Austin Webpages

Tag: business owner

  • Why Blogging is Good for Business

    Blogging helps business attract customers

    As an Austin small business owner, how do you stand out as having a great product or service? Showing your customer that you are an expert about your product is a way to gain your customers trust. That is why blogging is a great way to share your knowledge to your customers. Blogging not only allows you to grow a great collection of content about your product or services. As an added benefit, blogging will undoubtedly help you rank higher on Google.

    The Blogging Approach

    Every small business website usually has a handful of sections, their home page, a way to contact them and pages about their business. Those are very broad topic pages. A blog post should be about a specific and you can get into more details. You should write for your readers in a similar way you talk to them in person. Remember, the goal is to teach your readers first, so they have to be able to understand what you are saying.

    Blogging consistently will have many great results for your website. It will show your customers you know what you are talking about one blog post at a time. Before you know it, you will have a small library of information. Readers will come to you if you are able to explain your topic well, often referred to as “high quality” content in the SEO world. Bonus points if no one else is talking about what you are explaining in your blog post.

    Google and Your Blog

    This month marked Google’s 15th birthday, and Austin small businesses, if you want your customers to find you, then your website’s performance on Google is going to be among your main focuses. This past week there was a major announcement about Google changing their search algorithm, and actually had it quietly implemented for a few weeks, but how is this going to affect Austin small businesses?

    The truth is, you are Google’s customer, and their goal is to create the perfect search engine. Google wants its users to type in what they are looking for and show them exactly what they were searching for. Plain and simple. Whatever anyone tells you about how they know the secrets of Google’s magic formula, is baloney. This release from google, is one step closer to humanize the search process more and more. Give customers what they need to know, that is what Google wants, that is what you should want.

    Your blog, written for your customers understanding, will be what Google looks at the most. You have a small library of knowledge on your website. People in the same field will quote and link to your website’s blog explaining topics. This builds your backlinks and your credibility. Those points are vital to ranking high in Google. And that is how customers find you.

    Contact Austin Webpages today to get your blog setup and get direction on what to blog about. Contact us today for a free quote!

  • Role of the Business Owner

    Role of the business owner when creating a new small business website

    Website companies get caught up in what they are going to do for you and what technologies they are going to use. But what about what the business owner is going to do? The business owner hears search engine this and social media that…it may be all new them. It can be overwhelming. While I don’t think the technology matters as much as it used to, some companies insist on showing off their expertise of technologies and coding languages. So before you get caught up in technology word vomit, here is a short list of what you, the business owner, will be accountable for and what to expect.

    Be part of the decision

    If this is the first website for your small business, be ready to discuss with your marketing company what your website address will be. They should have some great suggestions for you, but once you get started using that address, all marketing efforts will be aimed at that one address, so it is an important discussion. Not only that, but your business has to live with that address, so make sure you feel comfortable with it.

    Do you have a webpage already?

    Maybe you hired a web page design company to redo your existing site. Not a problem, that is fairly common. Dig through your old emails and find y0ur domain name registration information and your host information. This will include: Which company they each are with, login names and passwords.

    You will need these for a couple of reasons. First, just so we are on the same page, a domain name registrar handles your .com name, such as austin-webpages.com.

    Without getting too complicated, your domain registrar knows who your host is. Your host is simply a computer that is housing all the files that make your webpage work. So when someone goes to your website, your domain finds your host, your hosts handles showing the webpage to your visitor. (There is a networking expert ready to kill me for simplifying it that much)

    Now…why would you need to dig this up? We have had clients who, in the past, used certain services, like godaddy’s website tonight, that allowed for quick, cookie cutter webpage to be setup. Which is fine, except the small business then outgrew these sorts of websites. The problem is, these kinds of hosting services don’t allow for full blown, professional websites, until you call them up and switch to a more traditional host plan. Not a big deal, but you might need your account number or login credentials when you are on the phone with the hosting company.

    Once your web designer has your log-in info, they should be able to handle most if not all configurations from that point forward.

    Ok, you got all my log-in info…now what?

    For brand new small business websites, you are still going to play the crucial role of subject matter expert. Depending on what arrangement you have with your marketing company (SEO or other sort), you may play this role indefinitely. One of the pillars of creating a great website is to keep it constantly growing, constantly providing information for its customers and audience. That may be through a blog, via a video or with social media. Large firms are able to hire professional writers who cover your market and can provide this constant fresh content for you, and your role may be reduced, possibly at a premium cost. But remember, whatever is published on your site is absorbed by your customers, so it is not a bad idea to work with your marketing / SEO firm to provide that expertise from actual experts.

    A few other things to be prepared for

    You will be asked about approving some graphical designs and other things to see that they are your liking. But that should be exciting as you can see your brand begin to take shape and have its own personality.

    The goal of your marketing campaign is to make your phone ring off the hook. A small business with a small staff needs to be prepared to (hopefully) handle the increase of inbound communication. It can possibly come through a medium that is not the norm for a company, such as email or social media. As a company, your customer communication should be a high priority, and this could be a great time to look for some business process improvements to handle the extra communication.

     

    Contact us today to get your small business online and expand your customer base.

  • Why Your Small Business Needs a Website

    Why Your Small Business Needs a Website – Strong Internet Presence

    In today’s economy, there are many answers as to why your small business needs a website. It goes beyond just advertising, a website isn’t just a digital billboard in the cloud. Having a website can shrink the level of competition between a small business with few employees and those mid range size companies. Unfortunately, owners must overcome a few barriers to get a small business website. These usually are a lack of time or lack of know how.

    Every small business is going to have a goal in common – to get more customers. Today we will cover four reasons why your small business needs a website.

    Central Information about Your Product

    Your small business will have blogs, general content, online reviews and many more tools all centered around your website. This gives potential customers everything they need in a one stop shop.

    Why your small business needs a website - major components of a webpage

    • General Content – Visitors can learn about your products and what solutions are offered
    • Portfolio & Reviews – Potential customers can see your prior work and feel confident by reading previous customers’ experiences
    • Product Knowledge – You can show off your expertise on a subject on your blog or by posting short videos. This will further gain your customers’ trust about your product.
    • Communication – You can provide various ways for future customers to get in contact with your business. There can be contact info listed with your operational hours, a map to your business and online forms for customers to send messages to you directly.
    • Social Media – Put your customers to work by having them share your great product for you. Social Media is a great way to get the virtual word of mouth going. Using Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and all your social media accounts to drive future customers to your website

    These pillars are the core of a small business website. Your product will be known, communicated and searchable. And the best part yet… is that a website is affordable and very cost effective.

    Get More Customers

    A customer want to do business with people they can trust. How many times have you gone to amazon to buy a DVD player and sorted by most positive reviews? Businesses should already be monitoring product reviews that customers leave on their website or 3rd party websites like Yelp. But many small businesses stop there. Blogs, for example, are a way to grew trust with your customer base. Blogging shows off your product knowledge. Combining that with easy ways to contact  you will generate opportunities and leads. Your contact list will grow for use in newsletter and email campaigns. Remember, one of our goals is to get more customers.

    The technical side will also provide information about your customers. There are various internet analytic tools out there, such as Google Analytics. A customers interest in your products and services can be shown by the number of page views reported in the analytics tool on a specific page.  On the other hand, Google Analytics can also show you which specific pages are lacking visits or even being where customers exit your website.

    Expanding Your Services Online

    Once your business is online, your business is open 24 hours a day. People that were never exposed to your business due to location, time or any other barrier can now find you online. The goal is to get more customers by expanding the audience. Businesses that have been operating locally will expand their customer base to a larger area. More possible customers will lead to expanding your business.

    Customers can come to your website at any hour, read information about your products and services, engage in communication if need be, and finally get that order on the books. This is an affordable investment with little to no increase in staff and high ROI.

    Unique or niche markets benefit greatly from creating a website as they usually have low competition, so their benefits are multiplied.

    Credibility

    15 years ago, marketing a small business took a very different approach. Today, adding a website to a small business shows your small business has certain validity, establishment and the long term feel to it. Established businesses aren’t looking to take your money and run. A business webpage shows stability within the company and organization to maintain the page.

    A website for a small business shows that communicating to its customers is a priority. Being open to questions and feedback shows that the business has more interest that just getting the sale. These are all factors that build trust between the business and its customers, no matter if there is thousands of employees or a small handful. This is why your small business needs a website.

    Austin Webpages is a small Austin based company ready to take your small business online to maximize its marketing potential. Find a website you like the look and feel of, and contact us today!

  • Getting Links to Your Website

    Getting Links to Your Website – The Worlds Largest Poll, the Internet

    Something that all SEO geeks out there can agree on, is that getting links to your website is a great thing. In our last blog about the bad practices SEO companies partake in, we mentioned that the internet is a giant popularity contest. It is the equivalent to the age long saying ..it’s all about who you know. Getting links to your website from high profile websites, say a university and their valuable .edu domain extension, is a great example of the holy grail of backlinks – the links that other people/companies have on their website that point to your page. It is like a celebrity telling their friends that they know you personally…you would be a popular guest anywhere you go.

    I don’t have control of those pages….

    Getting links to your website is not an exact science, has its challenges, but as small business owner you should not get discouraged. Again, in our last blog post about SEO companies and if they are doing a good job, we said there is a bunch of initial work that your SEO company can do to get the ball rolling. Remember, advertising online is going to take time: months and years not days and weeks. Nevertheless there are things we usually recommend business owners to do. We cannot stress this enough, marketing a small business online is a partnership between the owner and your SEO company.

    What Business Owners can do to get website links

    Getting links to your website can be heavily influenced by the owner, especially at the local level. Your online reputation is just as important as your local business reputation or word of mouth. Remember, online, your business is open 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Thus, you do not need an SEO company to sett up your profiles on the various Yelp and Yellow Pages of the online world. That’s an easy few and each of those review sites will have step by step instructions.

    Google also allows you to setup your business so that it properly shows up on their popular maps webpage, it is easy to sign up for and they verify that you are the owner it by sending you a code in the mail. This is usually one of the first ones you should target.

    You should immediately contact your past customers once your review webpages are up and running and ask for a review of your service on these pages. You are most likely already following up with your past customers looking for possible repeat business or referrals. That is an opportunity for an owner to ask for a review and testimonial online, as it will make it easier to start getting links to your website. Your SEO company might ask for a really good review from one of your customers to glorify on your actual website, but the reputation is going to matter more on 3rd party sites like Yelp, and that is something you can do on your own.

    How can I Increase Website Traffic

    Getting links to your website isn’t the only thing a business owner can do on their own, but they can also start driving some website traffic in the exact manner most local business do today. If your business can accommodate for it, reach out to them and offer something for free. Start an email campaign (and nothing more than once a month) where if they bring a friend with a coupon, which you have to get from the website, you get half off a free meal at your restaurant. They could get a free upgrade, or a free our of service / consulting, you know your business and where there is margin. Post these same coupons on your Cragislist ad (you are posting to Craigslist, right?), that is a great way to start getting links to your website, or at the very least some more visitors.

    Austin Webpages can partner with your small business to increase your customer base in the Austin are. We will start getting links to your website and guiding you with the right direction to grow your website traffic. Find a website you like the look and feel of, and contact us today! Get your past customers contacts ready, and we will make your old business create new business.

    Updated on 9/22/2013