How Do I Get My Business Online?

Giving a business an online web presence is essential in today's marketplace, as the Internet is now one of the first places many people will hunt for goods and services. If someone searches on Google and gets a list consisting of your competitors then your profits are going to suffer.

Getting your business listed online is relatively simple, but you need to plan your strategy carefully before plunging in with the first offer that you find. You could set up a beautifully crafted web site, but all that will count for nothing if your customers can't find it. Making your company's services easy to find is one of the major challenges and needs some initial effort.

Firstly consider what services you intend to offer. If you sell mouse traps, for example, then ideally you would like anyone typing "mouse trap" into a search engine to find your company listed in the first page of results. Unfortunately, Google returns about 750,000 pages for this phrase, so achieving a high ranking listing will be extremely difficult to begin with. Instead find a list of other phrases which are linked to your main line of business, but are less saturated.

A useful (free) tool for generating such phrases is "Good Keywords", which can be downloaded from http://www.goodkeywords.com. Installing this and entering "mouse trap" gives a list of related phrases that people search for - a handy one in this case is "humane mouse trap" which returns a more manageable 12,000 hits on Google. If you already have a strong brand name, then you may wish to use that as your web site name (URL), but if you are simply trying to establish your business online you will benefit from a name that includes your keywords. Check out available names at http://www.checkdomain.com . In this case www.humane-mouse-trap.com is available, but you may have to try some alternatives until you find something suitable.

Now you have a name for your web site you can investigate the options for getting your information on line. A Google search for "domain hosting" will give you thousands of possibilities - if you are new to the web it's probably best to pick a service that offers some ready-made templates and a support line. Signing up with a company is easy and most will register your web site domain name as part of the process.

Building a site for the first time can be daunting, but if your host has templates, then give these a go. As your business expands you may want to employ the services of a web-designer, but unless you are planning to get really big, really soon, you can set up the first page yourself. Make sure that your site includes your keywords in several places (most importantly in the page title) and you have made a good start at getting your business online.

Update your stationary to include your web address and beginning promoting like crazy through online directories etc. There is still an uphill struggle to get your page noticed, and that is a topic all in itself - Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is big business, but you can get many handy hints from experts by Googling SEO.

Keep your content fresh, relevant and exciting and eventually everyone looking for a humane mouse trap will be beating a path to your computer.

Author: Bryan Hallett