The internet is a wonderful place for small business to get noticed. It doesn’t matter if you have a brick and mortar place too or you only sell online. Finding your niche market is important so you can let them know about the products or services you offer. You don’t need tons of money to get noticed online, but you do need a professional appearance.
Website
Hire a professional to create a wonderful website for you. It should have an easy to use navigation system. It should be visually appealing as well as give the visitors a good idea of the goods or services you offer. The checkout needs to be a breeze for them to use and security needs to be there to protect their personal information. Everything on the webpages needs to be optimized in order to help you get a higher ranking in the search engines.
Backlinks strategically placed throughout your website are important. They help you to boost your search engine ranking because the search engine bots will index them. These links should take the visitor to a place where they can find more information, to make a purchase, or anything that is relevant. Those links need to be tested regularly to ensure they work properly.
Optimization
A variety of keywords and keyword phrases will assist you with improving your placement in the major search engines. Why is this important? When a consumer is looking for something, they will type keywords or phrases into a search engine. If you are listed high on the first page, there is a good chance they will click to see what you offer. If you are buried several pages deep, they will never see what you offer.
Social Media Presence
Your small business needs to have a powerful social media presence. This is a wonderful way to get noticed without much money at all being involved in the process. With social media marketing, you can get your information seen by your niche market. Facebook is a key entity where you should have a page. Make sure you separate your business page from your personal page.
Post information on Twitter to create a buzz. For example, when you are going to launch a new product or service. You can also Tweet when you have a time sensitive sale you don’t want people to miss out on. Videos on YouTube about how your products or services work are a wonderful way to use social media to promote your business. You can even do a Q&A session there. Make sure you use the links to those videos on your website to generate high quality backlinks too.
Offer Something for Free
Offering some freebies will go a long way to promote your small business online. Offer a free report or other materials. All they will need to do is provide their name and email and they can access it. In exchange, you now have another person on your email list. That list can be golden when it comes to reaching consumers in your niche. You can use autoresponders to send messages at regular intervals.
Facebook is also great place to offer something for free. For example, you can offer a free item and to enter visitors need to like your page and share it. They will love the entry and this also means everyone they are friends with will also see what you offer. The outreach can grow extremely rapidly. Make sure you announce on your page who won!