Tips to Improve the Value of Your Small Business Website

Websites are a vital part of the marketing plan for today’s small businesses.  However, too many small business owners get caught up in what the website looks like, in uploading photos and videos, rather than paying attention to the nitty gritty details that will make their website a valuable tool in promoting their business.  Here’s a few tips on how to make your website a valuable asset to your small business marketing plan.

               Content with keywords: Keywords are the word or phrases help your website get found by the search engines.  They are the words or phrases people are using with search engines such as Google to find the things they want.  Carefully researched keywords should be an important part of all content, articles and press releases posted on your website.  These will help your website get indexed by the search engines and found by potential customers. 

               Meta-data:  Meta-data are the keywords and descriptions associated with every page of your website.  They are not included on the pages clients see but are included in the descriptions of the website pages when found by the search engines.   Meta-data and meta-tags should be included for every page of your website. 

               Analytics:   Website analytics can provide you with valuable information regarding your website.  Analytics can tell you how many people have visited your site daily, weekly, monthly and yearly.  They can also tell you how many pages of your site they visited, how long they stayed on your website and where they came from.  This is valuable information for many reasons.  First, you want to know if your website is getting traffic.  Second, it allows you to see whether you’re getting traffic as a result of other marketing efforts.  For instance, if you decide to start posting press releases online once or twice a week for a month, and your traffic drastically increases, you can assume that the press release campaign played a role in driving traffic to your website and to your business.  Lastly, by looking at where your traffic is coming from, you can tell what’s working, what’s not and what you need to improve on.   

               Contact information:  Make sure you have more than one method of contacting you or your business on every page of your website.  Visitors should not have to hunt and probably won’t take the time to look for this information.  It needs to be visible and easy to find.  Be sure to include an e-mail address, a business phone number and a link to a website contact form on every page.  People will contact you if you make it easy for them to do so. 

               Websites are a valuable tool for the small business.  Be sure you’re getting the most out of this powerful tool and your small business marketing plan.