You Can Afford a Professional Web Presence

If you haven’t figured it out yet, you have to have a website in today’s market place.

The Web is the first place people go to find information, goods and services.

It doesn’t matter if your business is macramé golf club covers, community service or art. Even if you don’t sell directly online, a website is critical to finding and communicating with your customers. It’s amazing how many contractors, garage shops, maid services, CPAs and home businesses that suffer without. It’s also equally amazing how many businesses accept poor quality websites for their web presence. These problems range from poor quality graphics to missing front page content to broken links to confusing navigation to poor programming. Your website is your image and personality in the virtual world.

It’s a rare individual that brings competence to both macramé and website design. In fact, it is the rare individual of any sort that can bring competence to all aspects of Website design. For some reason, technical skills and creative skills tend to be mutually exclusive traits in humans. This means attention to your Website probably requires a team with the necessary complementing technical and creativity skills. Expect that there is a minimum ante necessary to build a professional functional website. A thousand dollars is probably as little as you can hope to get away with. More is going to be required as you build your presence but, rest assured, it is worth it. Your website is one of your top investment priorities. Eat ramen noodles, collect hotel soap bars, take the bus- whatever it takes to afford that investment is worth it.

Here’s a check list to get you started toward your professional presence on the Web:

• Pick a suitable, but short domain

• Choose a hosting plan that fits your website and budget

• Know the primary objective of your website.Will it,

• Describe your products or services

• Complete sales transactions

• Offer customer service and support

• Communicate company identity or branding

• Know your target audience

• Compile a list of keywords your customers would use to find you when searching

• Use these keywords when writing your content

• Who will be maintaining your website?

• If it is you, think about a Content Management System for ease

• If not you, plan on budgeting for updates and changes as you grow

• Keep your content fresh! Update your website at least once a month

Once you have your website, there is effort necessary to make the site findable, interesting and productive. Much of this can be done yourself or, if you have the cash, you can pay for these services. Your website needs to do at least three things for you. It should help prospective customers find you online. It should provide useful information to any customer or prospect in lieu of calling you. And, it should directly complement your employee’s processes for communicating and serving your customers.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an important function to the first. It is a never ending battle to get your website listed on the first page of any relevant search. There are three things that a search engine does. Crawling: Does the search engine know about your site? Can it find it? Indexing: Can the search engine index your site? Serving: Does the site have good and useful content that is relevant to the user's search? Search Engines use a process where automated software known as bots skewers the internet for new and recently updated pages to be added to their index. We all would like to be at the top.

While many prognosticate that search engine indexing will eventually obsolete the need for smart website layout, the reality is that many website users visit your site looking for specific information about your professionalism and legitimacy as a company. This is where your investment in professional design and layout pays off along with ongoing effort in content management. It is very important to keep your content updated and new. Search engines love to see new things happening on your website, and they reward you for it. If your site stays dual and dead, you can be sure to fall from the rankings. You can write articles all day if you want or just once a month. You can also look into RSS feeds or blog add-ons to keep your content booming.

Free Internet Marketing: Things you can do to help your website ranking

(Make sure to include a web link back to your website)

Finally, think about how your website can help your everyday business processes. For example; order tracking, troubleshooting, project management, corporate communications, job openings, etc. There are numerous ways to utilize the web to make business easier. So come up with a plan and go make the most out of your website!