It’s not a big secret that when you’re building a website, if you want to get it to rank well in search engines, then some SEO work is in order. This makes plenty of webmasters do their research on various websites, blogs, forums, etc. dedicated to the topic of search engine optimization. Getting information on the topic is of course the way to go and just like with anything, knowledge is power. So the more you know, the more you will actually be able to apply in a practical context on your website. But when you research information, it’s very important that the SEO tips that you read are actually good information and not some of the myths and misconceptions that keep re appearing on many sites. These actually cause webmasters to make mistakes when it comes to SEO and often make them waste time focusing on things that aren’t important.

The issue of wasting time is definitely one to consider for any webmaster. If you’re working on your site, or on your websites by yourself, then in many cases you only have a few hours a day to make things happen. You definitely don’t want to spend that time doing things that won’t matter and won’t help you achieve your goals as far as search engine rankings will go. Instead, you could be focusing on improving the content of your website or actually using SEO techniques that will work.

There’s also one big problem when it comes to bad SEO advice. If you apply the wrong SEO techniques to your website, this could end up actually hurting your chances of gaining a good position in search engine results rather than helping you. Now if you’re just making this mistake on one of your mini sites and you have 50 more of them, it may not be such a big deal, as you can start all over again. But if this is your main business website we’re talking about, then this would be even more problematic.

So the question is, how do you avoid making mistakes in SEO? The first thing would be to look for quality information. This can come from well reputed sources, such as websites and blogs of SEO experts. If you take advice from a forum or any other website where user generated content is posted, then first evaluate what’s being said and whether other members agree with it or not.

Avoid Black Hat SEO techniques. These are methods that take advantage of loopholes in search engines systems and are mainly designed with the hope of rapidly getting a website to go up on a search engine, even though it wouldn’t normally “deserve” to get to that position. Using such methods will rapidly get your website penalized as search engines catch on to them and close the loopholes that were used. If you want to build a good reputation online for your site, you should seek out techniques that allow legitimate and long term growth, not tricks to try to get ahead too quickly.

Previously, we have seen some of the technical aspects of building a website for your small business, namely planning the site building and determining whether you will want to use a Content Management System (CMS) to operate your website. While these are all important considerations, once you get them squared away, it is now time to move ahead and start building your site. Here are the main elements that you would be including in your site:

• Product information

Obviously, you will want people to know more about your company’s products and services. After all, this is why they came to your website in the first place, no? Add some details about your products, pricing, etc.

• Relevant details about your industry/niche

Here, you will be giving your site visitors some information that is not directly related to promoting your products. Like what, for example? Let’s say that you sell laptop parts. You could include some tutorials about how to take apart various models of laptops, how to remove the screen, replace the keyboard, etc. Basically, things that are relevant to what you are selling, without promoting your products too much. You can also include multimedia content here, such as videos as well.

• Background information about your business

This section will simply contain some basic information about your business, such as the types of products that you sell, the amount of time that you have been in business for, who the company leaders are, etc. This will help the visitor find out more about you and will give them the reassurance that they are dealing with a legitimate company.

• Contact information and ways to get in touch with you

Your contact information, such as your phone number and address, should be featured prominently on your site, as well as in the header and footer of every one of your pages. After all, you want your visitors to contact you, right? Don’t make them dig through 10 pages before they are able to find your phone number. You can also include a contact form that will allow a visitor to send you a request for information or an inquiry, and then you can respond to them via e-mail or by phone. Including live chat support on your site is also a great idea, if you will be able to have someone on staff ready to provide support by live chat to your visitors, at least during regular business hours.

• Links to your social media pages

Social media is an excellent business tool, and this has been stated numerous times by industry experts. Because of this, it will always be a wise idea to include links to your Facebook and Twitter pages. Also, on your content posts and product, include a “Like” button for Facebook, which wil let the user share that page with their friends. If your business has a YouTube channel, just link to it from your website. This will allow them to quickly check out all of your videos that you have uploaded to YouTube.

Previously, we have seen that there are certain things that you need to decide when you are building a website for your business. One of the things would have been selecting a system to manage the content of your site. Of course, the goal of any business website would be to share information with your visitors about what your business has to offer and make them want to buy your products. But you should also have a good back end system that will enable you to easily manage your website, plus add or remove information to it as necessary. Your main options are either: simply put up a static website, or use a content management system, or CMS. Both options have their pluses and minuses, as such, it would only be logical for us to explore them in the context of building a website for your small business.

Using a Static Website

This is by far the simplest way to put up a site. You create the pages, either from scratch, or by using a template or web builder and then you upload them to your web host. Then, you are done. Let’s examine some of the advantages and disadvantages of this option:

Advantages

• Ease of use. You will simply have to create the web pages and upload them onto your server. There are no new systems that you would need to learn how to use, etc. This makes creating a static website quite easy and an attractive option for beginner webmasters.
• Availability of many templates and tools. There are plenty of free and paid website templates and web building tools that you can use to create your site. Many of these are quite straightforward to use as well.
• Highly customizable. You can add any type of content that you want on your site, usually with a WYSIWYG web editor, without worrying about compatibility issues too much.

Drawbacks

• Hard to add or remove information. If you have a static website, adding or removing information, especially if you need to do so on a regular basis, will be quite difficult. You will need to open up the page in an HTML editor, make the changes and then re-upload the page to your web host. While this is certainly achievable, it is not too convenient.
• Limited e-commerce features. If you plan on selling things on your website directly, then managing an e-commerce site that is simply composed of static HTML pages is quite hard. You will have no back end system, so you will have to rely on your payment processor’s system to manage sales, get reports, etc. Also, adding and removing products, adding new promotions, etc. is going to be quite difficult due to the point above; you will need to manually edit and re-upload the page every time.

Conclusion

Using static HTML pages for your business website may be an acceptable option, if you own a business where your offerings do not change very frequently and if you are not selling anything directly on your website.

If you are going to be building a website for your small business, then there are certain things that you definitely need to know. The purpose of a business website is to help people who are interested in your business find out more about it and then contact you to purchase a product or service if you have something that interests them. To create your business website, you have a few choices. Either you can build the site yourself, or hire a web developer to do it for you. Many small business owners will prefer to create a website by themselves, primarily due to the availability of good tools that allow a website to be built without coding, and also due to the fact that professional web developers and designers might sometimes charge more than what some people would want to pay.

When you build your site, there are certain things that you need to keep in mind. Here is some information on the whole web building process that will be useful to anyone that is creating a website for their business.

• First, Make a Plan

Before you begin building anything, it is important that you plan the overall look and feel of your website, as well as determine the kind of content that you will be placing on it. Also, you will need to determine what your website will do for your business. Will it be just a website that will present information about your business and encourage your site visitors to contact you, or will it be something a bit more advanced. If you are selling products, you could, for example, build an e-commerce site that would let people buy your stuff online, without needing to call you to place an order or to visit your location. If you offer services, then you can include an ordering system on your website as well. Planning your site is the first step in putting all the pieces together. Of course, you will be able to make changes as you go along, as well as after when your site has been put up.

• Determine What Platform Your Site Will be Based On

A “platform” in web building usually refers to a content management system that will power your site and allow you to make easy changes to it. Of course, you do not have to use one if you don’t want to. If you want to build the simplest kind of website possible, then you can simply create a static HTML website that will need to be updated manually.

But to make things easier, there are several systems that you can use. Some are general, such as WordPress, Joomla or Drupal, which work well with any kind of website, due to the thousands of free themes, plugins and additions to these systems that can be used. If you are going to run an e-commerce website, then there are special e-commerce platforms like Zen Cart, Magento and OS Commerce that you can use to base your site on instead. It is a good idea to learn more about these systems and what they can do for you.

In the internet marketing world, creating your own digital product and selling it is seen as a profitable venture to take part in. In fact, there are millions of ebooks and guides on different topics that are being sold each year. Many online entrepreneurs have seen this and want a share of the action. Many of them simply create an ebook which explains either various methods of making money on the internet or focuses on a specific topic, such as Adsense, CPA, site flipping, etc. While this is a good way to start, there are some additional things that you can do to give more value to your products in the eyes of your buyers and thus make them more likely to be interested in buying them. Remember, the buyers can’t really see what’s inside your product when they are on the sales page, so they will base their buying decision mainly on the perceived value that they see in your product overall.

Now how do you increase the value of a product? Here are some good ideas:

• Add bonuses

This can be an additional, smaller ebook on a related topic that will be useful to the buyer.

If the method that your guide is teaching involves building a website, you can include things such as PLR website templates or graphics as part of the whole package. You can also include various other web building tools too.

The bonus doesn’t have to be in the form of a “product” either. Another thing that you can include is a service. It could be in the form of a free one on one coaching session with you. Or it could be something like a few months of free hosting or a free domain name. Basically, anything that will make the buyer see added value in your item.

• Separate your ebook into several parts

This will give the impression that your guide is bigger and contains more content, while previously these were all chapters in one big ebook. You can present these as separate, smaller guides that inform the reader about something specific. The buyer will feel as if they are getting many ebooks for the price of one and might see your offer as more valuable to them.

• Create a video course

You can convert your ebook completely into a video or add a few videos that explain something specific that is taught in your guide. There are some buyers who prefer watching a video over reading an ebook. Others will see the inclusion of a video part in your product as an assurance that it is more detailed and gives easy to follow, step by step instructions. While creating a video takes more time and requires more effort than simply writing, it can be very well worth it in the end, as it can have a very positive impact on the amount of sales that you make from the product you are selling.

When we talk about internet marketing, many people instantly seem to think that it is related to affiliate offers and building a website to host some Adsense ads. Sure, these things are what many people do to earn money on the internet, but they are not the only components of online marketing. If you have a local business, you can use the internet to draw more clients and above all, to get your business known in the community. There are various options for you to use to get the word out. Yesterday, we have talked about local SEO and your options for doing it. But search engine traffic is not the only way for you to get visitors to your website and clients for your business. Let’s examine a few other ways to get what you are looking for.

Getting Traffic

Whether you are pushing affiliate offers, or have your own, physical small business, you want traffic to your site. Traffic simply means visitors that look at your website. There are many ways to get this traffic: SEO (which we talked about yesterday), online classified ad sites, social media sites and targeted media buying. We will explore these one by one to see what the advantages (and sometimes drawbacks) are of using these methods. That way, you will be able to make a decision on how to advertise your business online.

Classified Ads Sites (Craigslist, Gumtree, Backpage, Kijiji and dozens more).

There are various sites which let you place a classified ad, which is similar to what you would see in a newspaper. There are some main, worldwide sites such as Craigslist, but there are also some local sites which could be geared towards people in your locality. For example, in French Canada where I live, the website Annonce123.com is very popular with people and attracts a lot of local traffic.

In order to maximize your chances of success and to take the highest advantage of the sites it is recommended that you:

• Post on all the sites. That’s right, both the national sites which have a section for your city and the smaller, local sites (if present in your locality). Posting an ad on these sites is free and takes 2 or 3 minutes. Remember, even if you only get 10 views a day for your ad, one of these viewers could be your next biggest customer. Say if you own a car rental place, the viewer could be a diplomat from Monaco on a temporary assignment in your city, who will rent your most expensive car for 6 months. Think of the money you will make with him. Sure, this is rare… but you never know… and if he doesn’t see your ad, well he never know your car rental business existed and use a competitor instead.
• Make you ad look interesting. Your ad should stand out and be engaging to the users. Thus, use a good title and also, make sure that you use proper spelling and grammar in the ad. Believe me, it helps.
• Use the “featured” or “upgrade” options if possible. Many sites, for a small fee of (varies from $0.50 to a few dollars) will let your ad be “featured”. This means that it will be either on top of all the other ads, or will have highlighting that will draw attention to it. If you have a few dollars to spare, use this option.

Tomorrow, we will examine social media sites and how they can be useful for marketing your local business on the internet.

It’s no secret that you need to figure out what keywords apply to your content in order to create an SEO friendly website. The challenge comes in figuring out exactly what to do with your keywords. We’re going to show you a few uses for keywords that will help you create a SEO friendly website.

The first (and one of the most important) place you should be using keywords is in your title. If you’re using a CMS like WordPress, you should try to use as many keywords as you can in the title of the post you’re creating. If you’re building a website using an editor like Dreamweaver, or just hand coding it, then try and use your keywords as part of the title of the page, in between the title tags. It’s important not to make your title awkward by overusing keywords. You have to remember, your visitors see your title too, it’s not just there for search engines.

Descriptive meta tags, and keyword meta tags aren’t as big a part of how search engines rank sites as they used to be, but that doesn’t mean they should be overlooked. Description meta tags should contain as many keywords as you can manage, while remaining coherent. It’s important not to make your description awkward or overly bulky just to squeeze in a few more keywords because search engines often use those descriptions as a snippet about the site when it shows up in search results. As for the meta keyword tags, don’t exceed 20 keywords when using them. Search engines view excessive keyword use in the meta tags negatively, so you could actually wind up doing more harm than good if you overdo it.

A visitor that comes to your site through an image search is no less valuable than a visitor that comes through a regular search, so make sure to handle your images correctly. Be sure to take the time to name your images carefully. Be as descriptive as you can, and don’t be afraid to give the image a somewhat lengthy name. Be sure to use the alt tags to describe the image in detail as well.

All of the uses for keywords covered above are important when building an SEO friendly website, but they’re all supplemental to keyword-rich content. Search engines are putting a greater focus on the actual content on a site, and h ow it relates to the keywords in your niche. So be sure to use keywords effectively in your code, images, and content, and you’ll see your search rank rise before you know it.