A while back, I told you that Google’s index will double by the year 2011 every 11 hours… The amount of pages in its database will double ever 11 hours.  That’s staggering.  It tells us two things — 1) people who position themselves now and base their revenue off search traffic will explode their businesses, and 2) people who wait will be crushed by the competition.  Gone are the low competition days of the Early Internet, but this is still the Wild West in terms of competition — especially where things are going.  The fatal flaw I see most businesses make when they are coming online is lack of planning.  You have to have a plan; you must know your outcome before you set out or you will never arrive.  Without a plan, you will throw thousands of dollars at bad ideas and poor execution and only start the process all over again with another web design firm, and another after that…

So, what is the plan?  How is your business going to take your existing website and actually make money with it?  If you don’t have a website, how are you going to develop it so you can be assured of success…?  If you’re thinking that you’ll simply build it and you’ll get traffic — because naturally, there will be so MUCH traffic that someone is bound to run into you… Well, that is not going to work.  In fact, I’ll tell you bluntly that it’s naive.  It would be like opening up a storefront on the busiest street in town, but not hanging a sign, not unlocking your door, and painting black on the windows…  People will have no idea you’re there or what you do.  You have to be open for business, and on the Internet, that means marketing your website. 

Before you start marketing, you have to look at your site.  Think about it as another business, because unless you’re already in the direct marketing business, it’s a completely different thought process from where you are right now.  I’ll do my best in the pages of this site to inform and advise, but really, consider hiring a reputable, experienced professional — of course, I think my firm would be your best choice — but hire someone who has navigated this course before and can advise you based on their experiences.  Find someone who will advise you honestly on the best course of action for your particular business, which will not necessarily be the cheapest option for you.  Find a firm that specializes in taking real world brick & mortar businesses from offline to online.

Let’s assume for the moment that you don’t hire someone like me.  There are different ways to approach your company’s website.  Think in terms of what you currently offer your community.  Do you see your website as being a business card for your existing product or service, or would you like to conduct sales on the website?  Do you have information you could share with others that would benefit them?  If so, you have the opportunity to package that information and sell it as a book, course or coaching program (among many other ideas).  Your local business can remain a local business online, or be focused on much bigger markets — it really all depends on what you want to do.  The good news is, you can do anything you want on the Internet.  That’s the bad news as well.  A myriad of choices and possibilities, but one of the most crucial things you can do online is decide who you are, decide who is your market, and be that one thing to that one market.  Diversification is death on the Internet.  Niche is success.

Here’s one clever strategy a recent client has decided to implement — consider all the different niches that are within their existing business and create separate web properties for each of them.  Buy up the domain real estate for about $7/year and then take the time to methodically develop those websites fully within the niches they serve.  There is a definitive strategy on what to name your website — the XYZ in your dot.com — which I’ll be happy to share when we speak.

Keep it tight, keep it focused.  Be patient.  You will reap the rewards with your online business(es).

Technorati Tags: Bound, Business Internet, Competition Days, direct marketing, Google, Marketing Website, Money, Poor Execution, Search Traffic, Sign Painting, Storefront, Success, Thought Process, Thousands Of Dollars, Web Design Firm, Website Focus, Wild West

You own a small business, just like me. You own a brick & mortar business. I have over a decade of personal, hands-on experience with that; I have paid rent, payroll, payroll taxes, sales tax, worried about inventory and sell-through… I get it. Your margins are getting thinner and sales are getting smaller. You have been looking at every expense item in your business and you have probably run out of things to cut. The next thing to cut will be you, or the business itself. What you need are more customers. More customers will solve your problem, won’t it?

I’d like to ask you to think about advertising your business in the Yellow Pages. I’m not suggesting you think about it as a viable means of advertising — I’m asking you, consider the advertising that you’re doing, whether it be the Yellow Pages or any of the other “old school” methods for advertising your business. Consider how that ad works for you. Consider how that ad MUST work for you in order for it to do its job of bringing more customers into your store or restaurant, or getting more prospects to call you. Someone needs to get the idea to open the phone book, page to your category, peruse the ads, find YOU, see something in your display ad to make them take action and call. NO ONE works that hard anymore to seek you out. That advertising costs thousands of dollars a year. How many of your new customers came from the Yellow Pages last year? Do you even have any metrics (data) to know where your new business came from? Humbly, I suggest the best thing you can do is eliminate that display ad; create a regular, simple listing and pay for an extra line for your website address.

Now please consider your website. I’m going to be very direct and honest with you — if you are running your website like most small business owners, it’s failing to add anything to your business. Many small business owners operate their website as though it were a Yellow Pages ad; it’s there. Your customers won’t randomly find you on the Internet. They won’t just happen to think about your business and type it in. Even if your potential customers go to a search engine and type in your TYPE of business, they probably won’t find you unless you have 1) optimized your pages properly and 2) created specific methods to increase the presence and visibility of your website to the search engines. You see, not only your customers need to know who you are, but Google, Yahoo and MSN does as well. If they don’t know you exist, they can’t deliver your site to people who need your product or service.

Done properly, a website can be a VERY effective method of adding customers to your business. It can be modified very quickly to adapt to trends. Through your website, you can feature sales, talk to your customers and find new clients. A website can be any size you want it to be. You can even sell some of your products on your website and reach beyond your local market.

Consider your website name. If your business is about plumbing, and you don’t have “plumbing” in your .com name, does Google know what your site is about? Do the pages of your site talk about the various aspects of your business? Oftentimes, you’ll see a local business have a three-page site — a Contact page, About Us, and then a HUGE page about everything it is they do. Why? Because they “got a deal” from a web designer for a three-page site that was cheap and easy to implement. This is a terrible strategy in terms of search engines. Segment your pages into one topic per page. Make sure the metatags on each page match the topic. You can Google a discussion about metatags, but essentially, metatags are the code Google looks at for clues on what the page is about. YOU determine what the metatags are. Oftentimes, web designers don’t put anything in the metatags because you have paid for “web design” not “SEO.” That’s one reason why you got such a “deal” on the price. (Kinetics Web Pro only creates SEO-friendly sites, so every page has metatags.)

Metatags are easy to find. Just go to your website, and then in your browser, go to “View Source.” Search for the TITLE and DESCRIPTION tags. If you don’t have anything there, or you can’t even find those words in your code, then your page is not optimized for search engines in the most basic way.

Metatags are the simplest way to optimize a website for search engines, but really, it goes to the very structure of the site. Think in terms of an outline with 1) 2) 3) and sub-sections of a) b) and c) — search engines think the same way. They like to see orderly, planned websites that function logically. Your site should be the same way.

We hope this has been helpful to your business.

If you don’t have time to do this work yourself, we can help. Contact us today.

Technorati Tags: Advertising Costs, Amp, Brick, Decade, domain name marketing, Hands On Experience, Local Business Marketing, Margins, Means Of Advertising, Metrics, Mortar Business, New Business, Old School, Payroll Taxes, Personal Hands, Phone Book, Prospects, Sales Tax, Small Business Owners, Thousands Of Dollars, Website Address, Yellow Pages, Yellow Pages advertising