Effective Web Promotion Techniques For Small Online Businesses
After setting up the look of your small business website, uploading its written content, photos, videos, and other files, polishing its web design and navigation, and publishing it to the World Wide Web, the next step you should do is web promotion. Since people don't have any idea that your website exists, you must spread the good news as extensively as possible. You may begin by submitting the link of your web address to the major search engines, Yahoo!, MSN and Google. Just find their link submission page. Upon submission, search engines will review your website and include it in relevant search results. This is not automatic, however, and your inclusion to search results may take from 7 days to 3 weeks.
Of course, you should also do web promotion to the people within your network. Friends, families, classmates, people from work, online friendsevery agent that can market your small business website on your behalf is important. Up to now, word of mouth is still the most powerful form of promotion, so ask people that you personally know to encourage other people to visit your site. If possible, you may send them a PR letter which they can copy and paste to their online profiles, blogs, journals, among others.
Building a small business website entails a lot of work: you have to purchase a domain name, subscribe to a web hosting provider, manage your web content, web design, submit your site to search engines, build links, and do other web promotion strategies. This is grueling, especially when your products are ready and they just have to be sold. But actually you don't have to wait too long to get your website done. As an alternative, you can create a small business blog for your company.
Unlike websites that call for a lot of intricate processes before reaching publication, in blogs, you just have to put your content in an online writing tool and in just one click your message is ready for the whole wide world to read. To create a blog, you just have tosign up for an account in any blogging site and in less than 5 minutes, you're free to do your web promotion and sales campaigns.
In running a small business blog, you don't have to pay the services of a web developer just to maintain your site. The online writing software programs of blogging sites are so easy to navigate, and do not need any editing of html, css, and other computer codes. Web design too, is effortless, and open to be explored. There are a lot of web design templates to choose from, and all of their elements, color, and style can be modified, arranged and matched according to your preferences.
Most of all, blogs can reach to more people than websites, because blogs are primarily social. Blog sites gather different web pages with the same topic and content, and they deliver them to online readers who have interest in such subjects. So whether you're selling bags, clothes, books, or anything, the blogs that you will write about your company will be promoted to people who have the strong inclination to the products you're offering.
In relation to blogs and journals, it is also better if you have your company blog aside from your official small business website. In your company blog, you can put articles on events happened just recently, like a specific product launching night, participation of your business in a trade show, etc. You can also put informative articles that are related to your product. For instance, if you are selling bags, you can feature articles on bag maintenance, guide to shopping for bags, where to purchase good bags, among others. In these articles you can mention, but not obviously, the products that you're selling. Make sure that the content of your articles is focused on giving reader helpful tips and instructions, and not encouraging them to buy your products. This can be very annoying to readers. You should not forget of course to advance the web promotion of your official website by putting a link.
Building links is a major component in web promotion of Internet small business. Visit websites, blogs, and forums that are related to the products that you are selling, and paste the web address of your site therein. If the site is personal, ask the permission of the owner to exchange links. By doing these, you can magnify the traffic of users to your website.