Every new business needs a website, but simply posting a website and waiting for folks to find you doesn’t work. With the millions of websites floating around out there, simply uploading yours without marketing it is like leaving a business card on the moon — if nobody sees it, it might as well not exist.
Thus, it is essential that you incorporate constant marketing of your website into your day-to-day work. There are many free or cheap ways to drive traffic to your site, and the best methods fall under the term search engine optimization, or SEO. These tasks help the major search engines find and catalog your website under the appropriate search terms. Like most other marketing, SEO is only effective if it is an ongoing, consistent part of your overall marketing strategy. New business owners need to take the time to learn the basics, even if you ultimately decide to outsource the actual work.
One of the most critical outcomes of marketing your website is building linkbacks, as search engines place a lot of weight on good linkbacks. Linkbacks are live links to your website on other, reputable websites. Buying linkbacks is usually a waste of money — the link farms that take your money are identified and not counted by the search engines on a regular basis. Good linkbacks come from posting articles, responding to forums and chatboards, having other people love your site and linking to it from their website or blog, and trading links with relevant, appropriate websites. Writing and submitting articles on a regular basis is an excellent way to begin building linkbacks to your site.
Whatever your business is, there are plenty of topics to write article about. Think about what your customers need to know and use article marketing to get that message out. The better article sites will not let you submit pure marketing material (as in, you can’t mention your own company in the body of the article), but your website link can go in the resource box, along with a brief description of what you do.
Article marketing provides excellent linkback opportunities, especially if your articles contain useful information. Consider writing about how to select your particular type of product or service, what to look for and what to avoid. Describe how using a product or service like yours makes your customer’s life easier or better. Write about the features of a particular product. When those ideas are exhausted, dig into your target market research to see what other topics your potential customers are interested write about that.
Article marketing requires a steady, consistent effort. One or two articles aren’t likely to build much momentum, so schedule time to produce new articles on a regular basis. You can cover the same topic multiple times, as long as the final article is not a word-for-word copy of the others. Generally, writing a fresh article about the same topic will turn out different enough. Keep an eye out for new things …
This article is meant as a practical outline for starting a web/world based business from someone in the process of doing so. I started to put a merchandising business together about a month ago and assumed that a presence on the internet was a necessity. The first thing I did was to research tax laws and file a DBA (“doing business as”) in the counties clerk’s offices where I anticipated doing “physical” business. The tax laws for an individual doing business “under an assumed (business) name are simpler than the more complicated corporate tax laws. Filing the DBA legally establishes you under the business name chosen. At each step from here you need to ensure compliance with manifold regulations, such as permits and licenses for your activities if you wish to sell things in various venues.
Next, you need to ensure the production of your product. This depends on what you produce. Keep record of all your business related expenditures and income. Do not do this in an electronic database only. Keep hard records!
When you have or are close to having a product, you need a website. You should look up “web hosting services” and compare reviews and rankings from those who have used them. Good customer service is essential with a web host. For a small business, you may want to use a shared server or a “VPS” (virtual private server), which costs a bit more. You need to either build the site yourself with software provided by the host or chosen from the marketplace (varied options) or hire it out. It depends on the scope of your site, but inquire about building it yourself as this can be cost effective and more fun. You will need to configure your e-commerce setup by providing online payment services. You can use Pay Pal, Checks, or Credit Cards as a few possibilities. Credit Card processing generally requires a merchant account with Visa/Mastercard. This can be an involved process. Once you are online, you need to promote your site. While there are tricks to web programming (search engine optimization) that make your site accessible, traditional real-life contact is indispensable where you share your name and website while building a rapport with the customer is just essential to a startup business. I am now at the point of marketing and advertising. Best of luck with your own start-up business.…