Low Cost Methods For Creating An Online Presence
Are you running a small business that needs to setup a website? Maybe you own a toy store, an insurance brokerage, or work as a freelance photographer from home? Irrespective of the type of business that you have, if you have been wondering how you can use the Internet to augment your business presence and attract more clients, then read this article prior to going out and spending money on a web design company to put together a site for you.
Whilst it may not be your core business, it pays to educate yourself a little bit first before you spend any money. This article will provide you with a foundation of web marketing before you go out and hire someone to put together a website for your business so that you aren’t uninformed. It will also coach you about a number of things you can do yourself, which you may take the option to do by yourself and save you the cost of hiring someone else.
Blogs As An Alternative to Websites
If you have the inclination to provide regular news and updates relating to your business, you might consider establishing a blog instead of a website. A blog functions like a diary, and each entry is time and date stamped. Here is a blog about finance as an example. See how each post is dated and note the optional peel away ad in the top right hand corner of the page. You don’t need to have any knowledge of html or programming to use a blog. Once installed, you just login to a control panel interface, write out what you want to say into an entry field, and click “Publish”.
Blogs are also very easy to setup. You might even try your hand at creating one yourself. You can get very cheap cPanel webhosting these days beginning at $4.95 p/mth. cPanel hosting comes with a system called Fantastico, which allows you to install a blog with just a handful of mouse clicks. A decent hosting provider should be able to assist you to install your blog as well, even if you have very limited knowledge. After all, they want your business.
Web 2.0 Content Sites
An alternative method to get the word out about your business without the need to create a website, is to put together a free page on one of the numerous Web 2.0 content sites such as Hubpages.com and Squidoo.com. The following is an example Squidoo lens reviewing Success University. These are even easier to setup than a blog as they require no technical knowledge whatsoever, leaving you to concentrate on your content and saying what you want to say to your target audience. Pages on Web 2.0 content sites also frequently appear very high in the search engine results, enhancing even further the means by which more people can discover your business and what you have to offer.
Social Networking Sites
MySpace, Linked In and Facebook are amongst the three most trafficked social networking sites. As with the Web 2.0 websites, social networking sites are also based on pre-coded templates and styles, removing the need to have any knowledge of html and allowing you to save the funds you might have otherwise invested with a web design company and invest that somewhere else.
Search Engine Optimization
Having now installed either a blog, or setup a Social Networking or Web2.0 page, the next thing is to make sure that your page obtains a high profile in search engine results, and therefore sending greater traffic and increasing the number of people who become aware of your business. This is where Search Engine Optimization, comes in. Don’t be daunted. You can learn about SEO by taking a loan of a book from your local public library or investing a little time researching it online. There are a tonne of free websites containing information on SEO, in addition to paid membership websites like Portal Feeder that will allocate you a mentor to assist you with your SEO knowledge and website creation efforts. There are some really basic steps that you can take that will boost the presence of your site and send visitors to it.
