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Your First Business Website

A professional websitebusiness website is very important for every business.  If you’ve never had your own business website before, your first one can be intimidating.   Here are some suggestions for creating your first business website.

1. A Clear Goal

Every business website is different because they all serve different purposes.   Are you selling products directly, or are you asking your prospects to contact you?  A website without a clear purpose will consume your time and money and is unlikely to provide any benefit.

2.  Your Own Content

You need to decide what you want your website to say.    Experts recommend that the website owner should start creating content for their site.   Whether you plan to do it yourself or hire someone, you know the core message of your business better than anyone else.

3. State Your Purpose Concisely

Make sure the key points about your business, it’s staff and offerings are clear and simple for visitors to find.

4. What You Can Do for Your Prospects?

Read your content as a if you were a site visitor.   A common failure is a tendency to focus on what your business does, rather than what benefit you can give to prospects.

5. Professional Website vs Personal Accomplishment

If you’re short of cash you may be tempted to look at the DIY options.   Although it’s possible, it’s not easy for a business owner to create a professional site.  It’s very common that business owners want to build their own websites.   Once completed, they feel so proud and they learnt a lot.  However, customers really don’t care whether you’ve had a great learning experience.    They will only notice whether your website looks professional. It it isn’t professional, it will be harmful to your business.”

6. Own Your Domain

All businesses should purchase their own domain name.   mybusiness.co.nz is much more professional and easy to remember than mybusiness.wordpress.com.

7. Future Growth

If you expect your business to grow quickly, choosing a low-cost platform may not provide your best outcome.  Platforms like Wix and Squarespace are great for small  business who will use only a few features.   However when you outgrow them, transferring your site to a new host can be a challenge.

8.  Personalise

New website owners often want to make their businesses look large.   That’s not always beneficial.  Most customers want to know that a real person will be working with them.   Including good photos of yourself and your team, with a personable bio is always a good idea.”

9. Contact

Your business website must include contact information.   This should include an email address, phone number, address and social media.  The more channels you give people to contact you, the more likely they will reach out.

10. Easy to Read Text

As your relevant information is contained in the text, it’s important that it’s easy to read.   Core typefaces, like those that your designer or theme suggest, are best for readability.   Don’t change your fonts just because they look cool.

11. Valuable Images

Images and videos add interest to your business website.   Relevant media could include team photos, examples of your work, and sometimes even relevant stock images.

12. Customer Reviews

Customer reviews are a key element of your business site.  If your business is new, look at getting quality reviews as soon as you can.   A few comments from customers will help build your credibility.

13. A Mobile Site

You must make sure that your site is responsive and mobile friendly.   As of February 2017, mobile web traffic accounted for 50.3% of all internet traffic.  A site that doesn’t work well on mobile drives customers away, damages your search engine rankings and is unprofessional.

14. Search Engine Optimisation

SEO is extremely important, ensuring that your prospects and customers will find you online.   Your web designer will integrate this into your initial website. However you’ll definitely want to educate yourself so you can maintain and improve your search engine rankings.

15. Keep Improving

Once your website is live, the process is just beginning.   A business website is never complete. You will want to add or change it as your business evolves.  Always try to improve your search engine optimisation.

Remember your your website is targeted at your prospects and customers’ needs, so always keep them as the focus as your develop and enhance your site.

Contact us for an obligation free discussion of how we can help you with you business website.

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6 Reasons Why You Must Create a Business Facebook Page Today

It’s obvious that Facebook Business Pagesocial media is with us for the foreseeable future.   Small businesses who use social media sites effectively can promote themselves in powerful ways.   The most effective start is with a Facebook business page.

 

Here are six reasons to create a business Facebook page today.

1 – Facebook Enhances Your Search Engine Optimization

A  business Facebook page is an effective in directing traffic to your website.   Posts, links, and other activity from your Facebook page will also give you a search engine ranking boost when they are indexed by search engines.  The speed of social media and additional weight search engines place on social media, a Facebook page with rich content, relevant to your business will boost your search engine rankings.

 2 – Your Competition Already Has a Facebook Presence.

If your business does not have a presence on social media and your competition does, this will lose you business, particularly when your competition are doing it well.

3 – Your Business is in Front of your Prospects and Customers every day.

There are more than 1.28 billion daily active Facebook users; many  consumers are using Facebook to find products and services.  Facebook and social media make it easy for prospects to find you. These prospects are then more likely to remember your business and share.

Once a Facebook user has ‘liked’ or followed your page, your status updates, shared links and videos will show in your fans’ feeds.

Your Facebook business page will be a powerful way to expand your reach and increase recognition of your business.

 4 – You Will Learn More About Your Prospects and Customers.

A Facebook business page allows you talk directly to your prospects and customers, and to receive direct feedback from them.   This will be your ongoing focus group.   These fans have connected with you because want to learn more about your company.   While they expect to receive useful information from you, you will also be collecting useful information from them.   Facebook have awesome tools to help you maximize the effectiveness of your page: for example, Facebook Insights provide useful information about your audience’s interaction with your page.   As a segment of your target market, your Facebook fans tell you about what they want from their interaction, comments, and feedback.

5 – Facebook Pages “Personalize” Your Business.

Genuine communication is one of the keys of social media, and a business Facebook page anchors a personality to your business.   Although your Facebook page will be the front door of your company, you will also show the human side of your business through personal conversations and revelations.

Even when you automate some of your social media, you you should include  personal interaction to create richer, more “human” relationships.

6 – You Will build a Community

Facebook pages are great for having fans provide reviews, opinion and offer feedback.   You build a community in several ways, including:

 –  Posting material relevant to your audience
 –  Posting useful, relevant and interesting links
 –  Asking fans for comments
 –  Creating contests and promotions
 –  Offering incentives for activity on your page

When your business Facebook page successfully brings people together, you will develop a loyal following that will grow continuously, and bring you more business.

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Writing to Optimize Search Engine Rankings

We all want our search engine rankingcontent to show high in search engine results.   Most new writers have trouble writing content optimized for search engines.  This article is intended to help beginning blog writers learn how they can make their articles better so they will rank better , and optimize their search engine rankings.   There are no absolute rules to rank on search engines;  there are basic guidelines which should are likely to give you better rankings.

Content is the key factor as to where your page will rank.    Links to your pages are also a major factor, but for the most part an author has little control over other sites which may link to their content.

While other on-page SEO factors like page title and meta description play a roll, the heart and soul of every page on the internet is content. And authors have complete control over the content of the pages they create. Here are a few important guidelines to help you write better content for SEO:

  • Be unique – original content ranks higher than copied content.  Avoid “spinning content” as changing a few words or phrases does not make an article “original” content.
  • Your  articles must firstly be written for people, your articles should be written so they can rank on search engines.   Make sure your content is always readable.
  • Each page of content should have no less than 300 words. Search engines are looking for  pages which will be useful; a page with more content is likely to rank higher.
  • Your article should be tightly focused on a specific topic.   When you cover too many topics in the same article, it weakens your ability to gain high rankings.
  • Include images, videos, and other media whenever possible.   Content with an image, graphic, or embedded video often ranks better in searches, because your audience will spend more time on pages which have a graphic element.
  • Make sure all your content is well written.  Poor grammar and spelling discourages linking to your page.
  • Remember, you are unlikely to see any significant result for a at least three months.  So many authors give up too early.   Every article you create helps you to improve, and adds to the articles on your site.   Never give up!

When you follow these guidelines, your articles will appear higher in search results over time.

We can help improve your search engine rankings.

 

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Improve Your Local Listing on Google

When business discovered the Internet,Google Search they were eager to reach the global market.   Many businesses, particularly those already online, began investing in search engine optimisation.   Since then, things have changed.   While the ability to achieve global reach is achievable, this not especially helpful to many businesses.    For hotels and car manufacturers, reaching a global audience is essential.   However a local restaurant or a one-shop specialty store will want to attract the people who are in (or visiting) the local area.   This needs a more specifically targeted approach to internet marketing.   This is where you should utilise local SEO, to improve your local listing on Google.

Local search engine optimisation brings your business to the attention of consumers from your location who are looking for your products and services.   Say your Italian restaurant – let’s call it La Ristorante – is in Hastings, Hawkes Bay; you don’t need to show your products or services to Innsbruck, Austria.  You will want to make yourself known to people in and around Hastings that are wanting to dine out.

There are ways to do this effectively.  As search is becoming the predominant way of looking for information, products and services, it is likely that someone in Hastings or travelling through Hastings will search on “Hastings restaurants”.  How do you make sure that the La Ristorante website or Facebook page is towards the top of the results?

When print was king, it was necessary for local businesses to have a listing in the local section of their yellow pages phone directory.   Registering your website in local directories now is the current equivalent, especially now that local directories are starting to show more on the web.   Register your site with every local directory that covers your specific geographical area.

Google is the top search engine; you should register your site with Google Places and Google Maps.  This will ensure that you’re found on Google searches.   If you’ve made a profile for La Ristorante in Google Places, whenever anyone in Hastings searches in Google for restaurants, even without adding the word “Hastings” to the query, he will be directed to restaurants located in Hastings.   An additional benefit from having a Google Places profile is that positive reviews from customers will be added to your profile; these will boost your rankings.   Other search engines also have local business directories. For example, Bing has Bing Local.

Always include your physical address, including postal code, city, and region as part of your website titles.  Search engine spiders index this information.  Always use targeted local keywords – such as “Italian Restaurant Hastings”;  these will prove valuable in localised searches.

Posting current or upcoming events and promotions to your site is a great way to keep your listing updated and to improve your local listing on Google and other search engines.  Another excellent way to attract locals is when your listing includes coupons or promo codes.

There are different local SEO techniques that you can employ.  Remember that localising will get more mileage from your efforts and turn your listing into a profitable marketing tool.

It’s important to learn SEO strategies and techniques as they develop to position your marketing strategies favorably.

See how we can help you maximise your local listing on Google.