Small Business online marketing is vital to a successful profit margin. The right website can push a small business over the threshold of “making enough to pay the bills†and into the often fantasized realm of “actually making a profit.†Because of this, most small business owners either throw up a website as quickly as they can to capitalize on potential profits now, or they blow their entire budget on flashy enhancements to make their site pop, only to find their online sales fizzle.
Building a website for a small business can be a simple, organic process if you take the time to think about some very key answers to some very key questions.
The first question is straightforward and classic, and yet without asking it, you risk failing from the start.
What is the purpose of your website?
The answer to this question will determine the direction that your small business will take on your website.
Will your website be used to:
Provide Information about your business
Sell products or services
Generate a Business Brand and Reputation
Generate Leads
A small business that offers local services will most likely not be using their website to sell products, but to provide information on the business and it’s services and to generate leads and quotes for customers interested in those services. In this case, the website must be used heavily towards those ends.
A small business that offers products for sale must rely more heavily on products, pictures and descriptions as well as a smooth process for sales, exchange of funds and purchase tracking purposes.
Building a website for the online presence of a small business needs to be tailored to the business purpose for successful online marketing.
If you want to build a successful website, whether you are building a site for an existing business or starting an online business, you need to consider these 3 essential factors. How you approach each of these factors will determine to a large degree how successful you are at building an online presence:
Site Design
Website Development
Website Promotion
Website design is all about how your site looks and how easy you make it for your prospects to find your website.
Development is about the functionality of your website. Is it easy to navigate? Do you make it easy for your customers to find what they are looking for and are you effective in converting them to customers?
Finally, website promotion is all about how well you market your website so that prospects can find you. Is it search engine optimized? Do you use social media effectively?
If you want to be successful online, it helps to have a plan. You’ll have to consider all three of these essential factors in your plan. Leave one out and you could very well be leaving money on the table.
So many small businesses pay a service to create their website, and they think they can place a big check list beside that to-do item and never think about it again. So wrong. Everything online is a process, and thank goodness it is. You can always update your site, add content, tweak your profile and improve your Google rank.
The good news is that there are some great online tracking tools that can help you improve your site, draw viewers, and know which of your webpages draws them in–and which ones are tanking. Knowing your bounce rate can make all the difference.
What’s a bounce rate?
It’s not how fast you can jump on a trampoline–it’s when someone visits your site and literally bounces in–and bounces out. They don’t go any further. They’re a one page wonder. Usually that means they either thought your site was about something else, or you didn’t hold their interest.
When measuring your bounce rate on Google Analytics, be sure to check several things:
Your Page Visits
Time on Site
New Visitors
Each tells you something different. For example, if a new visitor comes to your site, stays less than 30 seconds to a minute and leaves, you’ve got a bit of a problem. It may be in your title, your keywords, or with the graphics of your site, lack of content…in other words, you failed to hook your viewer. Consider making some changes.
If a new visitor comes to your site and stays more than a minute, you can consider this somewhat of a success. Even if they didn’t click to other pages, you held their interest. Perhaps they’ll revisit later. I call this “circling the camp.” Oftentimes, a visitor is itchy–they’re not ready to commit, they want to know what else is out there, but they did circle the perimiter–they know who you are and where you are. Success.
How to improve your bounce rate?
Make sure you page is navigable. Can they find where to click through easily? Are you links underlined and a contrasting color? Is your site too jumbled? Has it been a while since you added new content?
Try improving just one of these areas and watch your bounce rate for improvement.
Be sure to check out your content report and analyze every page of your website. Chances are, you’ve got a wink link. Find out where you’re losing your viewers, and you just figured out where to start implementing a few changes.
All of us get business emails. Typically, they come in plain text and we convert them so we can read them easier. Colors, images, and text come in place. We orient our eyes and scan the boxes and rectangles that hold bite-size pieces of information. We figure out what the email is about–what they’re offering, teaching, providing–and we do this effortlessly. Within seconds we decide–save the email, click through, order, or delete…
It only takes seconds to scan a good email, and at any time you could lose your audience, or you could glean a connection or a sale. Email layouts make this entire process easier, more efficient, and hopefully more effective.
Ever heard of heat maps? EyeTracking.com, FaceLAB.com, and Eyetools.com are just some of the tools used to track eye movements, pupil size, eyebrow and other facial changes that occur when people view online sites, landing pages, and emails. Major companies have utilized this innovation and have improved their connections and sales dramatically. What these tools have shown is that there’s a pattern to how we view online material, and the basics, such as user-friendly layouts can be used by anyone to optimize their site and increase sales.
Great Email Layouts Include quadrants that make it easy for the reader’s eye to follow.
Viewers usually start in the left hand upper quadrant, then go one of two ways–straight across, or straight down. The bottom right quadrant is always last. So make sure that your most important message or content is in the left upper quadrant.
What makes a viewer go across–or down? It depends on what you have anchored. A good visual is more appealing than text, usually, so if you have something important to say, consider using a graphic to accompany it.
You don’t have to divide your email into exact quadrants. I also get rectangles across the top or down the left side, (so that you are forced to read straight across) as well as other configurations. Figure out which layout you like by checking out other business emails, e-newsletters, and websites. Determine what goes best with your message.
Most important: Get a look, (colors, layout, graphics) a logo, a name, and identifiable contact information and stick with it. This is branding in a nutshell. Make sure that this information is always in your left-upper section/quadrant.
Your next most important task is to deliver something. Let your viewers know what this email, landing page, website is all about. If it’s an email or e-newsletter, make sure it’s in the subject line. Mention it again within the body of the email and make sure it’s near the top where the eyes tend to land. Be clear about what you want them to do–click through, call, learn about a promotion or a sale, inform them of something important to read or know about a product or service update are all important messages you want your viewers to know about.
Make sure you reference the purpose of this email in that left hand quadrant and tell them where to go to retrieve it. Give them a place to click or tell them where this information is listed within the body of the email or on your website. Make it easy for your viewers and don’t bury it in too much text.
These simple techniques make your email, e-newsletter, and even your website viewer friendly. Don’t you enjoy getting an email from a trusted business that you appreciate and respect? When you open that email you know what to expect–quality services or products and helpful information. You trust them to deliver good content again and again. Don’t you want your emails and your website to be anticipated?
A hit is a hit is a hit…or is it? How many hits does your website get? You’ve probably been asked that before, and even if you can brag you get a million hits a month, does it mean what you think it means? How do you measure traffic on your small business site, and more importantly, how do those hits turn into sales?
To understand how to track your website traffic, you have to understand what a hit is.
A website “hit” isn’t as simple as you think. It’s not when someone types in your website name, or find you on Google, Yahoo, or MSN and clicks on your site. That’s not the only definition of a hit.
A hit is a file–and your webpage may contain one, or one thousand. A hit can be an image, written content, or order form. One of your webpages could contain many “hits.”
But what matters is not how many hits you get, but if the hit leads to interest–a sale, a contact, or a networking opportunity. A simpler page with only one hit might just do the job.
Ways to Gauge Your Site Traffic:
Visits, Pageviews, Unique Visitors, Time, and Referrers.
Visits, also called sessions are when a visitor comes to your website. Whether they stay one minute or one hour, it counts as one visit.
Pageviews, is when a visitor looks at any one of your website pages. That’s why it’s important that each of your pages has a unique URL, or address–so that they’re indexed separately.
Unique Visitors, are “first time” visitors. If I return to your site, I’m no longer a unique visitor. Unique vistors isn’t as important (per say) because they might have looked around, realized it wasn’t what they were looking for and left.
Time, refers to how long a visitor stays on your site during any visit. By knowing how long a visitor stays, you can tell how valuable that page is. Are they reading content? Placing an order? You want to create pages that are interesting and helpful so visitors stay longer. The longer they stay, the more they’ll remember you and refer you to others.
Referrers, is a way for visitors to get to your site. A refer might be a search engine such as Google, or Yahoo–or it might be a link from another site.
These five tracking tools are essential to any website owner. You need to know who comes to your site, how many times they return, how long the stay, and how they got there. Take a few minutes and visit your dashboard and take note of who your visitors are. This knowledge can help you create a website that’s worth visiting. and is a great marketing and networking tool.
A Favicon. is an icon you can place beside your site’s name in the favorites list. It comes before the URL in the address bar, and is used as a bookmarked website on the desktop, in the “Links” bar and on the windows taskbar. Favicons are a great way for people to follow your small business website.
The Basics of Creating a Favicon:
Make sure that the bookmark icon you choose is obvious and clear
16x 16 pixels is best
You can name it what you want, but Windows recognizes “faviconâ€
Save your bookmark icon with 16 colors as favicon.ico and upload it to each of the directories in your website
Upload it to the root of your site (also known as your index page)
Place it between your head tags in the HTML of all the pages on your website. This works for Internet Explorer and many other browsers, so give it a try:
You can make sure it works by typing in your url (www.yourdomainname.com/favicon.ico)
You can also create a favicon at favicon.com
Hey, go crazy and create an icon library! Download a free trial of IconWorkshop by Axialis and have at it
Favicons are a small added feature that makes it easier for your readers to return to your small business site again and again.
Writing articles for online magazines, also referrd to as e-zines, is a great way for small businesses to share their knowledge and promote their services and products. It cost effective, it does take time and some skill, but the payoff can surprise you.
Why go to the trouble? Because it works.
Articles can drive traffic to your site because every article holds a link to your website, which means your Google PageRank goes up with each incoming link. Articles can even earn you revenue from the GooglleAdSense Program.
How do you get started? Writing articles starts with an idea, and even if you don’t consider yourself a writer, you’ve been gathering ideas for articles all along your business journey. Every time you solve a problem for a customer, offer helpful hints to someone online or on the phone, or share the many ways your products or services can be used, you’ve basically written an article.
Articles are used on the web in a variety of ways—an “article†can be used as:
• Shorter sections as blog posts,
• Bite-size pieces on Twitter
• Content for your own webpages, and for you e-newsletter
• An e-zine article posted on free e-article sites such as (you get to post your name and website, so it’s promotion for you as well),
• Free content for organizations you belong to—or do a search on your various keywords and find a website or blog that’s similar and ask them if they’d like a free article
• Offer bits of it on a forum, or various social media sites
• Keep your focus on being helpful and informative
Not bad for one article. You can take one 300-500 word article and spin it in various directions, so make sure you get plenty of mileage out of those great ideas.
Don’t go crazy and spread your articles to every free site there is–Google spiders won’t like it. Submit to four or five article sites you consider the best for your field.
According to Alexa Page Rank, the best free e-zine article sites to submit to are:
Articles help establish you as an expert in your field—so don’t go heavy handed with your company info in the body of the article. Place your website and contact information at the bottom of the article and focus on writing such a helpful and informative piece of work that they’ll want to come and find your business and website. The more articles you write, the more you’re considered an expert.
Don’t have time to write? You don’t have to. Hire it out and talk someone through the main points. You can find someone who writes in your own company, or search online for professional writers who are comfortable with the style preferred in the online community. Be sure to focus on those ever important keywords in all you write.
Each article benefits your small business in numerous ways—from driving traffic to your site, increasing your rank, and establishing you as an expert in your field.
Wordtracker is a great tool for any small business who wants to optimize their site.
In fact, SEO professionals rely on this tool to find out what people are searching for.
But you don’t need to be a web designer or SEO specialist to use this smart and timesaving tool.
Wordtracker is a website that tells you what search engines are looking for. It takes the data from metacrawlers, systems such as Dogpile that searches other systems such as Google, MSN, Yahoo!, and Ask.com, to name a few of the biggies.
Believe it or not, there are over 100 million searches every month. Wordtracker creates a database that holds this information for 100 days, which averages close to 400 million searches. Wordtracker then lists these search words so that you know what people are looking for.
Wordtracker does charge a fee, but it’s reasonable and worth it. You can sign up for Wordtracker and use it for just one day or one week.
How Wordtracker Can Help You:
• Wordtracker lists keywords and meta tags used by competing sites.
• Wordtracker lists rankings according to frequency used.
• Wordtracker lists common misspellings, synonyms, and other related words and phrases you might have not thought about.
• Wordtracker lists exact phrases so you can literally see what people are typing in.
• Wordtracker lists how many times a word or phrase is used on any given day. (Remember that you might also have seasonal words that won’t be used in the last 100 days, but their use might spike over a holiday or particular season).
• Wordtracker is more accurate than using a search engine to look for keywords since their results aren’t skewed by competitor’s keyword searches Wordtracker can analyze when a word is used repetitively in a short amount of time and doesn’t consider this a “true†search.
Wordtracker is immensely helpful if you’re building a site and are on a lean budget (and who isn’t?) Create your list of keywords first, and then check them on Wordtracker. You’ll quickly learn which keywords and keyword phrases are used the most, their variations, the keywords that have little competition.
Wordtracker is well worth the financial and time investment for small business owners. Be sure to mention this great tool to your web designer or SEO specialist. And don’t be afraid to try it yourself. Knowing your keywords will allow you to create a website that’s easy to find and exactly what people are looking for.
PROBLEM: Over 73% of the people looking to make a purchase of any type first research that purchase online. If your site doesn’t rank well with the search engines, it’s like you don’t exist!
SOLUTION: The 7 Things You Can Do to Make Google Fall in Love with Your Website
Plus
How to Turn Your Business Blog into a Search Engine Magnet
This new workshop, presented by Caroline Melberg of Small Business Mavericks. The workshop will cover the following essential topics for small businesses:
- Search Engine Optimization – what is it?
- Why Search Engine Optimization is critical to your online success
- The 7 things you can do to make Google fall in love with your website
- Blogging – what it is and why you should care
- How to launch your own business blog – the right way
- How to use your business blog as a search engine magnet
Here are a few reasons why website promotion is key to your success in the short and long-term:
Whether you’ve built a small niche website or a large directory, knowing how to promote your website is the only way to ensure success for the long-term. Websites built with search engine optimization in mind aren’t guaranteed traffic; while you may reach high search engine rankings that lead to a steady visitor stream, branching out with a powerful website promotion strategy will help you create a firm foundation and capture the market.
Here are a few reasons why website promotion is key to your success in the short and long-term:
Marketing your site helps build brand awareness. Building recognition for your brand is an ongoing process, but many website owners fail to see how important this step really is. Branding can be as simple as sending out press releases with your website URL and logo, or complex as building up a newsletter list and sending out frequent news bytes and other information to your customers. Promoting through social networks and other social media is another way to create brand awareness and encourage steady traffic to your site.
Building quality content will attract visitors. With the advent of Web 2.0 social media sites, more and more people are getting ready to share quality content they’ve discovered. Part of your website promotion strategy will involve building quality content for your site so that people begin to share and link back to your content, videos and blogs; this naturally starts to attract large amounts of traffic.
Directory submissions help boost page rank. Building an SEO-friendly site isn’t the only way to gain good PR rankings on Google; making sure your website has been submitted to different directories and listing sites can help you drive clicks to your site when people are searching for content specific to your industry. There are many directories to choose from, but you need to know which specific category and section to submit to so you get the best placement.
‘Freebies’ will drive traffic to your site consistently. Giving away something for free can also help you build traffic and encourage new visitors to frequent the site. Whether this is a free eBook, video or tutorial, anything that will attract unique visitors to your site is a part of website promotion efforts.
Using keywords and key phrases will help you capture your target market. Capturing your target market on a consistent basis gives you leverage against the competition. When you are developing unique content that captures a captive audience, both advertisers and visitors will become aware of your brand, your site and your business. This is an effective website promotion strategy that will help you create a phenomenal business; a few carefully selected keywords and key phrases may be all it takes to drive quality traffic to your site and build your business with ease.
Developing a website promotion strategy is a critical step for any business, and will help you create a firm foundation to build upon. Promoting a website through any or all of these five channels is a simple way to get started; there are several strategies that you can employ consistently to achieve results, but all are equally important in getting the traffic and brand exposure you need for your future success!
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