Three Ways To Get Your Small Business Website Found (For Free)
As a professional, it is critical to have a website that not only shows off your amazing work and services in the most attractive ways, but also properly advertises your business to your targeted end markets.
Build It, And They Will Come! ...Or, Maybe Not
Just because you build a website does not automatically mean new customers will find you. Unfortunately, many websites fail miserably at doing one job well: marketing a small business to his or her target or local market. It takes time and effort beyond the initial website build to make your website truly effective at marketing your business for you. And let's face it: If your target potential customers can't find you, you are probably losing business opportunities and future customers to your competition.
Master Your SEO
To differentiate your website among your competitors and get it noticed, you will need to focus your attention on SEO, which stands for "Search Engine Optimization". SEO is technical jargon for doing certain things to your website so that Google and other search engines find and highlight your business in searches. SEO is perhaps one of the most important details to pay attention to when creating and regularly maintaining your small business website.
There are many things you can do to optimize your website for search engines. Here we will briefly provide three of them, none of which require additional third-party plug-ins or other fees:
Use a URL and page titles that are unique: While it is certainly important to choose your domain name carefully, it is equally important to ensure every page on your website has its own unique and descriptive URL or web address. Search engines can more easily determine the relevance of each page with a differentiated URL. Importantly, make sure your website host does not automatically populate a page's URL with random and meaningless numbers. Customize every word of the URL (if you can) and be specific about the contents of that page. As an example, one of my photography website pages is www.matthewdalto.com/website-design-process-and-pricing. This is a much better and more specific SEO choice than a generically coded page URL such as www.matthewdalto.com/pageid15551.
Create and distribute new website content: You should regularly create and distribute website content on subject matters that relate to your business and your target market. The best blogs and social forums, for example, will establish themselves as expert sources for information that are valued by people who will thus revisit those websites repeatedly for regular updates. Every blog or social forum entry automatically creates another website URL for your website, which provides you with another opportunity to revisit #1 above on this list of to-dos for better SEO. Moreover, you should share those new webpages and get people to visit your site again and again through email marketing and social media. The more people that click on your blog entries, the more relevant search engines will perceive your website to be, which improves your search ranking. All blog entries should also continually reiterate the cities and towns you work in, as well as the services you provide. While this may seem repetitive, it increases the likelihood that search engines will find this information, and find you for a new local customer.
Set up secondary website presences: In addition to the main website you build for your small business, you should have other ancillary web presences that create a feedback loop back to your main business site. For example, you should consider creating a Google My Business page for your small business, which will provide another way for potential clients to find you, leave third-party reviews on your business, and a link to your main website (which again, enhances your relevancy for search engines). Similarly, think about the industry you are in, and whether there are industry groups with which you can become associated or affiliated that will help market your website for you. For example, a residential home builder, general contractor, or interior designer may want to also have a profile on Houzz.com, which again can also include a link back to your main business website.
There are certainly other ways to improve your website's SEO -- ultimately you will need to decide your skill level and the amount of time you can dedicate to it. There is a fair amount of work that goes into creating a beautiful and functional website, but it doesn't stop there. SEO for your website is an ongoing effort that goes on long after your website is built, and it must be maintained to remain relevant to your potential customers.
If time is a luxury you cannot part with, you may want to consider hiring a local website designer who can help you build and maintain the SEO of your website, understands both the creative and the functional aspects of website design, and also is familiar with your target or local markets.
All websites created by Matthew D'Alto Photography & Design pay close attention to the SEO factors above and more to make your website more visible to your local community. We also offer regular maintenance packages for all websites we build new for customers, which can include regular search engine optimization updates to help improve the relevancy of your site in Google searches.
Matthew D'Alto Photography & Design provides website design services for entrepreneurs and small businesses within its primary market in the Connecticut towns and cities of Norwalk, Westport, Darien, New Canaan, Fairfield, Wilton, Stamford, Greenwich, Ridgefield, Weston, and Easton; and also (when time permits) within its secondary market within the greater Connecticut area as well as parts of southeastern New York State.
What sets Matthew D'Alto Photography & Design's website design services apart from the competition is an acute attention to customer service -- from the fact-gathering stage through website completion and maintenance. In addition, Matthew D'Alto brings to the table multiple decades of experience consulting with and investing in best-of-breed small companies from different industries around the United States about their marketing strategies. Most website designers cannot make this claim.
Matthew D'Alto Photography & Design can create a great-looking website tailored to your small business objectives with an eye throughout the website design process on creating and improving the overall marketing strategy for your emerging business.
For a free website design estimate for your emerging business needs, send an e-mail to websites@dfspartners.com, or call anytime at 646-221-2482 and leave a voicemail if we are working and not available to take your call immediately.