Why a Website

Why a Website?

Ask yourself five questions.

Do you advertise your business?
Do you have continually changing info for your customers?
Does your competition have a web site?
Is customer service important to you?
Would you like to provide 24/7 accessibility to your customers?

A yes answer to any of the above leads you to realize the benefits of an online presence. A website can be the foundation of your marketing strategy. In many cases, your website is the first contact you will have with a potential customer. An easily accesible, informative website can be a remarkable sales tool. What can you do with your Web site? Most importantly, you can:

Describe your products and services
Provide photos and graphic presentations
Convert browsers into customers
Motivate people to call for more information
Get readers to come to your place of business

You can also:

Sell your products online
Collect payments for services
Communicate with vendors, suppliers and staff
Screen potential employees and accept applications

And all of this is on the same playing field as the biggest companies.

Basic Search Engine Strategy

The most important, and least expensive method to market your website is to make it easy for "Spiders" to find it. Major search engine companies use software programs known as Spiders, or "Bots" to explore the internet to index and catalog what they find. Once a search engine finds your site, it will browse it and capture bits of imformation for inclusion in its massive search database. Although the exact methods and criteria that search engines use to catalog information vary, there are a few basic things that your site must have in order for there to be any chance of being indexed.

Keyword-rich page title – A descriptive title for each page, maximum of 8 words. This title will appear on the search results page and will be hyperlinked to your site.
Descriptive Keywords – These should be the words that people are most liklely to search for.
Description META Tag – A sentence that describes the contents of the web page.

Keywords should also be included in the first paragraph of your content. Most search engines will only scan the first paragraph. Do not stuff in as many keywords as you can. Some sites detect this and will not include the page (and possibly your entire site) in its search results page.

Make good use of "header tags" such as H1, H2 and H3. These tags are usually the name of the article or section and should contain a keyword or two. Keywords should also be used in the "ALT Attribute" of your images and photos.

The keywords that you use should correspond directly with your content. Search engines will not give you a favorable ranking if they find keywords that are irrevelant to the content.