If you’re in business for yourself, but find that you can’t compete with the prices other businesspeople are selling what you want to sell on eBay, your best option is to attract regional (as in local) clients only. Local works, and people like local. Ask any local business owner.
The best way to attract local clients from the internet is still by means of a traditional web site; here’s how to go about that:
1. Register a domain.
The domain can be a dot-com, dot-net or dot-org. It doesn’t really matter because Google (which I’ll talk more about in a moment) will index it the same way since you will be ‘regionalizing’ it.
When hosting the domain, make sure to use a web host that’s within the same country you’re doing business it (ex: if in the US, use a host provider with servers in the US).
One of the easiest places to get a domain and host it all in one fell swoop is DreamHost. If you’re the skittish type and don’t want to spend any money until you’re sure you like it, don’t worry, they have a free 2-week trial.
And yes, hosting a site costs money. Nine measly bucks a month. Slightly more than the coins you’d find in the cushions of your couch, but nothing that will put you in the poorhouse.
2. One web page, business-card/résumé style
Your web site only needs one web page, listed in biz-card/résumé fashion. What this means is something that lists your name, a contact phone number, an email address and a brief to-the-point list of the services you provide.
Need an idea for what your web site should look like? Pick up any advertising flyer you get in the mail, find a full-page ad, and make your site look like that. Yes, really. It works.
"I know nothing about web design."
Use a blog platform and it will be just like using a document editor. And yes, DreamHost has easy built-in blog options just for that purpose, so you don’t need to know web design. All you have to do is create one blog entry, and that’s your one page. Simple and easy.
3. "Serving…"
This is what will attract local clients more than anything else. Google (((hearts))) regional-style web pages; it makes it easier for them to index because you’ve giving them pertinent regional information up front. To ‘regionalize’ your web site, all that’s required is a "serving" line at the top (whether in header or sidebar) of your web page.
A serving line looks like this:
Serving the greater [location] area including [cities] and surrounding areas.
If I were to use my locale, Tampa Florida, the line would look like this:
Serving the greater Tampa Bay Area including Tampa, St. Petersburg,
Clearwater and surrounding areas.
When Google ‘sees’ this, they know what area you’re serving, and given that Google is really hot on the idea of serving pages that are more personalized these days, more locals will be seeing your site compared to non-locals – which is exactly what you want.
The simple formula works the best
The formula is: All your biz info in brief short terms on one page with easy-easy access to contact info, all in text.
Images can be used for a company logo and product/service photos, but everything else is text, text, text for fast indexing and fast-load pages to accommodate people using mobile browsers (or really old computers).
Customers like this as does Google, so don’t deviate. Stick to the simple formula.
Do you have your own biz web site for your local area? What’s worked for you?
Feel free to post a comment or two to share with others. Many want to start their own site but don’t really know what would work well on a local level.
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While correct in the info this article gives, I think it falls short in giving small business owners all the info they need to consider before jumping in and creating a website for their small business.
When we create websites for small businesses we first focus on determining what they want to accomplish with their site. Generally their responses fall into two or three main categories. They either just want an “online business card” kind of website. Or they want a sales site that generate extra calls and sales leads for their business. A third option is they actually want to sell directly from the site. An ecommerce site.
If the intention is just an “online business card”, then this article is probably all you really need. However, if you want the website to help you increase your sales, or if you want an ecommerce site then you need to focus on many more aspect than this article mentions.
Here are a few of the things to consider if you want more than a business card website:
1. Choice of domain name for your site. You might be surprised to hear that it may not make sense just to choose the name of your company.
2. Platform you choose to create your site with. Hands down I’d suggest a hosted WordPress solution. Our experience shows that Google likes WP a lot! It’s easier to rank sites using WP than most of the other plateforms, or the “freebie” design sites. It’s also extremely easy to add content later when using WordPress.
3. Optimize for Google Places. If you run a small business that caters to local customers than it’s imperative that you optimize your website so that it will appear as one of the Top 7 businesses for your category in the Google Local Places section. This section now dominates the front page of Google Search results for local goods and services. So it just makes sense that you want to appear on this page. However, in most metro areas, this is not just as simple as creating a website and hoping google will rank it for you.
These are three of many things to consider. Creating a website that drives calls does takes time and monthly work. Is it worth it? Only you can answer that. Here are some questions to ask yourself. How much is the lifetime value of each new customer to you? How much does it currently cost you to acquire a new customer? Most local businesses find that the effort is indeed worth spending the time or capital to complete.
Love the site and have been reading it for a while. I felt like I needed to respond on this subject as it’s something I walk through with customers who are considering a new site and it is easy to overlook these basic ideas and end up with something that isn’t serving your needs.
This lead us to grow our business , go ahead