So many businesses get online and think that they’ve arrived on the Web! And that’s great! You really do need an online presence these days, and if you don’t have one, people wonder why. Having a website for your business really has become important.
Image by Fräulein Schiller via Flickr
But so what?
Just because you have a website, that doesn’t mean you’re going to get any traffic, except from people who already know about your business and are looking for you. I mean, you definitely want those customers, but you should have a bigger reason for being online, and you want new customers to find you, right?
So, #1: Figure out what that purpose of your website will be. Do you want to extend your brand? Gather more leads? Bond with your clientele, or make sales? You can’t do it all with the same website. You need to decide what your purpose for being online is. I mean, you can build a site that way, but with too much going on, nothing will work the way you want it to. Decide what you want your website to do before it’s ever built.
Then, you need to think about how people will find you online. What words might they type into a search engine to find your site, aside from your business name? A really cool tool to find words that you may not think of off the top of your head is Ubersuggest at http://ubersuggest.org/. This special search engine will come back with tons of phrases for you so you don’t have to uber-stretch your brain, either.
Then, take all of the applicable phrases (Don’t grab “pizza tools” if you’re selling hot pizzas, for example, because that keyword is irrelevant.) and feed them into a keyword research tool, such as Google AdWords’ Keyword tool. I like it best because it gives you Google results. You’re looking for low competition and high search volume. When you find a keyword that meets those criteria, and it’s relevant for your business, you’ve hit the jackpot!
Choose the best three keywords or keyword phrases that you can.
Then, make sure that you’re using the right META tags (in the HTML of your page that only spiders can see) with your primary keyword (the keyword that best fits the criteria low competition, high traffic, and relevant) first. Use that phrase in your title and in your META description, as well. Very important! Also be sure that your description is natural English that people can understand.
Be sure you’ve added your company address and phone number to your front page, too. That’s really important to Google these days, and get your business into Google Local Search, too. That’s simple to do and will give you a boost.
Actually, there are tons of other things you could be doing to get your site ranked higher in Google, Yahoo, and Bing, just to name the three big engines. If you’d like someone to take care of all of the details for you… Just send me a note. We’re ready to help!
