Get your small business and startups discovered on the Internet

Posted by: MindCron Posted date: July 08, 2012 In: Articles, Business | comment : 0

Last week I received a call from some one who is connected with me on facebook and wanted to see if I can help him get a few work orders for his new website development venture. I shared a few advise with him and promised to give some referral to him.

Given the popularity of Internet, there are hell lots of competition to appear on top of search results when people are looking for your business. Today, Internet is one of the most powerful platforms where people search for products and services. Even if one have to buy something from a store, chances are her or she will do a little research and comparison on Internet before ordering or booking it offline.

Power of internet can’t be ignored for your business and If you are a startup or a small business and just launched your website, chances are you are not appearing on the top in search engines and other social channels where actual customers are looking for your products and services.

I am going to share some of the easy and cost effective way to get your business discovered on the Internet.

Setting up your website

Setup and launch a search engine friendly website. Search engine friendly website is one that is designed using best practices and pass through W3C HTML and CSS validations.

Ensure there is no error whatsoever on your website

Create good and compelling contents for your web pages and use nice and attractive keywords that ask your visitors to take action.

If possible use images and pictures of real human beings instead of suing clipart

Ensure you have easy to use navigation and bread crumbs to help your users browse through your website.

Display a contact number and email address clearly so that people can reach you easily when they wish to. Don’t expect them to find your contact page, and then send emails using a contact form.

And finally, you are building your website for your customers, not for search engines, keep that in mind. If your customers like it, search engine will automatically like it.

Time to create some Buzz about your company now

Having a nice, friendly and easy to use website is just the beginning. Next step is to create some buzz.

Create your social presence on top social networking websites like facebook, twitter, google plus, and other social sites, where there are millions of customers searching for your products and services.

Social media is very important and considered to be a game changer for SMEs in coming days, use it for lead generation, sharing news, updates, knowledge and most importantly customer support. Share useful information, engage with your customers, thank them for every feedback good or bad, and engage with them in real-time.

Start building relationships with blogger and influencers. Ask for their tips and advise for anything where you think they can help.

Share story about your business and startups with blogger and if they like it, they may write a review or cover your startup on their blog.

This will help you get some early adopters and also help you appear on top as they will link to your website. Such links are very important because search engines consider it as a referral and assign better rank to your website.

Blog regularly to share contents (tips and advises)

There is a popular saying “contents is king” and that means, no matter what you do, you should always try and update contents on your website. Share news and updates, new features, team party, new clients case studies etc.

You may use wordpress to setup a blog in minutes and integrate social sharing and all in one SEO packs (plugins) for better results.

Keep your customers and targeted users up dates with everything.

Share new features, tips and advise of your industry.

Take opportunities to write guest posts on other popular blogs and websites

Share articles on popular article sites and directories with a couple of link to your own website.

Setup an email news letter subscription option on your blog (and on website), so that you can share updates with those who are interested and generate leads

All these will help you get discovered on the Internet

I am sure there are many other ways, but to begin with, focus on these things and see how it goes. Feel free to experiment, measure and re-align your plan.

I would love to know what else one should do to appear on top of the search results. Share your ideas and views via comment.