New Year’s resolutions often involve a new website for a business. A new website design and website build should begin with a business plan and researched marketing plan.
Marketing Plan With Local Strategy
Get a marketing plan done with your local market strategy, first.
Mapping out what your prices will be, buying products in advance or listing things for sale online without a plan will only cause heartache, stress and anger. Blaming a webmaster for building what you told them to build is wrong. You should have built a website for your target audience with content written and produced specifically for them.
3 Local Online Starter Tips
1. You need to take over the world online with a local, then regional, then national online plan
2. You need to continually add information, video, pictures to your website to keep it search-engine interesting
3. There is no shortcut, trick or way around this. Google, Yahoo and Bing have local requirements for websites to show up in their searches
All Websites Begin With Local Plans
Local search is very important to Google which needs a solid address, phone number and e-mail address specific to every location that a business has. You cannot trick Google into thinking that you have 20 locations. And when they catch you, you’ll be lucky if they don’t ban you forever.
That local business is then posted on the website and a first link can be created. This is a process. Nothing happens quickly online.
From there, the complicated next steps taken by webmasters and content builders goes deep. Business owners need to know that every website starts local and gains ground there, first.
Building Online Equity
You have to build up equity locally online and succeed where you’re located, first, then go on to other locations. If you can compete online locally, you can then compete regionally.
There is no trick to hit the WORLD with your little website. Yes, it’s online. But like any TV station, you have to know the channel and the content has to be at a high level to get national attention. There is no shortcut.
Beware of Tricks, Plans, Ways Around Google
If someone tells you that they can get you instant traffic, they may be able to do so for a very short time. But it’s like a Ponzi scheme: they’re lying. If they have some “trick” “scheme” or “plan” to go national without the usual footprint online, you may end up banned or penalized by Google, forever.
Think you’ve got a shortcut? Do a search for banned and penalized websites. You’ll see things differently.
Crawl, Walk, Run Online
When there is local business success, the regional business and national and international business can be pursued. That timeline may be as quick as six months or as long as two years. It depends on how how your product or service and the quality of your website and the SEO and SEM it receives.
Build It and They Will Not Come
Building a website won’t ensure traffic. Educate yourself about the Internet and don’t believe the infomercials that scream “Make Money Online With a Website!”
There are no get-rich quick schemes.
The coding, programming, formatting, design, advertising-based and quality content will ensure traffic. Unless your a webmaster, your little GoDaddy.com, Wix or Weebly website is not going to bring you thousands of dollars.
You Get What You Pay For
If you spent $20 a month for a website. You can expect $20 back. That’s just how it goes.
Television ads are expensive. Everyone knows that TV ads cost a lot to produce, then, the commercials cost a lot to air on various channels. The Internet is similar. Costs are high because they’re not free. They are expensive when advertising on your own website or, on someone else’s website.
But the Internet and websites are definitely cheaper and more specific and targeted than TV. The TiVo, DVR and ability to skip commercials has ruined that for TV and especially local cable ad revenue.
Some people feel that an ad somewhere online is better than posting information to their own website which has little or no traffic.
But think about the ads you’re paying for. You are hoping that someone clicks one of those annoying ads on the banners, sides and almost everywhere you look.
Would You Click on That Ad?
You are not your own business target so never say what your target may or may not do without research. If you want to know what people click on, pay for the research to find out.
If you want to know what your competitor is doing to get so much online business, ask yourself first, why are you looking at the competition so much instead of your own website.
Look at Your Marketing Plan
Your website is and should be your first point of contact. People will Google you and if they don’t see what they like, they’ll leave.
The first impression is important so if you have crazy colors that cannot be easily read — for example white type on pink, black, purple, blue. If you have no video, if your pictures are generic, if your content is copied, if your video is slow or your website won’t load, here are the answers.
Your website isn’t working as well as the competitors. You’ve done nothing to it in a month or 10 months. You have a function that isn’t working.
Broken, Old, Dated…Do YOU Read Those Websites?
Would you trust a business with a broken link or misspelled word, non-loading video, terrible photos, old and dated visuals? You get what you see first online. Good, bad, or ugly, that is your image.
Your image is local first, so if you need more traffic, or need to rebuild your website to ensure that your image is strong, contact The Marketing Square.
Website Sale Until 1.1.14
The Marketing Square is helping small businesses with websites on sale for the first and last time. We met many companies that needed a break in 2013, so we’re giving it until 1.1.14. Call 407-434-9328 to get started on New Year’s resolutions today.
It will take time to build your local following, so the sooner you start, the sooner you’ll drive in new business for the New Year!
