Kick-start your online marketing

Kick-start your online marketing

A good website doesn’t need to be complicated or expensive.

More small businesses are now realising the importance of having a good online presence. But where do you start? Here are my top tips.

1. Don’t skimp on your website

A good website doesn’t need to complicated or expensive. Look for a developer who can build your site on open-source software. Watch out for those who are peddling ‘proprietary software’ as this simply means that you will be tied to their systems for the life of your website.

Always enquire about the SEO friendliness of the content-management system (CMS) as this is the back end of your system and should be as user-friendly as possible.

Make sure you ask if the software allows for functionality such as custom metadata, title tags and URL structures. This will help you keep your website competitive and up to date.

A good website doesn’t need to complicated or expensive. 

2. Content is still king

If you’re creating a new business website, the worst thing you can do is copy content from competing websites. You may think this is a shortcut to get your website up and running – it is more likely to be a shortcut straight out of the search engines!

Search engines such as Google are aware where any content on your website originated from. So, if any content is copied, down goes your Google ranking. Fresh and new content positively pushes up your search-engine rankings.

3. Track everything!

With the plethora of analytics tools available, there should be no reason that you’re not tracking everything that you do online! Tracking your online campaigns allows you to know everything about your website’s performance, including where your visitors are coming from and what pages they visit.

A great start is to sign up for free Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics).

In conclusion, using these three points will really assist you in creating success for your business in the online world.

All you really need to get started is a good, accessible website for customers to check out your fantastic (and unique) content, and a methodology in place to measure what content is working the best.

Mike van der Heijden, SEO Director, Atomic Search