design needs to be clean, on a light colored background. Never use a reverse test where the text is lighter than the background as it becomes hard to read.

Once the business owner is clear with these four aspects of small business online marketing, it is important to decide how to put everything together. Your budget may determine if you approach a developer or put the site together on your own. A bad website can often do more harm than good, so be sure to make the most of the available resources for marketing.

Professional web design for small business online marketing may cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to thousands, depending on several factors. Remember that the site will need constant updating for online success. Good planning can allow owners to reap many business of a successful marketing campaign.

Online Marketing Strategy Tip 2: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Almost everybody knows that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. This is an important Internet marketing tool that helps to increase the ranking of websites with major search engines such as Google. It is also the most popular small business online marketing techniques. What most people do not know is that there are many SEO techniques that a person can use to optimize a site. Some of these techniques are very easy to implement and can be done even before SEO experts are called in to offer their expert service. Implementing these strategies will make it easy for the SEO experts to get your website on the first page of Google search results. The following are some factors that you may want to consider when optimizing a site.

Keyword Usage

Choosing the right keyword or keyword phrases is the most important thing in SEO. Without these words or phrases, potential customers will have no way of finding you. Ideally, these words and phrases should appear in header tags, titles, image descriptions or names and the URL of each page.

You should choose keywords that are related to the products or services that you offer in your business. The best keywords are usually those with little or no competition. Ideally, you should avoid keywords that have already been used by larger companies. In order to find the right keywords for your business, you can use Google Keyword tool. This will help you to find keywords that Internet users commonly use when looking for products or services in you specific industry.

Quantity and Quality of Content

While quality may be more important than quantity in some industries, the two are equally important in SEO. Your web-pages should have a large number of well-written content. You should avoid copying pages from other sites as this can lead to blacklisting of your website. For you to compete with larger companies, you should have several interesting pages that rank high with major search engines.

Optimizing Titles

As Internet users browse through your site, they will see titles on the viewer's browser bar on every page. Most people often forget to include this title when creating their websites. Some people will just write the name of their company in that field. This is does not help with SEO. Most top ranking sites have optimized titles on every page. Creating titles for your pages is very easy and does not take a lot of time. There are many companies that offer high quality web design services that might help you with this. Once you have identified the most suitable keywords and phrases for your site, all you have to do is add them to your title bar. It is important that you use keywords that are relevant to the content on that page. This will help to confirm to your readers that they are indeed on the right page. Below is an example of a title that has been optimized:

'Netblots Web design | Melbourne Web design | Melbourne SEO | Flash Webdesign | Internet Marketing Consulting'

Backlinks

Links that point back to your web-pages from other websites are known as backlinks. This can be links from articles or directories linking back to you. However, using directory links that are poor in quality may backfire. Ideally, you should create backlinks from popular sites that are also well known. You should write informative articles that are interesting to read and post them on e-zines, social bookmarking sites and other similar sites. Use links on video tags and descriptions. If you have a n active imagination, there is no limit to the number of ways you can make backlinks work for you.