Well it’s taken me three years and I’d still like to be number one but I have finally managed to get my web site into the top three of Google for the search term “web design plymouth”. Not bad for a freelance web designer competing against some big web design agencies.
All new businesses need to advertise; whether it’s posters, radio, television or the web. Without advertising potential customers will never know you exist and as a result your business could fail. Even business giants such as Coca Cola and McDonalds still need to advertise, the need to excel in the market place is no different for a global enterprise than a small business.
So, how can the internet help your business? The benefits of a web site speak for themselves. A web site is accessible 24 hours a day to a global market. It is very cheap advertising, hosting for your site costs as little as £40 a year. Compare this to print media such as brochures and flyers and you’ll soon notice a big difference in costs. It is a great way to show off and when designed efficiently can be a real asset to your company or business.
If your business doesn’t already have a web site then you need to get one. Even if your business is already successful, not being on the web could be losing you potential custom. If you decide not to have a web site you can still build a web presence by submitting your business to various free business listings such as Google Local Business Center or Freeindex. That way, someone searching for your business will at least be able to get your contact details or opening times.
If you already have a web site there are numerous things you can do to further promote your business online.
A great way to get your business noticed online is new content. The more unique and relevant content you add to your site the more traffic you will get. You could create your own RSS feed or join web sites such as Digg, designed for people to share news articles and stories. The more quality content you create, the more visibility your site (and business) will get.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. This is primarily the job of the person who designed your site. When designing a site there are certain factors that need to be taken into account. Web sites are not just visual, they need to be coded correctly, certain accessibility standards need to be taken into account and the better your web site adheres to these standards the greater your chances are of being picked up by search engines.
Below is basic checklist to ensure your web site is coded correctly:
The above is a very basic list; there are numerous factors to take into account with SEO. For further details check out the following:
Top 10 SEO tips – at the UK small business directory
SEO tips – from Submit Express UK
Ultimately, ensuring your web site is coded correctly will draw more traffic to your web site and if your web site has done its job, get you more business.
If you want to really push your web site online then you’ll need to think about using Google AdWords. The processes described above are known as organic and they can only take your site so far. AdWords is not a free service, it works on the basis that you pay when people click your ads. The ads are fully customisable and appear alongside organic search results, however they are much more likely to appear higher up the search results and will be placed in a more prominent position.
If you want to be found on Google then AdWords will get you where you want to be much quicker than organic SEO, but you will have to pay for the privilege.
If you would like more information on Google AdWords then take a look at the following page.
I set up my own web site, Retro Edge Web Design in the later part of 2007, prior to that I spent a good couple of years learning the trade and finding out how best to go about setting up a small web design business in my local area. After researching other web design businesses I quickly realised the similarities between cowboy builders and cowboy web designers in that as anyone can pick up a paint brush and call themselves a painter and decorator so can anyone pick up Adobe Dreamweaver and call themselves a web designer.
Having always taken great pride in my work I wanted my portfolio and Retro Edge Web Design to reflect a high standard of work. The better the quality of work, the more business I would get… or so I hoped. Over the last few years I have dealt with various businesses that took the cheap option when it came to their web site. Perhaps it’s because their friends, uncles, mate down the pub can design sites and has promised to do it for a hundred quid or perhaps they fancy having a go at it themselves, after all “Dreamweaver isn’t too hard to use is it?” More often than not it unsurprisingly comes down to cost and the cheapest quote wins the gig. I always find this frustrating, as companies are prepared to spend £100′s if not £1000′s on poster and flyer advertising but when it comes to their web site they are prepared to leave it in the hands of a novice. I’m talking from personal experience of course, as this is not always the case but my own experiences have led me to take on more web sites that needed fixing than new projects, and it normally takes twice as long and costs twice as much to sort out.
I guess the problem is that on the surface web design appears very easy but there is a whole lot more to web design than simply adding text and images to a html page. What are the chances of these web site cowboys offering any sort of SEO, there isn’t much point in having a web site if nobody can find it and it certainly isn’t worth having a web site if it is coded incorrectly, in fact it could do more harm than good.
My advice is simple, if you need a web site, seek advice from a professional…if a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing properly!
