Sounds pretty obvious, right?

I guess it’s not, because for some entrepreneurs, the Contact page has morphed into a necessary evil, not a way to help their website visitors. For these people, there is no contact information or personal message on their Contact page. Instead, there is merely a cold, unfriendly form, which for your visitors is irritating and frustrating.

Just like when creating your website sidebar and your website footer, when it comes to creating a successful Contact page for your website, you need to put yourself in your visitors’ shoes. When you visit the Contact page on a website what are you looking for?

Here is a list of things you should consider including on your small business website Contact page:

Phone Number

Many people want to be able to pick up the phone and talk to someone and for some, not providing a phone number can be a deal breaker!

Fax Number (If Applicable)

For some businesses a fax number isn’t necessary, but if it is for your business grab yourself a fax line and include it on your website. If at all possible get a separate phone line for your fax number or use an e-fax service. A phone/fax combination is often perceived as not being able to afford a fax service or fax line.

Email Address

An email address is a must for your Contact page, but consider using a generic email address such as info@ to track the inquiries that comes from your website.

Mailing Address

For any business that wants to be taken seriously, including a mailing address on your website is not an option, it is a must. Running a business from your home? So what! Invest a P.O. Box and get over it.

Social Media Profile Links

You may include graphic links to your social media profiles in your website sidebar or footer, but you should also consider including them prominently on your contact page – after all, they are other ways that your website visitors can get in touch with you. If you audience is older, consider using text links on your Contact page.

Contact Form

You want to give your website visitors as many ways to contact you as possible, so in addition to your contact information, it is a good idea to also provide a Contact form they can complete right them and there. If you can, it’s smart to generate the form in your shopping cart or customer management software so their inquiry is saved in their client profile and they are added to your internal database for easy follow up.

Upcoming Events

Are you a speaker, or an avid networker? Do you host events and workshops? Your Contact page is also a great place to list your upcoming events and link out to an events page for more information.

What’s do you think about our approach to Contact Page content?
Please share you thoughts below!

Like your website sidebar, the footer of your website is a very powerful part of your site that can make a big difference in your search engine rankings and how your website visitors move through your website – yet it is one of the most under-utilized tools.

Before I share with you some ideas on how you can leverage your website footer to improve your website and search engine rankings, I want to cover some of the biggest mistakes website owners make when it comes to their website footer:

Website Footer Mistakes

• Including only the copyright notice
• Not including all of your contact information (i.e. phone, email, mailing address, etc.)
• Including only a link to email you, instead of a link to your contact page
• Including a link to your CMS or WordPress login page (hello hackers!)
• Including broken links or links to irrelevant websites to your subject matter
• Including a hodge-podge of logos with all different colors etc.
• Including out of date information

The footer of your website is included on every page of your website and/or blog. That means if you have 10 pages on your website and you include one link to a sales page in your footer, you just built 10 internal site links to that sales page. Imagine what kind of impact that would have on a website or blog with one hundred or even several hundred pages or blog posts…

Your footer is an understated opportunity to build internal links, to help boost organic search results, and most important, to help your website visitors find information quickly.

Here are some ideas of what to include in your website footer:

• All of your contact information, including your phone number, fax number if appropriate, email address, and mailing address
• Copyright information
• Links to your privacy policy, legal disclaimers, and if you sell anything on your website, your return/refund policy
• Your logo
• A short bio and avatar-style photo with a link to your about page
• A list of recent blog posts or recent articles
• A list of links to your article marketing profiles on sites like ezinearticles.com
• A list of your most popular blog categories
• A Facebook badge or widget
• A list of links to your individual product sales pages
• Graphic links to your social media profiles
• Your recent tweets
• A featured product description with a link to the sales page
• A list of resources or products you recommend as an affiliate
• An “as seen on” area with media mentioned and logos

As you can see, while your website footer may be an afterthought to your visitors, it is a prime piece of online real estate that, like your website sidebar, should be planned out.

By leveraging your footer in a smart way, you can maximize your marketing, juice the keywords you want to compete on, and provide more easy and quick ways visitors can find the information they need.

What do you think about this approach to website footers? Do you agree or disagree? What do you include in your footer? Please, share your comments with us below!

The yellow pages and phone books are no longer the main way consumers locate businesses. With computers, laptops, netbooks, mobile phones, and other web ready tools, the Internet has now replaced the yellow pages and most consumers now turn to the search engines to find what they need.

Consumers aren’t just searching for broad terms either. Consumers are searching for local businesses and resources just as much as global businesses.

When your target market searches for your business online, do you show up on the first page of the search engine results? If not, you really should invest in a website upgrade and work with a marketing savvy web designer who not only understands how to visually present your information, but how to market your products and services as well.

You need to show up when someone searches for you online because your target market can’t buy from you if they don’t know you exist!

At minimum, you need to have a simple, clean, well designed website with good, informative, helpful content. This will ensure that at least you have a professional presence when someone searches for you.

What I recommend, is consistently adding new and fresh content to your website. Some people through a blog update their site every day. Some once or twice a week. Some business owners only update their site once a month. Obviously the more you update the content the better, but even one update is better than zero updates.

What do you think? Agree? Disagree?

The two most important things to help you get found more often online and stand out from the rest of the sites in your niche are, in this order:

1. Good content
2. Good design

Good content that is user focused, information rich and valuable is the most important part of your website. Good content that is updated regularly is even more important.

The search engines first and foremost want to see that you are providing information of value on a regular basis. Consistently adding new content to your website shows the search engines that your site deserves to show up in the results because people need access to your newly updated content.

Good design that is user focused, easy to navigate, and clean is the second most important part of your website. Good design shows the search engines that you care about your visitors and that you want to make their experience on your site easy, useful, and enjoyable. Good design keeps the code clean and simple, places the main content no more than 2-3 clicks from the home page, and portrays a visual design that helps guide the visitor through the site.

With that said, here are a few tips to optimize your website content pages:

• Make sure keywords appropriate to the page are in your title tag.
• A short description (160 characters or less) of the page contents should be included in the meta description tag.
• Your page headlines and sub headlines should be placed inside header tags.
• Your page keywords and long-tail key phrases should be included in the meta keywords tag.
• Integrate your keywords and key phrases into your content, especially at the top of your page. But make sure it is a natural integration into the flow of your content.

So, when developing your website, first focus first on smart, fresh content and great design. Second, focus on optimizing the content, image and links. Then, once your site is completely dialed in, focus on building massive amounts of traffic to your site.

Do you agree with my top two things every website needs? Let me know