I got an email from a friend the other day that stumped me for a little bit. He knew I was doing Small Business Internet Marketing in CT and he said was launching an internet business. He wanted to know the best way to begin promoting his website for free on the search engines.
What he was asking wasn’t that simple to answer.
The internet is constantly changing and I wanted to make sure he would build his business upon a solid foundation for years to come.
I also didn’t want to overwhelm him with a ton of information. (even though I may have )
I told him the advice I gave him can only steer him in the right direction. It is up to him to put the effort into building a responsible business without getting caught up in the latest way to promote his business.
Below is the exact advice I gave my friend.
I mention some really good resources to get listed online for free fairly quickly. Especially if you’re a local business looking to build a website and get listed in Google for your area.
1. WordPress is The Best Platform To Build Your Website on. It’s Easy To Setup and Using it is Like Using Microsoft Word.
WordPress is an amazing platform to build your website on. (It’s what this site is built on) It’s a blogging platform but can also be used to build an entire website on. It’s very flexible and allows for a lot of customization. Some sites built with WordPress sites don’t even look like they’ve been built on WordPress. You can create static pages or have pages that work like a blog.
Once you install it, all you have to do is log into an area and the interface is very intuitive to create webpages. It’s similar to using Microsoft word.
Note: What I’m talking about here is installing wordpress on a domain name you own! Not a blog started on wordpress.com. You don’t own that! You want complete control over your content and have it belong to you. The wordpress for your own website can be found on www.Wordpress.org which I explain below.
Even if you think you just need a static website, I highly recommend adding a blog. Blogging is a fantastic way to build relationships with your market. Give away free advice related to your industry, answer people’s questions, tell personal stories, and open yourself up. Anything to make an emotional connection and establish you as the expert.
2. Wordpess Installs With The Click of A Button!
WordPress is extremely easy to learn. Programming is a thing of the past for the basic website owner. You can either download it at www.wordpress.org or most hosting providers has a feature in the control panel called fantastic which installs wordpress on your domain in about 1 minute with the click of a button.
Check out this video tutorial and see how quick it is.
WordPress Installation Using Fantastico
3. The Search Engines Love WordPress.
I mean they love it!
You can link your pages together with keyword rich links in absurd ways with WordPress. (This gets you ranking high in the search engines) The search engines love it, your customer’s love how they can find your company easily, and all you have to do is produce great content.
In part II I’ll give some great plugins (add-ons) that make your site give the search engines that warm tingly feeling inside.
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