The present global financial situation is challenging for the majority of us. Getting business moving again will help drive our economy back to where it should be with people and the country (and world) prospering again. We all still need to buy goods and services and if we support each other, we can get there.

In fact, now is as good a time as any to start a business if you don't already have one, or to take steps to grow your present business, in order to contribute to and benefit from our economy's future growth. The internet is essentially still in its infancy in regard to business sales and services. It is the way of the future and there is opportunity for anyone with the desire to take part.

But how exactly do you have a successful business online? First, you need a website, be it a small, medium, or large size business, a local business, or a home business. How do you get traffic and the opportunity to show your product or service solutions to people who can benefit?

Most businesses now have a website, at least for an online presence.  Beyond that, there is a wide range of how the website is used.  Active websites can have new content posted daily and be interactive with visitors posting comments or a customer support presence in place and a social marketing plan integrated.  The other extreme is a simple website with basic company information similar to what can be found in the yellow pages.

Since the majority of local, small, or home business owners' day to day tasks are running the business, there is not much time for maintaining or marketing the website.  Larger businesses may have one or more employees managing the internet end of the business.  Either way, it does not take long to discover that simply having a website will not bring massive amounts of visitors.

This blog is targeted for website owners who want to learn how to market a business website online, or at least know more about it so that they can put the wheels in motion to get their website up and running, and producing business. 

First thing to consider is that a small or local business may have spent a great deal of money to have a design service make a fancy website for the company.  This might include flash and great graphics.  The website design usually does not include marketing the website, and often does not include certain code behind the website that makes it search engine friendly.

Flash on a website may look good but the website visitor can experience problems loading the website.  If the site is hard to navigate, or it takes too long to locate the desirable information on the website, it will not keep a visitor's attention.  People want to find what they are looking for as quickly as possible.  Another point worth noting is that some websites focus too much on what the company is about rather than what they will provide for the customer.

Why does a website need to be search engine friendly?  One of the main purposes a local business needs an online presence is because today people search online to find information about businesses.  If the website is not optimized for local search, it is not going to show up at the top of the search results where people are searching.  If the website offers a national or global presence, it also needs search engine optimization in order to rank well.

Let's look at a couple basic things that a website should have.  First, is the title of the website.  This is also what shows up in the blue bar at the top of your computer screen when you are viewing the website.  The search engines look for keywords in this title.  Many local businesses list their company name and possibly something like 'Serving the Community for 30 years.' 

There are a couple of things wrong with a title like that.  First, there may be people that search for the company name, but often they are already established customers or possibly a referral from a customer.  For new business, the website needs to attract people that are searching for their product or service.  Those names need to be in the title of the website if possible.  Also, the name of the location can be included in the title tag for better search results in the local area.

These are just a couple of very basic beginning points for a local business website.  It is these foundation points that we must have in place in order to build a successful internet marketing plan for the website.  Next post we will discuss the process of <a href="http://google.com">keyword research</a>.

Vicki Zerbee
business services