Having a web business requires a lot of web knowledge so whether you like it or not, you will have to read a bit about it to make sure you make the right decisions. This article will summarize the top 5 ten mistakes a business does when going online. This includes mistakes in buying/creating a website, choosing an advertising campaign, hiring a web consultant or simply identifying a good web resource.
1. Buying a Bad Website
- Mistake:
- Many businesses try to find a cheap website, thinking that a website is just a commercial brochure. Later they notice that their website is just sitting there and the visitors are bouncing off the website as if it was another spam pop up. This usually happens when businesses try to outsource a site in a 3rd world country or find a freelance web designer off craigslist or rentacoder.com who doesn't even know what PHP stands for. Many freelancers today use CMS, content management software, like Joomla, WordPress or Drupal, making it difficult to completely customize by yourself and often times making it hard to switch to a new web designer.
- Solution:
- A web developer needs to know HTML, Graphic Design and CSS to design nice pages and needs to know PHP and/or to make it function well. Every real developer will then be able to jump on it and edit it should there be problems. Also, a web developer must know SEO, which is second big mistake a business makes when getting a website.
2. Paying Full for Only Half the Goods - SEO
- Mistake:
- Do your web guys know anything about commerce? Many companies today buy a website that may look good but not really get anything out of it. The most common scenario is a company buying a great looking website and then not realizing that after having it for 60 days, they only had 2 views. Well, even if it would have been 100 view, it still wouldn't be worth developing if all that's all you're aiming for. You are probably just ranked on Google for your business name, with no SEO on your website.
- Solution:
- Before hiring a web developer, you want to make sure that this web developer also knows SEO. Incorporating the right keywords for your business on your website is important. Everything on your website has the be optimized not only for visitors, but also for the search engines. This way, you save hundreds of dollars on SEO onsite optimization, as it is really not difficult for the web developer to incorporate onsite SEO while developing the website.
3. Copying other Web Businesses
- Mistake:
- Now, this is something I hear all the time: "I like this website, let's do the same.", "I like what they wrote, let's use that." This is often referred to other designs and content. And a novice web developer would say: "Yeah, I'll copy and paste that." Okay, well the problem with that is, even when changing the content up a bit, the search engines will notice and the same keywords they ranked for with the same article will be impossible for you to dominate. You might even get thrown off the search engines for duplicate content.
- Solution:
- Have a professional content writer generate unique content for the websites pages and pitch pages. The same writer has to know SEO to effectively rank your website for more keywords.
4. Web Advertising in the Wrong Sources
- Mistake:
- Why are you advertising carpet cleaning on Facebook? This is a typical scenario for many businesses. Advertising a product/service in a wrong site or market can be a big money waster. Especially now, when pay-per-click costs have sky rocketed and new deals are harder to find, you may wanna talk to the right business marketing consultant.
- Solution:
- Talk to a business marketing company with a high success rate. Find out what online business marketing strategy best applies for your business.
5. Getting Bad & Expensive SEO
- Mistake:
- There are many scam companies out there providing SEO services, without even really knowing SEO. Many companies have fallen for great SEO pitches, paid money for several months and are still not seeing results. If you have been paying since months and haven't been ranked on a nice keyword - big problem. If you are paying to just be on the local maps - mistake. If you are paying to see 10 organic visitors a day - mistake. If you are paying to ranked for your business name - big mistake.
- Solution:
- Talk to more than one SEO company. SEO is a constantly changing game and it takes a confident, up-to-date SEO company to know get the results you want.
By avoiding these top 5 mistakes in starting a web business, your business should be up and running online in no time. Make sure to find the right web marketing company to help you with these services.
