3 Steps To Your First Small Business Website

It might seem obvious, however it’s amazing the number of people do not bother to think about them and then moan complain “our website does not bring us any business”.

1) Who is your target audience?

Provide a great deal of thought to your target market. Who do you want to bring in to your site? Why? The answer to that is more than likely to offer them something – a product, a service, or an idea perhaps.

Claiming that your market is anybody and everyone is far too unclear, and your website will not have a focus, and will fail to maximize its potential. Preferably you should be aiming to develop a specific niche.

2) How will they find you?

Developing a specific niche will also help you with the search engines, and drive hot leads to your site.

Consider what keywords your target market may search  to find you. Really do the searches yourself. Look at the sites that are returned.

Those keywords – or key phrases to be more precise – require to be integrated into your pages of your site – in the page titles, in the headings, and in the internal links.
Specify with your key phrases. They will be less competitive than the more general single word searches, and will more accurately target your market. You may have to localize or specialize to get in that leading 30 – and the top 30 is where you are required to be to drive traffic to your website. As you know, If you have not discovered what you are looking for in the first few search results, you look somewhere else.

The key to achieving high search engine rankings is developing inbound links to your web pages – that is pages on external sites that link to pages on your site. Most importantly this link acquisition must be a natural growth – where incoming link count increases at a steady rate. The pages that link to yours need to be relevant, on-topic and ideally contain the very same keywords – specifically in the connecting text. Search engines rank pages based upon their track record – your ranking will be identified by what other (ideally high ranking) pages state about your page.

3) How will you convert your visitors into sales?

Don’t just inform them of what  you sell or do. Tell them how you solve their problems. Offer advise, ideas, etc – anything to get that dialogue began.

Present research suggests that the human brain makes a judgment about a website within a twentieth of a second! That does not leave you long to make an impression. Make sure that you have your Unique Selling Point (USP) plainly visible on your home page – and preferably popular on every one of your other pages. It’s not a provided that the home page will be the first page that the visitor sees, especially if they have discovered you via a search engine.

Make sure that you list what makes you special. Visitors have to understand why you are different from the rest, and why they must deal with you and not your competitors. And as we’ve discovered, they have to comprehend this practically instantly.

Determine your essential pages – usually the “call to action” or buy pages – and make sure all roadways lead to those pages. If you offer blue widgets, do not call your items page “Products”, call it “blue widgets”, and make sure that the links pointing at this page also say “blue widgets”.

The secret to accomplishing high search engine rankings is building inbound links to your web pages – that is pages on external sites that link to pages on your website. Make sure that you have your Unique Selling Point (USP) clearly noticeable on your house page – and preferably prominent on every one of your other pages. It’s not an offered that the house page will be the very first page that the visitor sees, particularly if they have found you by means of a search engine.

Identify your crucial pages – typically the “call to action” or acquire pages – and make sure all roadways lead to those pages. If you sell blue widgets, do not call your items page “Products”, call it “blue widgets”, and make sure that the links pointing at this page likewise say “blue widgets”.