Website Promotion for Small Business Owners
 

Website Promotion for Small Business Owners

So your small business or association now has a first-class, professional website that is attractive, functional and informative. Your website has a place as an integral part of current and future marketing plans - but you have one problem... No one knows your site exists!

No matter how fantastic and useful a website you have, your new website is worthless unless it is visited and utilized by your target market. How is this accomplished? The best way is to first get your web address on your business cards, stationary, your email signature, even put your web address on your voicemail message.

The next step is to announce the "launching" of your website to all your current customers and business associates. This can be done by sending out an email, mentioning it in phone conversations, issuing a press release, or even better by doing all of the above. While you do this, spend some time researching websites on topics that relate to your business, and request information about having them link to your site.

Now for the real key - get in the search engines! While being proactive and telling your target market about your website is great, the real key is to make sure your customers can find you when they need you. This means search engines. Its no wonder over 85% of website visits stem from search engines - primarily the top four - Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL.

After just a short time, you'll notice that getting your website into the search engines may take some effort and patience (if it is a new web address), but getting high rankings for the search terms your customers use while searching online is the real battle. Why is this important? Because most people are not patient when searching online - unless your site is on the first page or two of results, you aren't going to see much of an impact. What you need to do now is optimize your website for high search engine listings.