Ninja Web Strategies for Entrepreneurs

What is the Purpose of your Website?

Photo by ky olsen

Why do you want to build a website? What business purpose will it serve? What are your goals for your website? What do you want it to do?

Most small business web sites have one of the following primary purposes and may have one or more secondary purposes.

Advertise your product or service

A “brochure” website will basically give the following information:

• Who you are.
• What you do.
• Why visitors should be doing business with you.
• Where to find you.
• How to contact you.

This is essentially all a brochure website does, which may be perfectly good strategy for many small businesses. However, most successful websites are more than just brochure sites; they invite the prospect to to explore the website, learn more, and contact you.

A good strategy is to link your brochure website and you business Facebook page together, using your Facebook page to connect with your customers in a casual and friendly format.

Sell you product or services online

You may want to set up an e-commerce website whereby visitors can purchase products and services directly from you over the internet.  E-commerce sites can greatly benefit from having a Web Marketing plan in place.

Generate leads or qualify prospects

Instead of selling your product online, this type of website creates qualified leads through the use of information pages and landing pages that prompt visitors to contact you.

Provide customer service and support

Your website can support your customers by having FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions), technical information, troubleshooting guides, downloadable manuals, etc. You might also have an online RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization) system.

Create an information resource to establish trust and credibility

These websites contain or link to articles, blogs, videos, or other information resources that visitors can use to educate themselves on subjects related your product or services.  This establishes trust and credibility with your customers.

Create ad revenue

Some websites or blogs are designed to sell advertising such as Google AdSense. However, unless you have a very popular website, advertising usually only generates supplemental revenue at best.

Earn affiliate commissions

Your web site can have links that direct visitors to other sites that sell products and services, thereby earning you commissions for sales and leads your site generates for other companies

How to Lose Customers - Part I

Janice (not her real name), a friend of mine who owns her own business, needed to have an automobile sign made from a local sign shop that she's been doing business with for the last 9 years. They had a new person working there who quoted her a price of $35 for the sign. Janice verbally agreed and the sign shop person said she would call Janice when the sign was ready.

The next day, the sign shop person called and informed Janice that they would not be able to make the sign for $35 but instead must charge her $65. Janice asked if they would still honor the original price quoted. The sign person promised to ask the owner of the sign shop.

The sign shop person called back and told Janice that the owner of the sign shop would not honor the quoted price. Janice replied, "Fine. I'll take my business elsewhere!" And she did.

By quibbling over $30, the sign shop lost a loyal customer who now is "bad-mouthing" the sign shop to all of her friends within her business network. Was this worth the $30?

If the sign shop had decided to honor the original quoted price, they would have lost $30. However, they likely would have elevated an already loyal customer into a super-loyal cheerleader who would almost certainly tell her business friends about what a great company the sign shop was and how everyone should use them for their sign needs.

And this would have been worth the $30 many times over.

Encourage Visitors to Share Your Web Page

You are placing "Share This" buttons on your web pages, aren't you? If you care about the power of Social Networking—and you should—then these buttons will encourage your visitors to quickly and easily share your web page with social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and Delicious.

What 'Share This' Buttons Are

'Share This' Buttons are buttons or a button toolbar that have one or more icons that a visitor can click on to share your page with a social networking site. For example, a 'Facebook' icon, when clicked on, will allow the visitor to quickly add a link to your web page onto their Facebook Wall so that their Facebook friends can see the link and view your web page.

This is, in effect, free word-of-mouth advertising!

Oh. Did I mention they're free?

How to Add 'Share This' Buttons to Your Web Page

It's easy to add these buttons to your web pages. You will, however, have to be able to edit the html code of your web page and then upload the new web page to your web site host. If you are uncomfortable with this, then your web developer can do it. The whole process takes about 15 minutes.

1. Go to one of the 'Share This' web sites below, choose which button configuration you want, and copy the JavaScript code.
2. Open up your web page for editing and simply paste the JavaScript code where you want the buttons to appear.
3. Upload your new web page to your hosting server.

That's it!

Where to get the Buttons

Here are three of the most popular 'Share This' button generator sites:

AddThis

ShareThis

AddToAny

Have fun!

Use Google AdWords to Drive Traffic to your Web Site

By implementing a Google's AdWords pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign, you can drive additional traffic to your web site when your potential customers use Google to search for your products or services.

It is true that if your web site is well-optimized using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, you should be generating traffic to your site naturally (or organically, like SEO experts like to say...) However, even a well-optimized web page doesn't always appear on the first page of the search results. Also, it can take a few months for a new web site to appear in search results.

AdWords have the advantage of instantly placing your web site ad or link prominently on the search results page, either on top (if a link) or on the side (if an ad).

How AdWords Work

You determine one or more keywords or key phrases that will be associated with your link or ad that, if clicked, will direct the search engine user to your web site landing page. If the user conducts a search on keywords that matches yours, Google will place your link or ad prominently in the search results. If the user clicks on your link, you pay Google a fee for that click.

 

How much does an AdWords campaign cost?

There are two factors involved in determining the cost of an AdWords campaign:

1. Cost of Keywords.

   Some keywords are more popular than others. Therefore, web site owners are willing to pay more per click to use the more popular keywords. Based on this, Google sets a minimum amount of cost-per-click that they are willing to accept. This minimum can be from a few cents per click to over $10.00 per click (Yikes!). The good news is that the minimum cost-per-click for most keywords is less than 25 cents.
   
   You get to set the maximum cost-per-click that you are willing to pay for a given keyword or phrase. The higher your maximum, the more likely and often your link or ad will appear in the search results. If another web site owner is willing to pay Google a higher cost-per-click, Google will display their link more often and more prominently than yours. In other words, you are bidding against other web site owners for placement. Google will tell you what the current average bid for keywords is when you are setting up your campaign

2. Your Budget.

   You tell Google how much money you are willing to pay for entire campaign and when this money is used up, Google stops the campaign. This means that you can run a Google AdWords campaign for as little as $25.00 without having to commit large sums of money.
   
   

Your AdWords Campaign Strategy

1. Start off small. In the beginning, only commit a small amount of money to each campaign. This will allow you to try out the effectiveness of various keywords without wasting too much money. Once you find the keywords that work well, then you can better determine your Return On Investment (ROI) and have confidence in committing more money.
   
   
2. It is often better to use multiple less frequently searched, low bid keywords and phrases rather than paying more for the higher costing popular keywords. You'll get more bang for the buck this way.
   
   
3. As a rule of thumb, stay away from keywords and phrases that cost more than 25 cents per click. Any more than this, and the campaign can become expensive, and there had better be a solid return on investment to justify the high cost.

Check out the Google AdWords web page to learn more about using Adwords. Google has a great tutorial.

The Fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization

If you're a business owner who uses a blog or web site as a major component in your marketing strategy, then you need to have a good understanding of the fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Basically, SEO is the art and science of optimizing the content and code of your web site to attract relevant visitors that are using search engines to find exactly the products and services you are offering. The beauty of a well-optimized web site is that these visitors are already pre-qualified by the time they get to your web site!

Relevant Content

The number one thing search engines use to rank your web site in search results is relevant content. Search engines try to exactly match up web sites to the search terms used. The more closely the content on your web site matches what the searcher is looking for, the higher the ranking your web site will have in the search results.

Specific Content

What this means is that the more specific and detailed your content is, the higher your ranking. For example, if your business sells custom made baseball equipment, then you probably won't rank very high when people are searching for "baseball" or even "baseball equipment" But if people are searching using more specific terms such as "custom baseball mitts Reno, NV", then your page will likely be near the top of the search engine results.

Key Words and Phrases

To help your content be specific to your products and services, you will want to determine what key words and phrases that qualified visitors will use to find your web site. Then you must use these key words and phrases in your content.

General keywords will not help. You need specific key words. In the above, some good keywords were used for the baseball equipment business:

• Custom made baseball equipment
• Reno, NV
• Custom made mitts
• Custom made bats
• Custom Little League equipment
• etc.

Keyword Stuffing

One warning though: Do not "stuff" your pages with keywords. "Keyword Stuffing" will get your site banned from the search engines and this is the kiss of death for your web site.

Read How to Get Your Site Banned from Google

New and Updated Content

It's a good idea to change and update your content at least once a month to stay high in the search engine rankings. This is because search engines believe that a web site that's been updated recently will have more relevant and timely content than a web site that hasn't been updated in over a year.

Using Keywords in the Web Page Code

• Title - The Title headline of your web page should be very specific to the relevant content of the web page and should contain key words and phrases when possible.
• Headlines - The section headlines of your web page should contain keywords. Search engines place more weight on "header" content than paragraph content.
• Paragraphs - Of course, your paragraphs should contain your key words and phrases as well. This is your main content.
• Pictures - Pictures should be named using specific keywords. Also, each picture should use a hidden "alt" tag that describes the picture, again using key words when possible.
• Title Tag - (Different from the Title Headline above) is the short description of the web page that appears at the top of the browser. Search engines tend to place a great deal of weight on Title Tags, so make sure it is short, to the point, uses keywords, and is very specific to the content on the page.
• Page Description Tag - This is a hidden tag that search engines also place a great deal of weight on. Basically, it describes the content of your page in 250 characters or less. This description appears in (most) search engine results, so it is an ideal place to entice people to visit your site.

Now Your Page is 90% Optimized!

By following these basic principles, your site will be about 90% optimized for search engines. If you need to have a higher degree of optimization, than a good reputable SEO firm can help. But it will cost you. So, like everything else, you will need to evaluate the Return On Investment.