Expanding Your Business Online with Great Website Design
Advertising is a very simple process in a small community. A few ads in the local papers, a flyer on local bulletin boards, a little word of mouth and you’re good to go. However, if you want to take your business to a higher level with a potential of unlimited income, you will want to look into the concept of online marketing.
Online marketing is, metaphorically speaking, a doorway. It is a portal to the homes of millions of potential customers and everyone that they know. Marketing online is a totally different concept than community marketing. There are a few basic necessities that you should know when entering into this new realm of promotion. The main way to start is getting a business website up and going.
Not just any website will do. There are many websites out there that are sub-domains. For example, your business website will get far more business if it is, “yourbusiness.com.” However, if it is a sub-domain such as “yourbusiness.nocostwebsites.com,” then you are missing the larger majority of your customers. Search engines tend to avoid the sub-domains and focus on the .com domains.
Next, make the business website a mirror of the business. If your store colors are, for example, green and red, use these colors on the website as well. The same goes with your store logo. You will want this to be the first thing that the potential customer sees when he or she enters your website. This is part of a process called branding. To put it in simple terms, when people see that logo, you want your business name to pop into their minds even if the name is not on the logo.
Once you have a good web design, it’s time to move on to promoting it. Websites are not automatically listed on the first page of search engines. On the contrary, they will generally be closer to the last. However, with proper marketing, you can build it up on the list and, inevitably, attain front page status. This is done with web marketing and search engine optimisation.
Search engine optimisation is the process of making your website easily accessible to search engines. You are literally optimising the site to make it search engine friendly. This involves using keywords related to your business and/or products a certain amount of times. On that same note, you don’t want to use the keywords too many times as it will appear that your only concern is search engine notice and not the attention of the customer.
Once you have made your site search engine friendly, you will want to move on to the concept of cross-linking or backlinks. This is the act of getting your site name and address on other relevant sites around the web. You can do this by a number of methods. You can merely ask other sites to swap site links with you. Also, you can write articles about your product or services and give them away on several article sites around the web, with the condition that your backlink be left on the article. That way, every time someone uses the article, you will get a backlink.
Once you get all this done, you will begin to see a steady rise in your customers. Your business will grow constantly, if you go about this in the correct manner. If you aren’t technically-oriented, there are several businesses out there that do web design and web marketing for affordable prices. If you want your business to grow beyond what your local community can provide, online advertising and marketing is the route for you.
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