It’s All About Appearances

The beauty of the online marketplace is that small business is playing on a level field with corporate giants. Everyone on the internet is working with the same tools: a website. There is no reason your website can’t be as popular as that of your biggest competitor, if you employ the right web techniques.

Advertising

Significantly cheaper than a huge billboard in a high traffic location, online advertising is a great way to get your brand in front of customers. Google AdWords are a relatively cheap way of advertising to people who are already interested in what your business offers. Using keywords and contextual targeting technology, Google places your ad on relevant websites, including within Google search results. When someone uses Gmail to send an email asking a friend if they can recommend a good beauty therapist in Neutral Bay, your Sydney clinic’s advertisement will be placed on the Gmail site. You can control your budget with Google AdWords by defining how much you want to pay per click, and can localise the advertising if you are an area-specific business.

Keywords

There are millions of potential customers browsing the web, but how do you find them? With 86% of internet users employing search engines to find sites, according to MediaMetrix, search engines are a vital tool in successful online marketing. With the right words, your one man fishing boat charter operation can come up in Google right below the listing for the largest fleet in the world. Brainstorm some keywords by thinking of terms that describe your business, and identify relevant keywords by trialing some you think would be relevant on search engines. Remember that many people misspell, so give room for common mistake versions of your keywords.

Throughout the copy on your website, use the words that describe what your business does, eg ‘charter’ ‘Melbourne’ for our Victoria based fisherman. Without being overly obvious, the more often you can incorporate these keywords in to your website copy the higher you will rank on search engines and increase your traffic. Most people scan when reading online faster than they would a magazine, so choose words that will jump out at them to get your message across.

Popularity

The internet is worse than high school when it comes to the quest for popularity, and you want your website to be the blonde cheerleader with the most friends and party invitations. Have a links page on your own site to increase your chances of getting inbound links and search for websites relating to your industry and send a request for link exchange. website station’s Traffic Accelerator program can do this for you, ensuring that the links are ethical and trusted.

Forums and communities relating to your industry are a great place to interact with interested consumers. Participate in discussions, leaving comments directing readers to your site. Don’t make it too blatant that you’re just out for shameless self promotion by participating broadly in a community to come across as a genuine source.

Presentation

Your business operations may be just your battered laptop in a café, drinking one cappuccino all afternoon to make the most of free wireless, but there’s no reason you can’t come across as equally professional as a multinational corporation with swanky CBD offices. The world wide web, as a visual medium, is all about appearances. The best part is, you have total artistic freedom. Rather than calling attention to the fact that your staff consists of yourself and your spouse, no one needs to know that the only knock on your office door today has been your kids wanting you to make them spaghetti. For a physical address, invest in a PO Box in a central location rather than using your home address.

Browsing online is simply a digital version of shopping: think of your company’s website like a retail store in an area overrun with competition – your website is one of the blossom sellers in New York’s flower district, with a dozen stores in the same street all selling red roses. What makes your blooms interesting to customers window shopping down the road? Make your website stand out to the digital window shopper by emphasising your previous successes and the most attractive aspects of the services you offer.

Meta Tags

When your page appears on a search engine’s results, the title or heading of your main page and the first paragraph of text appear, unless you are using meta tags. By getting a little net-savvy and up-dating your site’s meta tags, your search engine presence will be much more effective. If your business provides tutoring to students, it’s not much use having your company name “Success creators” and your company’s trademark phrase “Building tomorrow’s brightest brains today” come up in a search as it doesn’t adequately explain why the user should click on the link. Include keywords in your headings, subheadings and meta tags, directly stating “Maths and English tutoring” and “affordable one-on-one tutoring from professional qualified HECS experts”. You can go in to more detail in the body of the text. This is definitely the place to mention location if you cater to a specific area.