The growth of E-commerce, Internet marketing and the world wide web as a whole is growing exponentially everyday. Businesses's of all shapes and sizes, products and services are now harnessing the power of the Internet to generate sales and ultimately expand their business.
The reason for this is the numerous benefits to business that the Internet offers.
Websites
By far the most obvious resource for business, on the internet, is your own web site. Giving you 24/7 exposure to potential cutomers world wide, aswell as offering existing clients 24/7 accessability to all your goods and services. An E-commerce website gives customers the option of purchasing goods and services directly from you in the comfort of there own home. Due to the direct link between buyer and seller, goods and services can often be offered at a far more competitive rate than your local retailers, who are paying large overheads in the form of there shop rental etc.
A Website is also relatively inexpensive to set up and offers business's, especially small business, a fantastic oppotunity to get exposure quickly and effectively to a global base of potential customers.
A professional website has the potential to generate business from all over the world.
At BrandonSymonds.com we realise that potential by implementing specialised techniques which enhance your website presence. Just having a website is not enough, a website needs to be promoted to get it to the top of a search engine where it will have a far greater chance to reach its full potential.
A website has varying degrees of profitability depending on how it is managed. Sure you can create a website and refer new and existing customers to it, and use it as another avenue where customrers can do business with you, however unless your website is promoted, the only customers who know of your site are ones that you have told either directly or through advertising etc. Although this is still beneficial, especially for small business as it gives a professional image and offers customers the ease of dealing with you online, it is limited compared to a website that is promoted effectively, has a good rating on search engines and therefore reaches a far greater global consumer base, competing perhaps with bigger multi national companies on an equal footing. It is quite possible to get your business a better listing on search engines than much bigger competitors, simply by aggressively promoting your site.
Search Engine Optimisation
Getting your site listed in the major search engines is the most important step towards successfully marketing your website. Your website may look professional and offer great products, but if its not optimised for the search engines you will not reach a global market place.
Search engines are looking for just one thing, content that is relevant to the search query. Search engines determine site relevance in the following ways:
Keyword density
The first thing a search engine looks for when determining if your site is relevant are keywords. Your keywords must be displayed prominently throughout your website and have the right density. Repeating your keywords too many times will result in the search engines thinking you are trying to cheat them. Not enough keywords and your site might not apperar relevant enough. The text on your website should read naturally with your keywords appearing a few times throughout your text and in your links and image tags.
Meta tags
Meta tags are code that is written specifically for the search engines, they generally can not be seen by the human eye. They include the title of your site, a description and a list of keywords. The major search engines now mainly look at the title tag and to a lessor extent the desciption. The keywords tag is no longer seen as a relevant part of the site content, so it is overlooked by most of the search engines. Including keywords in your title tag is crucial to acheiving a high ranking on the major search engines.
Amount of content
To the major search engines content is king. Relevant content that is updated regularly is exactly what the search engines want to see. Having lots of pages on your site with related content allows you to include more keywords and inevitably leads to more pages being indexed and more traffic to your site.
Link popularity
Most crucial and often most overlooked part of search engine optimisation is link popularity. This refers to the number of times a link to your site is found throughout the entire world wide web. If a search engine finds a link to your web site on another highly ranked, relevant site, it will think your site is relevant also. The more relevant links you can get for your website the higher your ranking will be.
Website hosting and domain names
A website hosting account provides two essential things for a small business; web space and email addresses at your domain name.
Your web space is where you store your web pages, images, videos and any other content you want to make available on the world wide web. Hosting plans vary considerably with the amount of space offered, and added features such as unlimited email addresess and data bases. it is a highly competitive niche in the infomation technology industry.
Domain names are simply website names. Your domain is your website space. Most businesses use their trading name as their domain name if it is available. Obviously you want your domain name to reflect your business. Choosing an appropriate domain name can be tricky, especially due to the large number of domain names already registered. .However it is an important decision and needs to be made with a clear view of what you are trying to acheive and how you want to be represented on the world wide web.
Email
Email or electronic mail is one of the most powerful tools on the internet for both private and commercial use. Having an email address allows you to communicate with anyone else on the web who also has an email address, It is virtually instantaneous and is a highly effective communications medium. An email address at your own domain name (your website) gives a professional image to potential customers and allows communication with your business 24/7. By replying to all emails asap a business can create goodwill and trust and promote an effecient image.
A powerful marketing tool, email can be used to target market sectors directly with promotional emails, follow up and thankyou letters. As well as being used to register with various websites as a member, or to receive news letters or special offers etc.
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