Building a Small Business Website That Gets Visitors

Time:2010-01-30 13:02:34 Source:Ezinearticles Author:Steve Pemberton

There are many software packages that make building a small business website child's play. For those of us who have no knowledge of coding or limited time, there are now numerous software packages that make it possible to more or less draw a website.

Building a website is only part of the process of gaining an online presence. Many small business owners have low cost websites built for them by designers or developers. Once the website is built it is put online and little if any development is done thereafter.

To gain an online presence and capitalise on the free traffic it is necessary to have the search engines see our web pages as relevant to specific search terms. It is therefore essential that we consider what search terms people might use if they were looking for our company.

Often business websites are built around the company name. This is fine if the company has a strong brand, but if this is not the case it is better to construct the website around the terms that people would search for if they were looking for a company like ours.

When a search is carried out the search engine has to return the results in order of relevance. It uses a number of factors to determine this. The search engine software will look at the keywords, title, description, url and contents of the page and will use this to decide its relevance. When you have identified a set of keywords you should choose one as your main one and buy a domain name that incorporates it.

When a web page is constructed it is important that all of the factors above are kept in mind. Building your small business website in this way will give a good framework on which to build. Each page can be built to target a different set of keywords or phrases that someone is likely to search if looking for a company like yours.

As well as the make up of the pages the search engine will also look at the web sites popularity. Having a large number of links coming into your website tells the search engine that the site is popular with other sites. Incoming links carry a little bit of weight back to your website and have a strong influence on its pages rank.

There are various types of incoming links, some are good and some not so good. Link popularity is a big subject and cannot be covered in a single article, but there are some simple basic practices to follow. Generally you should get links from websites that have subjects relevant to your own. The higher the page rank of the page or website linking back to yours the more weight it will carry.

The major search engines favour websites that are of reasonable size, are popular, that have plenty of rich text content and that are regularly updated. Once your website is online it is crucial that you continue to grow and maintain it and to continue to develop incoming links. This does not have to be a labour intensive task and in most cases will demand no more than an hour or two a week.

Building a small business website can be enjoyable and very rewarding. If your business is small and localised, building your own website might well be your best option.

Modern software and a wealth of online information on the subject means that getting your small business online has never been easier.
Before you rush off and hire a designer check out http://u-do-makemoneyonline.com/2010/01/22/should-you-build-your-own-small-business-website/ and see if it's right for your small business.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steve_Pemberton

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