Small Business Website Tips

How to get the most from your small business website design package.

Help Us Build You the Best Small Business Website Possible

We enter this <meta description> in your web page's code. (Visitors to your site never see this description, but it often appears on the first line behind or below your site name in search engine listings. This is your big chance to stand out from the crowd. So, you'll want to highlight any satisfaction guarantee, free shipping, low price guarantee, credentials and accreditations or other benefits that'll motivate visitor to click your link.) More importantly, however, it clarifies for us, as designers, what you feel are the most important benefits your business provides.

For example, the meta description for Joe Web reads:

"Joe Web designs, hosts and markets powerful small-business websites - all for one affordable price. Click for details."

Using these keywords as a base, we then create a fine-tuned list of the 5 or 6 EXACT phrases customers most commonly use when searching for services or products like yours.

A free suggestion tool we use for this is the keyword planner at http://keywordtool.io

These exact phrases then become the skeleton around which we build each major top page.

(This is an old advertising technique for writing tightly-focused, on-topic, verbiage in the least amount of time. We 1) research the topic, 2) develop a compelling headline, 3) write a couple sub headlines to better organize the content and then 4) fill in the copy to support the claims or answer the questions proposed in the headline. Too often, people do just the opposite. They write their content and only then start thinking of a catchy headline. Unfortunately, they often end up cutting and pasting and rewriting much of what they'd originally written.)

Here is an example of how two pages might look, if Joe Web was our client:

Important search topics that we need to show up for highly in search engine results. Each of these would then become the headline and title for its appropriate page:

• website designers in Asheville
• small business website design

Here is are a couple short lists of the most common ways that people search for the above two topics. These would be used as subheads to organize each page's verbiage:

• logo design asheville
• asheville web development
• asheville web design companies
• asheville seo
• small business website examples
• small business website design cost
• affordable website design services
• small business web design packages

Now, writing the content will be much faster, easier and more effective than if we'd started writing with an empty page.

In addition, please provide us with a list of awards you may have won, credentials or licenses you've earned, testimonials you may have from your customers, years of experience, associations you belong to, etc.

Also, we'll want to include details such as: your physical address, hours of operation; the forms of payment you accept; your phone, fax and cellular numbers; etc. (These are important for any business website but become absolutely critical for submitting your company to Google and Bing if you are primarily a locally-focused business or service provider.)

All of these items will help give customers confidence to trust you with their business.

When creating an effective web site, appearance and the body copy are important, but what happens behind the scenes (in the code) is equally critical.

To rank highly with search engines, we take extra care to make sure your keyphrase topics are written into the content so that your pages sound 'right' to the customer and flow naturally, while helping search engines clearly understand your business and why you are a trustworthy, credible provider.

The target phrases must also appear optimally in the code: keywords appearing higher rather than lower in the content, keywords embedded within the appropriate tags, keywords in the navigation wording and structure, etc.

Marketing Your Small Business Website

A web site is the quickest way for both current and potential customers to learn more about what your company offers. (And your site will be working all day, every day - long after your staff has gone home.) Plus, anyone you correspond with who uses a hotmail, gmail, or yahoo email account, the content of your messages may gets anonymously read by the service provider. And research suggests that the more often these email providers see your company name and email, the more they see your business and being significant and trustworthy and give you a slight bump in search engine rankings.

By directing customers to your web page, you can communicate much more information, for a lot less money than other marketing methods alone.

For example:

--------------------------------------
Want to save hundreds of
dollars on your small business
website? Learn how at
www.JoeWeb.com
--------------------------------------

For example: a nutritional supplements dealer may visit message boards or chat rooms discussing chronic fatigue or weight loss. He/she can mention they have a product that addresses this issue and direct readers there for more information and instructions on how to order.

Make sure everyone knows that, with your web page, you are now easier to contact and do business with.

When customers know your page is a timely source for company information, they are more likely to bookmark the site and visit it frequently.

Updates are billed at the discounted rate of $60/hour.

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