A decade ago, small businesses flocked to the internet. It was going to transform the way business is done and they wanted to be part of it. And many are today quite disappointed and perhaps philosopical about how their web pages didn’t do didly squat.
While there is no doubt the internet has changed how business is done today, for most businesses all that changed is they now have an internet Yellow Pages add in addition to there actual listing.
The only people that go to their web site are people who already know about their business, and are jsut checking for a phone number or the times we are open.
While that’s certainly not true of all businesses, it is true for a good many, how about you?
I’ve been preaching on three major topics here about why I think most business web sites stink.
- Most aren’t using their ability to list their business in multiple categories.
- Most have just a billboard, or an electronic brochure and not an interactive site
- Why most web sites are so bad, even when you paid good money for them.
In my prior posts on this blog, I have tried to use the trade show as a metaphor as to what the role of your web pages should be. I encourage you to look back at my past postings and read them.
In the last few days, I have been focusing on how most web sites I’ve reviewed lately have poor and often no keywords.
If you were able to afford it, and were in the wall paper business, you might buy a yellow pages ad under wall paper, and maybe under decorating or a number of other yellow page headings. Most businesses don’t as its very expensive to do so, even with multiple category discounts.
With your web pages, you don’t need to pay extra to be listed in multiple categories. You just need to do a systematic listing of all relevant keywords that your possible customers might use in an effort to find you.
This may take a little time and effort, but once done, it will pay tremendous rewards in additional traffic and potential new business.
You may have thought your web designer would have done this for you. But unfortunately most web designers are not marketers. They tend to be graphic artists or techno geeks. Great at creating web pages, but not necessarily at getting your web site to generate the business you had hoped it would.