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How to Gain a Web Presence

Written by: Roger Bauer

Article Overview: One of the keys to starting a successful venture in today's business climate is having an effective website that reaches and appeals to your target audience. This article outlines some simple ways to get you site up and running while also appealing to search engines in the process.

How to Gain a Web Presence

Often times when consulting with small businesses, I’m asked “where do we get started with a website, and will we be able to afford this?”

First off, you can definitely afford to have a website (most web designers charge in the neighborhood of $70-100/page for fairly basic pages), and I’d argue you can’t afford NOT to have a website for your small business. Many potential customers today prefer to research companies and shop via the web, and the boundaries to the audience you can reach is limited only by your imagination. Let’s look at how you get started.

Initially, you’re going to want to reserve a unique domain name (as in www.yourdomainname.com). Try to think of a name or phrase that is easy to remember. If you can get one to match your company name, that’s best. If not, think of a search term someone might use to find the company. For my company, “consulting services” would be a popular search phrase so including the word “consulting” in the name was a key. Don’t over-think this—-keep it simple, and don’t get too cute or fancy with the name. The shorter the name the better as most people won't remember a long and drawn out domain name.

There are several places you can search for an available domain name including:
• Go Daddy
• Register.com
• Domains.org

Most domain registrars charge less than $10/year per site name, and their sites do a good job of stepping you through the process if you’re a beginner. If you come across a registrar wishing to charge you too much, shop around—there’s a lot of solid competition in this arena.

OK. Now you have your domain name picked out and registered, but what good is it to have a web presence if nobody can find you? The next step is to find a few higher ranking sites to link to your site. Online directories (free and paid) can provide a solid link base which will remain in tact for a long time provided the directory isn't shutdown or banned for some reason. The best way for your site to be discovered by a search engine is through a link from another well respected site. Manually submitting your site to the search engines can often delay your site's inclusion in the index so try directories first. Submitting to all of the directories available is a rather tedious and time consuming task that I recommend outsourcing. A few of the better services to consider for such an endeavor include:

* inetzeal.com
* directorymaximizer.com
* seoster.com
* submit2please.com

If you insist on managing the directory submission aspects for your site, a directory submission software program may be right for you. There are numerous packages available for download to help you achieve this task, and one of the best can be found at http://directorysubmitter.imwishlist.com. Oh, that tool is FREE by the way so the price is perfect for a small business. There are 1,723 directories contained in this tool, but it may take some time to get submitted to all the directories if you're going about it manually.

Next, it’s time to develop some content. I’d highly recommend hiring a professional to create an appealing and functional site. Most beginning websites done by inexperienced developers tend to lack good navigation, institute poor layouts, and have unappealing aesthetics. Your site doesn’t have to be complicated to be appealing and functional. If you wish to develop the main content yourself, have a developer create some template pages complete with basic linking for you to obtain a consistent look and feel for your site. There’s nothing wrong with paying for a site shell and tweaking that shell over time. In fact, that’s how most sites are started. Don’t expect a web designer to write your website copy for you. You know the most about your company so you’ll want to drive the bus for that.

Once the content is developed and laid out to your liking, where are you going to put it? Most small businesses don’t have the resources to host and support a site internally so that means finding a web-hosting partner. There are tons of web hosting companies out there (do a Google search for web-hosting and select one that appeals to you), but you’re going to want to find one that is reliable, provides quality 24/7 customer service, and instructs you how to upload and update your content. The web-hosting company does not have to be local to serve your web pages although it is a good idea if they are in the same country. If you require internet e-mail addresses for your employees, it might benefit you to find a package that includes a certain number of e-mail addresses with the package. These are rather common. Some other whistles and bells you may want to have included: script handling, database integration, shopping carts, and visitor statistics. The latter is rather important to see how your site is doing and which pages your visitors seem to migrate to the most. You’d pay attention to your visitors if they physically came into your company or store so your website shouldn’t be any different.

Voila! You have the very basics of gaining a web presence. Now you’re ready to start tackling ways you can optimize your site content along with gaining new visitors and retaining them.

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Related Forum Posts
Re: Forums Blog? - [quote="Evan":1yww01zw]Interesting idea Don. In my weekly newsletter I show the most recent forum posts and on the side of every page on the website (not the forums) I also show the most recent entries.[/quote:1yww01zw] The Newsletter update is great for people _already_ signed up to the forums. The Blog would be a teaser for those who are unaware of it entirely. [quote="Evan":1yww01zw]How often would you see the blog being updated?[/quote:1yww01zw] I would say no more frequently than once a week. It would be more an an ad than an interactive forum. Although, that can change. [quote="Evan":1yww01zw]Any other ideas out there on a blog or ways to show the most popular topics?[/quote:1yww01zw] If you really want a big Internet Presence, this is what I have learned works very well: 1/ Website 2/ Blog 3/ MySpace 4/ Press Release 5/ Ads posted on free & paid classified websites 6/ Networking 7/ website submission to search engines You will notice that only 1 out of the 7 requires human contact. The other 6 will begin to create a presence and if the right keywords are used, then people doing searches for those keywords will find many references to this site. Networking helps build your 'real world presence'. I haven't done any aggressive marketing of my site yet the hits just keep on increasing on a monthly basis. I'm on track to be making 20,000 hits (probably more) this year. Not bad for not spending a dime on advertising and being fairly casual about what I do with the site. That's what I have learned thus far online. The more I learn, the more hits grow.


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