Most small business websites don’t work; in other words they don’t generate leads and/or customers for the business. As a result, many small business owners I speak to think that the internet doesn’t work for their business, but in the main it is their website that isn’t working.
Great local online marketing is fairly simple. Have a great website that you can regularly add fresh, relevant, useful content to, ensure the website is search engine friendly and optimised for your keywords including local keywords and promote the website online using social media.
Where most small business websites fall down is that the sites are static, ‘brochure’ sites with content that rarely changes. Google likes fresh content that is relevant to the niche that the website is in. If your website has it then you are more likely to appear near the top of the search engines, if not then it will likely wallow somewhere on ‘page nowhere to be seen’.
When I started my first local business back in 2005, I had no idea what made a website effective in getting me business and I started with a template website from my hosting company.
I then decided to get a web designer to design my website but I didn’t get very far with that because I got stuck writing the copy. I had this thing that the website copy needed to be perfect because once it was written and online it would take time and more money to get it changed. So, because I was focusing so much on getting it perfect in the first place it never got done!
And that’s the other problem that I see with local business websites – they often don’t exist! Quite often small business owners, and you may be one of them, know that they should have a website but get stuck with finding the time and/or the right words to actually get one done.