Any business starts with an idea. Turning the idea into a profitable business takes time and dedication. It doesn’t happen overnight. There are a few fairly easy ways to turn your business into a profitable website.
Online businesses are part of the internet. The internet is full of people searching for things from all over the world. This is one reason to have a website. You will be able to reach many more people than a local business. In order to get your website started you need to have a domain name. This is the name of your business online. You can search through places like GoDaddy to find available website or domain names. Usually a domain name will cost about 7.99 and up for a year. You will need to pay this cost each year to keep your website or business name online. You want to be sure that your domain name fits with the type of business you have online. If you sell clothes you don’t want to use a domain name that goes with selling pet food. You also have to make sure this is a unique name that is only used by your business.
So you’ve got your domain name, but that’s not all. You have to choose a web host provider. In order for your website to function right you need a good company to host your website on their server. Some good web host providers include BlueHost, Startlogic and Resellers Web host. Make sure it is a reliable company with good reviews. You don’t want to have your website with error messages or saying this website is under construction. If you can’t see your website chances are other people can’t. If you wish to avoid this choice you may wish to use a company like Wix which will do these things for you for a monthly fee.
Now you need to list your business and product information. Even if your business is an Ecommerce website it is still important to have good content. In other words, describe your products well. Also make sure you have good pictures of your products. A picture says a thousand words. Even if you go through a company like Wix you are responsible for managing the pictures, products and information on your website. If your website is more of a blog or information website you may wish to go through WordPress which is free for blog type websites.
In order to be a profitable business you need to make money. You may need to use money to advertise but make sure you are reaching a targeted audience. You want people to come to your website who are looking to buy from you. There are several ways to advertise your website for free. Social media like Twitter and LinkedIn are great ways to do this.
In order to get the right people to your website, be sure to do some good SEO or Search Engine Optimization. WordPress Ecommerce is a great program to use in order to make this step easier. There is a learning curb but if you check forums and do some research you will learn how to do this step yourself. You may wish to hire a programmer if it is too complicated. Be sure to use good keywords and keyword phrases. If you are selling perfume, you don’t want to use keywords like pets, food or words that have nothing to do with your products.
These steps may seem a bit overwhelming, but study each one at your own pace. Stay focused and keep doing what you know to do. It takes time to get your website to be a productive online business but it is very possible. Keep learning and stay encouraged.
Online reputation management is one of the most demanded digital marketing service in this year. To attract your potential customers and to control their buying decisions, you have to build a strong online reputation. There are mainly three strategies that you should keep in mind to increase your search engine visibility and online presence.
Monitoring and Responding
The most important step in boosting your online reputation is monitoring and responding online activities. At any point, your business could be subjected to bad reviews from sites like TripAdvisor, Yelp, Google map. Meanwhile, the positive reviews will help your company to go forward. Not managing the negative reviews will drive your business into the ground. Always keep in mind that, you should take control of your reputation before it’s too late. By monitoring the reviews, get an idea of which areas of your business are doing well and which areas need improvement. Try to respond to the reviews within a time period of 24 hours. The objective is keeping your current customers satisfied while gaining new customers for your business.
Fixing your listing distribution
The consistency of your business information is important to achieve higher search engine rankings. A consistent business line means that you are trustworthy and the search engines will suggest you to the right customers. Google maps and Apple maps are the sources where customers daily search to find businesses for shopping. Studies show that seventy-five percent of the customers lose trust in the brand due to an inaccurate business listing. Having consistent business details gives you a better search engine results.
Creating social community
The increase in social media usage shows the importance of managing your reputation in social channels. Social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Instagram become a new form of service in which people share their thoughts about brands and businesses online every day. By creating a community you will get the chance to respond to the complaints. Most of the customers buy a product after liking or sharing it in social media channels. They also ask their friends and other customers through social media to get suggestions about brands, products and services. With a social media marketing strategy, you will keep your name in your potential customer’s mind by engaging in their everyday life and being present when they want to make a purchase decision.
Having a web site on the World Wide Web does not automatically grant you instant traffic without web site promotion. Just like in the offline world, you need to advertise and do some form of promotion to let people know more about your business and the services you offer. Without promotion, potential customers will not notice you and within a short time you will go out of business due to a lack of sales. The same is true in the online world as well, although both have different methods of promotion.
There are many types of web site promotion that you can use to attract web traffic to your site. You can devise a strategic Search Engine Marketing (SEM) plan that will draw paid traffic to your site. SEM can include Pay per Click (PPC), AdWords, Banner Exchanges, Banner Advertising and many others which all fall under the category of paid traffic. Another form of promotion known as Social Media Optimization (SMO) is basically the process of optimizing your site so that it can be easily linked to and shared across various social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube and many others. This allows you to spread your message even further to parts of the world at a pace so rapid that it beats traditional marketing hands down.
You can also use another form of web site promotion known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). These techniques enable your site to rank highly on the search engine results page ( SERPs). Ultimately, you want your site to be ranked on the first page for keywords that your site is trying to target. This will allow you to attract traffic from organic searches to your site which is free. SEO can be both On Page and Off Page. On Page is where your web page contains the keywords you are trying to promote. Off Page is where links with your keywords point back to your web site. The only cost involved in getting your site to be ranked would be the cost spent on link building. One of the most important factors search engines use to evaluate your site’s ranking is the number of incoming links that are pointed at your site. The more quality incoming links your site has, the higher it will rank on the Search Engine Results Page.
There are many other ways you can build links to your sites, including Article Submission, Video Submission, Social Bookmarking, commenting on blogs, creating forum profiles, or creating pages on HubPages.com or Squidoo.com. You could even go a step further by building a complete link wheel for your site. This means that you will not only build your first tier of links to your site but you will also build a second tier of links that are pointed to the first tier links. The whole point of link building is to get the search engines to recognize the importance of your site by the number of popular votes from other sites. This method alone can significantly boost your search engine rankings and help you beat your competition.
The only problem with link building is that it takes up a lot of your precious time and can distract you from your main focus on your business. Fortunately, there are various companies out there that specialize in link building and web site promotion. Depending on your budget, you could easily outsource the entire promotion and marketing of your site to a qualified SEO consulting company that will not only save you time but money as well.
Getting the hang of Google AdWords takes some time. You can’t just jump in there and pile up on keywords. Sometimes you only need one keyword to maximize on your bids and keep your quality score high. Other times, you might need to use more keywords. The point is to adjust your campaigns based on the type of CPA program you are promoting. Here are some basic essentials to help you get the most out of AdWords when promoting cost per action offers.
Your quality score is very important. A low quality score can result to you paying higher bids on keywords and getting knocked back behind the competition. The best way to help you keep your quality score at a steady level is to keep relevant keywords pointing towards your site. The more relevant the keywords, the better your score will be.
If you are promoting a website that sells designer dress shoes, it won’t make any sense for you to place a bid on Nike shoes or bid on “work shoes.” You will need to stay relevant to the words designer, dress, and shoes. Revolving your content around these three components keeps you good with Google.
Now as far as CPA offers are concerned, you just need to look at the site and look at how relevant the site is to your keywords. This is if you are promoting something that isn’t as obvious as insurance quotes or car loan quotes.
Even if the site is talking about life insurance, you still need to make sure your keywords are surrounding life insurance as oppose to car insurance or “caskets.”
Most ill-informed internet marketers will tell you that Google AdWords is dead and you can’t do anything with them anymore. What they are really saying is they can’t get away with restricted marketing methods or work around certain features on Google AdWords anymore.
As long as the Google search engine is around, AdWords will never die. All they are trying to do is make sure you are getting most out of your money and the searcher is getting the information they are looking for. Remember, Google is the middle man between advertisers, information sites, and the searcher.
Therefore, all you need to do is make sure your keywords are relevant and not attracting the wrong audience. Besides, attracting the wrong audience means you could be missing out on sales.