Traffic is probably the most difficult thing for small online business owners to get. Unless you’re a major brand, you need to establish a presence online and to make the search engines aware that your business exists.
How?
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There are plenty of ways to do that. Start a Google Plus page or a Facebook page for your business. If you have a brick & mortar store, be sure you’re listed in sites like Yelp or Angie’s List or other online directories. Set up a Google Places page.
Then, get active online Participate in social media by posting to your accounts. Share information, Like and +1 entries that you enjoy or have learned from. All of these things can be helpful.
But the very best way for you to succeed in online business these days is by producing amazing content. Teach people something and you’ll own them. Or, be clever. Everyone loves a good smile. Create videos that show people how your product works. They don’t even have to be top production quality videos, only entertaining or informational.
Want to know a secret? There really is no best way to create content.
Let’s take a look at a website called Boing Boing. Most of the content on that site is mined from other websites. Sometimes, the editors write a blurb or an entire article about something they have found, but that’s what the blog is about — finding cool stuff online — and it works. The site has a page rank of 7 and an Alexa under 4K. That’s strong. But they’ve been around a long time, and because they have so many people visiting just to see what’s on tap, they are respected by Google as a “popular” site.
You can do the same thing, if you don’t like to write or aren’t very good at it. Just find things in your niche that are interesting to you. Chances are that those same things will be interesting to other people, too. Because of changes at Google, however, you will need to include at least 250 words of text.
Don’t have time? Hate to write? Not a very good writer?
Simple. Pay someone else to write for you. Just be sure you’re paying more than $1 or 2 for the articles you’re getting. Google is very excited about proper spelling, grammar and punctuation these days, so you want articles in your language that are written by someone who truly understands it. You can’t put up gibberish stuffed with keywords online anymore. (Well, you can, but don’t expect any traffic from it.)
The Web is evolving, and become more and more professional. You need to establish your brand online, more than ever, and one way to do that is by producing amazing content and putting it everywhere — on social content site, on your own website, or on other blogs or websites, too. I see a day when the Internet is all about brands. Establish yours now and put some juice behind it, or you’ll be left in the Internet marketing dust.
For help with determining a plan for content creation and/or to have us develop it for you, email us on the contact page or call 1-941-538-7629 today.
