Starting a Business Website
June 19, 2010 by mike
Filed under Internet Marketing
In the internet marketing world, a “business website” can mean multiple things. If you are a small business owner with your own company, then you could do it in the traditional sense of the word and make a website about your business.
But these days, as long as you have a site that makes money, it is deemed an online business, so even a sales page could be considered a business website.
I don’t know which of these two categories you are interested in, but you follow the same steps for setting up any website, whether it is for your own company or not.
- First of all, you will need to buy a domain name. This is the name for your website (the www.websitename.com part). My favorite domain registrar, and one of the cheapest also, is Namecheap.com.
- You will also need to pay for hosting. HostGator is my favorite since they are affordable and reliable. You can host an unlimited number of websites for less than $10 per month.
- Now you will actually need to make a website, unless you just want a blank page. There are a few options here, depending on your skills and budget. If you are a web designer with html knowledge then it will be easy to design a site. If not, don’t worry. There are lots of tools to help you build a website without much trouble. Dreamweaver and XSitePro are two popular website building tools. Another option is to set up a blog using WordPress (this site is an example).
After you make your website and have it up and running, there are some important things to remember. It needs to follow basic rules of SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. You want people to visit your site, so it has to be keyword optimized so people can actually find it.
Use focused keywords in your website title, article titles, and throughout the content. For example, if you really do have your own company, it is understandable to want to get your brand name out there. But if you want visitors, you need to focus on keywords that actually get searched for…which means location based keywords. As an example, a website title of “Welcome to My Chiropractor Site” won’t be as beneficial as “Houston Texas Chiropractors- Pete’s Family Chiropractic.”
These are the basic steps to starting a business website. You can find a lot more information on these, or post a comment at the bottom and I will help any way I can. It really isn’t that hard to build a decent looking website, so instead focus on optimization and getting visitors that could possibly turn into customers.
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Hello Mike, nice read. I have one question based on your recommendation of targeting local traffic.
I live in a smaller city outside of Nashville Tn. Since there are many more people in Nashville, I would prefer to target that city instead with my graphic design site. Do you have any recommendations on how to do this? Will the search engines figure out that I am not a Nashville citizen and punish my website? Can I target multiple cities?
I’ve tried to find more information on this subject but can’t seem to get anywhere. I’m assuming the simple answer is to just include the keyword “Nashville” throughout my website, as well as in post titles. Would I be right? I’m loving your site by the way.
Hi Derek, no, you don’t have to target the exact city you live in if it is small and won’t get any visitors. Targeting big cities near by, like Nashville, works well but you could expand further if you really wanted to. There is no penalty for search engine rankings depending on whether you are a citizen of that city or not. And you could target multiple cities if you want, but it would be easiest to just focus on one city at first I think.
I took a look at your site and you have done some nice work. But I’m not sure how much geo-targeting you have done so far. I just did a quick SEO test for the phrase “Nashville graphic designer” to try and get some ideas for you. Your site has a Page Rank of 4 which is good, and the domain is pretty old which helps too. But it could be optimized for the Nashville area better if that is your goal. Like you said, use the keyword “Nashville” throughout the site and in post titles. You could also change your meta description and meta tags to include Nashville graphic designer.
Also, have you already added your website to Google Maps? Perhaps by doing this you could reach more people who are looking for designers in the area. Include your brand name, but also include your keywords for that extra boost. I hope this helps some, good luck!
Thanks for the thorough response Mike, greatly appreciated. You are right, I haven’t paid much attention to SEO with my site. I will implement your advice for sure. It’s nice to know that term “geo-targeting”. Now maybe I can find some more info on the subject. Thanks again for taking the time to answer my question and more. I really appreciate it.