11-16-2008
Creating A Web Presence 101
Are you running a small business that needs to setup a website? Maybe you own a pizza shop, an insurance brokerage, or work as a wedding photographer from home? Whatever type of business you have, if you have been wondering in what way you can use the Internet to heighten your business profile and attract more clients, then read this article prior to going out and spending money on a website designer to create a website for you.
Whilst it may not be your core business, it pays to educate yourself a little bit first before you spend any $$. This article will provide you with a foundation of web marketing before you go out and hire someone to put together a website for your business so that you aren’t uninformed. It will also guide you about a number of things you can do yourself, which you may take the option to do on your own to save you the cost of outsourcing.
Consider A Blog
If you don’t mind providing regular news and updates pertaining to your business, you might consider installing a blog instead of a website. A blog functions like a diary, and each entry is time and date stamped. Here is a blog about finance as an example. Note the time and date stamped posts and the optional peel away ad in the top right hand corner of the page. You don’t need to know any html or programming to use a blog. Once your blog is installed, you just login to a control panel interface, type what you want to say into an entry field, and click the publish button.
Blogs can be quite simple to setup. Why not have a play and see if you can install one yourself. You can get very affordable cPanel webhosting nowadays starting from $4.95 per month. cPanel webhosting includes a feature called Fantastico, which enables you to setup a blog with a few clicks of a mouse. A decent hosting provider should be able to help you setup your blog as well, even if you are a novice. After all, it’s in their interest to secure your business.
Web 2.0 Websites
Another way to spread the word about your business without the need to create a website, is to put together a free webpage on one of the numerous Web 2.0 content sites such as Squidoo.com and Hubpages.com. Here is an example Squidoo lens reviewing Success University. These are even easier to setup compared to a blog because they don’t require any technical know-how whatsoever, leaving you to focus on your content and writing whatever it is you wish to write to your target audience. Pages on Web 2.0 sites also often appear towards the top of the search engine results, further boosting the means by which greater numbers of people can find out about your business and what you have to offer.
Social Networking Sites
Facebook, MySpace and Linked In are probably the three most trafficked social networking websites. As with Squidoo.com and Hubpages.com, social networking websites are also based on pre-defined styles and templates, removing the need to have any knowledge of html and allowing you to save the funds you would have otherwise spent on a website designer and invest that elsewhere.
Search Engine Optimization
Once you have setup either a blog, Web2.0 or Social Networking page, you will want to ensure that your page has good exposure in the search engine results, thereby delivering more traffic and awareness of your business. This is where SEO, short for Search Engine Optimization, comes in. Don’t be scared! You can get a handle on search engine optimization by borrowing a book from your local library or spending a bit of time researching it online. There are a whole host of free websites containing information on search engine optimization, as well as paid membership websites like PortalFeeder who will allocate you a mentor to assist you in your search engine optimization knowledge and site creation endeavours. There are some really basic steps that you can take that will heighten the profile of your site and send visitors to it.