Websites
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Websites are one of the most important aspects of a business today. It is the #1 way to not only find a company for a clients specific need, but to verify the company is what they need. Your website needs to clearly display who you are and what you do. Let's go through this step by step.
- Register a Domain Name.
Use one of the many, many services on the web to acquire your .com, .net, .info, .us, etc. These are very cheap (about $9-$17 per year) and you don't want to try to get "www.JoesDiner.com after you have already started your planning, only to find that someone has taken the name out from under you. If you are in the entertainment industry, you will want to reserve your name ASAP. It's very common for up and coming performers to have there names registered, then be contacted by someone offering to sell it to them for $5,000+. This can happen to your business too. Check out your choices for a domain name here.
- Create a Web Page.
The next step is to actually design a site that portrays your services. You want a clear and concise list of your services, as well as an in-depth look at each individual one and why your company is the right choice for each. You want graphics to help keep the site interesting. Customers don't typically like a website that reads like a manual. If it seems like it will become a chore to hire you, they will go find your competitors.
- Submit Your Website to Search Engines.
How does Google find you? Simple, you tell it you exist! The top 3 websites all have web site submission pages where you tell them to start "Crawling" your website. What this means is that every so often, they will visit your website with an automated system and review your text (content), meta tags (keywords and description), hyperlinks (any links to other pages, or places within your website), as well as other information. You should have some content and links up after you have created your page, and you will refine it as you go on.
- Social Networking.
Even if you wont start using it right away, you should sign up for a Facebook, Twitter and Linked In account, as well as creating a corporate Linked In page. Reserving your company name is important as you start out. Later on you may find someone has stolen your Twitter or Facebook company name, and as the Domain story goes, it isn't available, or being sold at a large sum.
- Content Sites.
Local listing sites are a great way to get outside links to your site, as well as drive leads in from clients who use these sites to find services. First off, Google Places, Bing Local and Yahoo Local. You should create a profile with each of these sites and FILL IN ALL OF THE INFORMATION POSSIBLE! It takes time, quiet a bit of it, yet when someone searches for "Plumber in Orlando", these sites will list there local companies in the area. You wont be showing up #1 yet, but you will be on the list. Next up, Yellowpages.com, Citysearch.com, Yelp.com, and all of the similar sites you can find. These sites offer free listings. Once again, fill in all of the information possible! Next up, mapquest.com. Mapquest and Google are the 2 largest driving direction sites on the web. If you have a storefront and someones looking for you, you NEED to be listed on both of these sites.
- Dynamic Information.
More and more these days, clients don't just want the book. They want a TV series based off the book, blogs, movies, news articles, twitter updates, authors bio, you name it. The point is, if you do something great, you need to keep at it, and let people know you're still at it. Blogging is a great way to do this. For instance, you're a mystery writer, you can write quick short stories that pop into your head. You can expand on news articles related to yourself, or stories that are similar to your writing. You could blog about TV interviews that you were on. You could blog about your up and coming book. Just keep talking. That is what's important. People need to see you're alive and working. Twitter is a great way to do this. Short updates sharing links, photos, videos, or just thoughts you're having. The wonderful thing about Twitter is that 144 characters of text is something that virtually every site can easily sync up to. This means you may have an option on a content site to give your Twitter username and have your feeds fed directly into your listing on there site. For one of my clients (That Deli in Lake Mary), the Twitter updates feed over to Urban Spoon (A popular restaurant review site). I post the daily specials 6 days a week, so people who find us, see the Daily Specials right away. This may sound like a lot of work, but contact me for cutting this down from hours of updates, to a few minutes a day.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
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- If you want to start showing up on Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines (yes, there are more out there), you need to do some SEO work.
- First off: Content. Have you really written all you can on a particular topic? When starting or recreating a website it's very common to write a paragraph or two on a particular subject and then move on. If you were to sell your product to your client, you are typically going to talk with them for several minutes. This ends up being a lot more than a paragraph or two of text. One of the best things to do is take a tape recorder and "Sell" your product to one of your friends or coworkers and discuss the service you are trying to sell. Have them ask questions. The more content you have on a particular subject, the more search engines will love you. When you do type up and edit your work for publishing on your site, remember this: Keywords.
- Keywords are any specific phrases your clients could be using to find you. If you are selling plumbing services, you want to land for keywords like "Toilet, Plumber, Sink, Clogged Sink, Tub Repair, Installation", and whatever other services your sell. Make sure you use these in your content! Not just once or twice, but as often as you can without diluting your meaning with repetitive keywords.
- Next up, make sure you don't use the same keyword strings over and over exactly the same every time. Say you have plumbing services in Lake Mary. Don't keep saying Lake Mary Plumber, say "Plumber in Lake Mary, Central Florida Plumber, Plumber Servicing Seminole County, Sink Repair in Lake Mary, Etc". If search engines see you stuffing keywords repetitively, this will hurt your SEO efforts.
- Next, make sure you have all of the Meta Tag information you can, especially Descriptive text. This helps define the pages that search engines are reviewing and descriptive text can be weighed pretty heavily on what keywords you will show up for. Next is Page Titles. You may not have thought about this when you first put your site up, but Page Titles are weighed VERY heavily by search engines. Put some keywords in here, but make sure to describe the page you're on!
- Hyperlinks are very important! Google wants a good amount of navigation throughout your website. You should never have a page that's a "Dead End". If the customer has to hit the back button on there browser to navigate anywhere on your site, then you need to fix it!
- While on the topic of Hyperlinks, lets mention Anchor Text. Anchor Text is the words that are used on the hyperlink. If you use Click Here, the only thing Google knows is that the page's topic is "Click Here". You want to use a link such as "Small Business Lawyer", or "Luxury Real Estate". Google then knows what the links are taking them to. You can further define this by using descriptive text for if you hover over the link. Hover over these two links to see what I mean.
- There are so many aspects to SEO it's hard to mention all of them in a day, and it's constantly evolving! The best thing you can do is to hire someone like myself out to assist in SEO if you have the budget. If you can write the content and service the clients as they come in, then your business can grow as your website grows. For more information on search engine optimization practices, please contact PCNewb with any questions.
- Research Your Competitors.
- Why is Joe's Welding showing up #1 in "Welding Services" and your company isn't even on the top 10? Check it out! Do a direct search for "Joe's Welding" and find out what sites he's popping up for. If you search the company and it has his website, a profile on Yelp, a Linked In Profile and his Facebook, make sure you have already done this for yourself! Check out what he wrote for himself on these sites (Services description, Services categories, About Us, anything). I am not saying that you should copy your competitor, but read what they wrote and see if you can pick up any pointers. If they use the words "Welding Services" 4 times in there description and you only mention it once, maybe you should think about adding to yours or rewriting it, so you mention it 3 or more times. Some of these company bios have character limits over 500, so you can write a few paragraphs!
- Check out there website. Read there pages and see how you can possible expand on what you have already done. Remember, you can't directly copy what they've written, but you can surely rewrite or expand on your own work.
- Check out there Social Networking. Facebook and Twitter updates can be great for SEO. See what they're writing. Remember, you can always use these sites to link up ideas, news articles, photos and similar items from other places on the web. Put in a short description "The new, state of the art welding torches our company just purchased!", then add the link to the page listing the torches. Use the SEO from other websites to help boost your own.
- Keep checking for the new guy on the block. Say you started up your site, in 5 months you were top dog in the search engines. Check back a year later and you're #7. What happened? Well, keeping up with the new content sites that emerge, knowing the new social networking means, updating your current listings as things change, and researching the new competitors on the market will help keep you on top.
For more information, please contact me regarding websites. You may also view some samples of sites I've created.