Do's and Don'ts for Building a Business Website

Photo courtsey www.webranditpromotions.com

In this age of so many free website creators and social networks that can be set up to promote business, many people assume that websites are obsolete. Why get a website when all these other platforms are free?  

In terms of the free website platforms (Wix, Weebly, Wordpress, etc), you get what you pay for. Limited and limiting features. In Wix, for example, you don't have control over your domain name. In Weebly and Wordpress, there are a fixed number of templates to use. And oh, the ads! Unless you upgrade to the paid version, you (and your customers) will be seeing Wix ads, which communicates that you are too cheap to get your own hosting site and pay for a website design company. 

The message you are sending your customers is that you don't have the budget for this essential communication tool for your business. The question has to arise in your customers mind: how will you chintz out on the product or service you will be providing for them? 

When you use a free platform like Wordpress, there is no support for how to use it. Sure, when you come across a problem, you can spend hours googling for the solution but how much of your time is being wasted that you could be using on your business? 

If you are serious about your business, be serious about the tools you use to market it. 

Finally, the reason a free social media platform like Facebook to market your business is a bad idea is because you don't own the platform, it belongs to Facebook. That means the content belongs to them, too. And access to all those customers. So, one day, they may decide that they don't like your page or what you are selling. They may decide to delete your entire page! Or something may happen to your page and there's nothing you can do to fix it. Have you ever tried to get support for a problem on Facebook? 

Obviously, if you are relying on a free web platform for your website, cost is an issue. There are affordable solutions that have everything you need and you don't have to spend thousands of dollars on a website. As you consider different website solutions, here are some do's and don'ts as you get started: 

DO get educated on the basics so that when you talk to a vendor or company, you know what to ask. You can do it! Learn why it's important to buy your own domain, why you should have your hosting account and domain name under separate companies and how a website actually works so you know the parts that are important to a well-running website. 

DON'T hire your nephew, son, daughter, cousin or other family member to build your website-UNLESS they work for a professional website company . Lots of reasons for this but the main one is that if they decide they don't want to do it anymore, you are stuck. You could potentially lose your domain name (see first DO) and other issues may arise that affect your website when they decide to leave. 

DO get a website design company that provides as much responsive support as possible especially if you will be doing the site maintenance yourself. 

DO make sure that the company you hire has basic search engine optimization included in their package. Many people are saying that SEO is dead but I don't believe that is true. There are some basics that you need to have in order to be indexed by the search engines.  

That's all for now and I know it's a lot to digest. I'm here to help, feel free to ask questions in the comments! 

Not another online marketing business blog!

So, I'm finally starting my blog again. I've been in the online business game since 2005 and started a blog a long time ago. Unfortunately, it got wiped out and I never had the time to start it up again. 

Instead, I've been curating content and adding my own short commentary on it wherever I publish something on social media. But now, there is just so much happening with online marketing strategies. So many people posting dated misinformation and misunderstanding how it all works that I really feel the need to start blogging again. 

A little history on how I learned to play the online marketing game. In 2005, I started my own health-themed website that still exists today but is, sadly, neglected by me. I "developed" it using a platform called Site Build It! Very good in it's day but meant for beginners. But here's what I learned from SBI that I consider the single most important tip you need to be successful online: You Must Get Traffic to Your Website to Be Successful Online. Pretty simple, right? But easier said than done. 

Back in those days, we didn't really have social media. Twitter started in 2007 and at the time, Google actually indexed tweets! Woo hoo, all of us SBI'ers were all over that. (By the way, Google only indexes Google+ posts now.) Back then, we used article directories, link exchanges and news sites like Digg to promote our websites . Remember them? All of those methods are outdated and in some cases, will get you dinged with a penalty by Google. When social media came on the scene, I "got" it. This was the fast track to being successful online. But back to my story... 

As I became more experienced on how online marketing works, I learned it was a lot cheaper to get a hosting account and start building self-hosted Wordpress websites so I said goodbye to SBI and launched out on my own. 

Hosting my own websites and "developing" them using Wordpress platform was an education in itself. I learned a lot about the tech side of things. Enough to be dangerous. I also tried XSitePro to build websites and also dabbled a bit in Dreamweaver. That is scary stuff for a non-techie! 

As I was developing all these websites for myself, I looked around locally and saw that a lot of small "Main Street" businesses really didn't understand how to use their websites to get more business. Social media was starting to become popular in other parts of the country (and world) but my local area had no clue what was going on. So, I hung out a shingle and decided to start helping them out. 

It was a lot of fun to see it all start to click in their heads and lucky for me, other local companies started to see the potential in it, too. I could leverage their marketing for my own business because social media buzzwords were starting to surface everywhere that business was being done. The more people were talking about it, the more business owners were starting to value my services. 

Most business owners would say that having more competition is a bad thing. But I see it as an opportunity because there's more local businesses who are looking for help to do their online marketing. And they all can't afford the big companies. There's enough business for everyone! 

I have a lot more to say about online marketing and how to do it right. I am constantly reading the Influencers on the latest trends in online marketing and how those tips and tools can be used to support local business. So, what can you expect if you decide to follow my Online Business Blog? No B.S. explanations of those social media tools and trends, best practices, things to avoid, some humor and lots of visuals. My goal is that I will be the voice of reason that you can trust in the fast-paced world of online marketing.