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Small Business and the Internet?

Guest post by: Clarissa Leary

Article Overview: I have been working with Websites for a number of years and have found that for small business owners, they are so confused with how the whole system works. Most small business owners either not have a website or have a website that doesn't work.Let's take a look at some of the processes that need to be considered by the small business owners when setting up a website.

Small Business and the Internet?

I have been working with Websites for a number of years and have found that for small business owners, they are so confused with how the whole system works. Most small business owners either not have a website or have a website that doesn't work. They tend to bury their heads in the sand when it comes to learning about the Internet.

Business Advertising is changing rapidly, more and more clients are using smart devices and the internet to find their products and services.

So many small business owners are being left in the dark ages, are you one of them, do you have a website? do you keep in contact with your existing clients? do you know what QR codes are? are you spending thousands on advertising?

Most small business owners are either burying their head in the sand and not doing anything or spending thousands and it's not working. There are some simple steps for listing your business online that are very inexpensive or free.

I have found that most Small Business Owners are either confused about getting their business online or they haven't got the time to do the work.

Let's take a look at some of the processes that need to be considered by the small business owners when setting up a website.

What's the first things for Small Business to consider when wanting to be online?

What is my purpose for the website

Is it to to collect clients details, sell products, provide a service. It's important to clarify why you actually want a website.

Should I do the website myself or get someone to do it?

I noticed small business owners who get someone to do their website are charged way too much and they are not getting the full service, so that the website benefits them or they do the website themselves, but don't understand the search engine optimisation strategies that are needed to get traffic to their website.

The first steps are choosing a Domain Name, think about this carefully, you should be using the same name as your business or something that is very similar. Do NOT use long website names or symbols and try to avoid numbers. Good Domain names are simple and easy for your client to remember.

Then comes picking the Hosting Site. There are hundreds to choose from. You need to consider the size of your website, is it going to be an online website. A fair price for hosting is up to $9.00 a month and you should be getting unlimited space. You can get great prices from $2.25 per month for 25gb or $3.75 per month for 100gb. Do your research, don't pay too much for your hosting.

What type of Website?

Now I love Wordpress, it's free and you can upload it easy into your hosting site. Wordpress is very easy to use and has lots of plugins, search engine optimisation, you don't need programming skills, you can upload photo's, video's etc very easily into this website platform.

Wordpress is great for

• Blogs
• Brochureware websites
• Community sites
• Small online stores

There is another site that is great, which is Drupal, this platform is if you need to do more complicated work because you have a website like

• Large community sites where you need different kinds of content generated by users (blogs, wikis, job postings, etc.)
  
  
• Complex, document-heavy library sites, or sites that need document management
  
  
• Sites where you want complex control over multiple content types - how they are created and viewed
  
  
• Magazine/Newspaper like sites where you want to control how lists of content are displayed and ordered
  
  
• eCommerce sites
  
  
• Sites with deep integrations to CRM platforms and web services
  
  

Now there is adding the content, pictures, video's, signup forms, legals, contact us, products, services and whatever is needed for your website to look and feel great.

Keep your Header simple and to the point. What your Business is about? The name and unique selling distinction, add a photo of yourself or your logo.

Now most small business owners, think that's it. All the information has been entered into the website, people will automatically come to your website.

Not quiet, there are lots of small things that you can do now that will get traffic to your website.

Articles

How To sites

Google Listings like maps and places

Yahoo Listings

Yelp Listings

Local Listings

Reviews

Testimonials

Social media

Squeeze pages

Mini sites

Press Release Sites

QR Codes

Coupons

Smart Devices

Outsourcing

The above will give you extra exposure to being ranked by the search engines, which brings more traffic being driven to your site. I won't go into the descriptions of all the above here, but you can certainly read my other articles to get what each of these do.

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Article Tags: business online, SEO, small business, small business online, small business website, small company online



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