To take your business to the next level, you need a professional website design or professional blog design and it needs to be developed by an experienced website designer who understands what you are trying to achieve and how you want to use your website.

You can call it anything you want, but ultimately when you break down every business to it’s core, you are engaging in commerce and trading a commodity for payment. Yes you may be aspiring to make a difference in the world, or help other business owners just like you achieve greater levels of success, or you may even be in business to create social change. But ultimately, you as a business owner must do one thing to make it all happen. You have to sell your products, services, and ideas for a profit.

To Make a Profit, Your Target Market Must Know That You Exist.

Your target market must be able to find you and learn more about what you have to offer and how it can help them solve their problems or achieve their goals. Only then will they be able purchase from you.

READ MORE

A frequently updated website, blog, or weblog with high-quality, relevant, personal, value-added content is the key to a high search engine page ranking. A website that is updated consistently with fresh content means you’ll be found by your prospects and customers much more often online, both in the search results, and through referral links.

In fact, while search engine optimization efforts do accelerate your results and help drive more traffic to your website, many entrepreneurs and business owners are seeing an increase in website traffic and search engine page rankings as a result of simply adding a blog to their existing website, or upgrading their existing website to include a blog and a complete content management system, such as WordPress (which is what this site is built on).

READ MORE

Do you have a gorgeous website that has a fantastic and beautiful design? If you hired a talented web designer, I am sure you do. And, I am sure you are really proud of your website. If you didn’t hire a professional, you should check out my post 10 Reasons Your Business Website Stinks and How You Can Fix It.

Here’s the problem. Your website needs to be a whole lot more than just pretty and attractive. It needs to be a 24 hour a day lead generating machine that makes your life easier and helps your increase your profits.

Don’t get me wrong, high quality design is very important to your branding, image, credibility and professionalism, as well as the flow of information in your website. But, you website needs much more than high quality web design.

READ MORE

I’m sure you’ve heard it before, but I am going to say it again.

It’s not about you. It’s about them.

But what does that mean? It’s simple really. It means that you need to stop talking about yourself and stop writing what you want to hear said about you and your business.

Instead, focus on what your audience wants to hear, what they want to learn, and what information they need. Then you need to focus on getting it to them as quickly as possible.

Think of it this way, when someone is searching for something online, they more than likely aren’t just browsing with endless amounts of time. Usually they are searching for a specific piece of information, answer to their questions, or solution to their problem – and they are turning to the Internet to find what they need fast.

Your job as a website owner is to research your target market, find out that they want, need, and desire, learn how you can help them, and then deliver it.

READ MORE

When it comes to SEO, most Entrepreneurs’ eyes glaze over and a fog-like state sets in. The most common things I hear is that it is too complicated, there are too many terms and how it works is confusing. Today I hope to clear some of that up.

Pairing the two, SEO and shopping, at first sounds very strange. But in reality the two are actually very similar and when the beast that is Search Engine Optimization is broken down into shopping terms, it makes much more sense!

Let’s start with shopping. So much fun. Imagine that you’re strolling through the mall, laughing with friends, and deciding which store to go into next. More than likely you are going to base that decision off something that you NEED or WANT.

READ MORE

Building your website can be an overwhelming experience simply because there are so many different components to manage. Getting your website done and live is the first and most important step. Once your site is live, the optimization and marketing for your website can begin.

I advise my clients to implement one strategy at a time. Not only will this help you gauge the effects your efforts have on your site traffic and search ranking, but it will also help make your efforts more manageable.

With that said, here are three key things that I often see left out of the optimization process:

READ MORE

10. You Hired Your Friend’s Kid.

You’ve heard all about how he is great with computers and is a tech genius. He took a design class in high school or maybe a couple courses at the local community college and he has done a couple websites. Your friend mentions this a few times and you see a chance to get your website done and save some money. At first you’re excited, and then you start to realize that developing a professional polished website that works isn’t as easy as you thought. Soon you’ve spent hundred of dollars and you’re unhappy. You don’t even want to tell people your have a website because you’re embarrassed. So not only did you waste your money, but you wasted your valuable, billable time and lost out of some potential new business.

READ MORE