When the Internet was fairly new, entrepreneurs would throw up a website that provided some contact info. Then they might add some information about their services, rates, clients, etc. That helped to reduce the number of questions that customers would ask. Instead you could send them to your website. So it was basically an online brochure

Today a website is much more important even for ‘offline’ businesses (typical brick and mortar businesses). Customers search for local businesses using Google and other search engines, much more than yellow pages these days. Will they find you?

Google and other search engines use the content on your website to determine when to send people to you. When people tell me ‘I want to be on the first page of Google’, I often ask them ‘Ok, but for what keyword phrases?’ You need to spend some time discovering the keywords that people are typing in to search for your business. And then put these keywords in your content which doesn’t always happen naturally.

For example if you are in the document serving business, do people type in ‘process servers’, ‘document server’, ”affidavit or ‘I need a restraining order’?

Getting found on Google is much more than just putting up a website and submitting your site to them. Google uses a series of criteria to determine how to rank your site. It also uses ‘backlinks’ which are links that other sites have that point to your site. These can be considered ‘votes’ for your site, and the more popular the other site is that links to you, the better you will be ranked as well. You can get links yourself by posting articles that contain your link to EzineArticles.com for example.

To set up an inexpensive website that you can easily maintain yourself, as well as building email lists, shopping carts or membership sites, please see our internet consulting services.

1. The ability to make your own edits – we highly recommend setting up your website with Wordpress. It’s a content management system and it’s free!
2. A way to collect email addresses (leads) – this is usually done with an email autoresponder. You pay a small monthly fee to a provider and you get a sign up form to cut and paste into your website. You can get signups by offering a free report, or e-book for example.
3. A blog – nowadays customers want to see that you’re a real company with real people, and it gives them a way to interact with you and give feedback. It’s also a way to keep your site current.
4. Contact information – it’s surprising how hard this is to find on many websites. Often this is because companies don’t want to help their customers!
5. Useful information – many businesses take a brochure of their services and put it online. But by providing useful articles, blog posts, reports and so on, you will be perceived as an authority. This will build trust with your customers which is vital these days. Think of a customer going to your website and seeing your services – they will probably be thinking ‘How can I trust this company?’. Other than asking friends for recommendations, they will often use your content and knowledge of the subject to determine whether you are trustworthy.