I Have a Website for My Small Business, Now What?

Did you just get your hands on a brand-new website for your business? How exciting is that? This is your business's most important step into the digital world. Now, if you are an entrepreneur with no tech background, you might be in for a few surprises. Also, there is nothing wrong with not having the tech knowledge to further your website. You have your own unique expertise and value. Over time, you will get to learn about the game or at least how to have others do this work for you.  But I won’t sugar coat it for you, most new business website owners are not taking the next steps needed to make their website work for them.  This article will be your quick guide for that process and how to ace it!

Let’s be real

The digital world has become very competitive in the recent decade. Do you know that there are 198.4 million active websites? Your business website needs to stand out and compete in this tough environment. You must be aware of the right tools and expert services available in the market that will help you to reach the top. These tools help you in deploying effective strategies to promote and optimize your business website. You must be open to listening and sharing your ideas with experts to make an impactful collaborative effort for your website. Moreover, there are strategies that have been proven effective over time and you can learn from these.

This article will tell you about 6 essential tips for best utilizing a new website. These tips are integral if you want your website to perform well and yield desirable outcomes.

6 Essential Tips for New Websites for Small Businesses

1. Benefits from SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Search engine optimization is the process that improves a website's online presence and visibility. It provides information to search engines so that your site can be found in searches on Google and Bing search engines. On-site SEO can help your website to stand out without having to do much heavy lifting.  Best of all it uses your own web content to make it easier for people to find your site. Otherwise, your website will be lost in the sea of 198.4 million websites.  With a little bit of keyword and content planning, onsite SEO will provide your website with a great starting place to be found in web searches naturally.

According to 57% of digital marketing experts, on-page content development is the most effective method of SEO. You can connect with digital marketing services, content writers like Nectar Strategic, or design agencies like Prime Encode to help you with onsite SEO, even if you plan to write all your own original content.  It is good to at least have some direction from professionals that work with onsite SEO daily.

2. Use Google My Business

For most people, Google might just be a way to quickly find answers or products online. Google is actually much more than that, especially for business owners. Google My Business, formerly residing inside of their Google+ offering, is an iconic service by Google for small business entrepreneurs. This platform can enable you to benefit from 84% of discovery searches. It can help you generate more local traffic for your website and prove to your customers that you provide excellent customer service, products, and services. That is right. You can simply make a Google My Business profile with a Google account, and it will help you enhance your local SEO and further your online presence. Moreover, you can monitor local consumer behavior too. It will lead you to design an effective promotion strategy.

The first thing we tell clients to do once their website is in the final stages of development is to create a Google My Business Profile and start asking their current clients for reviews.  Google reviews, more so than any reviews provided by any other online source, are the primary way to get people to your website and to prove to them that you are credible.  The reason is, Facebook and other social media platforms offer reviews that don’t do anything for your website’s SEO.  Google reviews directly link your website to the reviews.  The more positive reviews you get, the more Google will recognize your business and website as legitimate, and it will affect your page rankings.

One other main benefit of using Google My Business is that it links your business to a location, either your business address or to a service area.  In fact, if your home address is your business address and you would care to not divulge that online, you can still show up in local search results by providing a service area only.  How awesome is that?  But without creating a Google My Business page and linking it to your website, you will not be able to take advantage of Local SEO benefits such as showing up in searches for “restaurants near me” or “hotels in Olcott, NY”.  You have to take advantage of Google My Business if you plan on being found online and it is the number one thing Prime Encode recommends to their clients to do to have their website be found online.

3. Escalate your Social Media Game

Social media is also a viable channel to promote your website.  Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Linked In, Alignable, and Twitter are very effective. There are currently 3.78 billion social media users in the whole world. Your social media accounts can directly bring potential customers to your website.

All these social media channels give your business an opportunity to gain new B2C and B2B connections. In addition, you can benefit from running specialized ad work on Facebook and Instagram ads.  A good digital marketing service can help you with social media ads as there is a lot to consider. You can also monitor your progress with social media analytics. It will give you real-time data about visitors, clicks, and your audience.

4. Use Business Content Aggregator Websites

Business aggregator websites are another vital tool for promoting your website.  A business aggregator website is a site that collects data about various businesses from other sources across the internet and puts the information in one place where users can access it. It is a directory-style offering that can even contain media content, reviews, maps, etc… The data collected can be based on many things, depending on the channel or platform it's pulling from and in fact, you can offer up your own business information and content to affirm your business is being depicted properly.

There are many business directories online and a good portion of them will only let you edit your business listing if you have a paid account and others only if you sign up for specific marketing groups.  We often recommend starting with the easy ones like Yelp, Online Yellow Pages, and Houzz (if it applies to your services) and Moz Local is also a great place to get listed in business aggregator sites that you wouldn’t normally have access to.  You can also look for specialized local business aggregator sites online to better your search engine rankings and your online reach.

5. Make use of Blogs

Making a blog section on your website is extremely effective over time. Blogs can attract a huge chunk of visitors to your website. In fact, many leading business websites have a blog section that is a long-term solution to gaining new prospective clients. The main thing is that it allows you to advertise your business’s offering inside of informative and useful content.  It also creates a community atmosphere on your website that spreads to other blogs online as well.  Did you know, 80% of businesses use blogs as their main advertising tool?  And best of all, you can write them yourself if you have the time and ability!

Moreover, you can communicate and share with other influential blogging websites. You can hire them to write articles about your business and products and offer those articles on their website linking to your blog. These articles can act as a direct channel of access to your website from other websites.  The more credible the source (think scholarly and news website blogs) the better the effects this has on your search rankings.

6. Email Marketing

Email marketing is a tried and tested method to promote your website directly to your current customers.  This is also a cost-effective method of website promotion as usually once you have a good template set up, you can use services like MailChimp to send to many of your customers all at once. You might think you can do this easily with your current email service, but there is usually a limit to how many people you can send to at once and your design tools inside this email will be very basic as compared to what top email marketing services can provide. The goal is to write a proactive email that will compel users to subscribe to your newsletter and visit your website. You can send offers, coupons, and brochures via email marketing as well. You can also promote your blog and distribute content through email marketing. 9 out of 10 marketers use email marketing for content distribution.

Ready to Kick Ass?

These are 6 workable ways to promote your newly made website. The impact of these practical methods is drastically increased if an expert is working alongside you. As they have the innate abilities and set of expertise to help your website to achieve goals. A good digital marketing service can also help you define website-related milestones as well. They can also enable you to pave the way ahead as well. It would set the tone for your business and website. Content masters like Nectar Strategic, are also imperative for making your website’s content shine and they can write engaging content that sells and increases your search engine visibility.

If your business is based in or around Olcott, New York, you can connect with Prime Encode to optimize your business website. We can help you with everything mentioned above and beyond what is listed here.

SEO Data Analytics 2022 Update:

This article was originally written in September of 2021.  While most of the metrics are still accurate and applicable to the industry, we would like to keep you up to date with current information. Here are some snippets from Upcity's 2022 SEO study which is excellent and definitely worth your time to read in full.

• 46% Of U.S. Businesses Are Focusing On On-Page SEO
• 16% Of Businesses Noted That Social Media Marketing Is A Key Part Of Their SEO Strategy
• 44% Of Businesses Are Implementing An SEO Strategy For 2022
• 43% Of Businesses Say That Their Current SEO Strategy Is Somewhat Effective In Reaching Their Goals

- Michael from Prime Encode