If you run a business of any size, you need to advertise. The Internet provides a way to reach and do business with a large number of potential customers regardless of physical location. The added bonus to the web's easy access is that you can get your name out to cyber customers with relative ease.
Instructions
Advertise on the Web
1. First, build your website. If you have a small budget, you can do it yourself at relatively little cost by either using your Internet service provider's website-building tools or by checking some online registration and hosting sites such as godaddy.com or homestead.com. If your budget is a little bigger, you may hire a professional web designer, but this can cost several thousand dollars.
Regardless of whether you build your site yourself or have a web designer do it, there are certain things that you must take into consideration when creating your website. Primarily, you must keep in mind that keywords and content on your website are what the search engines are looking for, and these need to be the focal point of your website. All of the graphics, sound and multimedia on your site won't help much if your customers can't find you.
2. Submit your site to search engines. This gets your site listed on the results page when someone searches for your service or product. You can submit to Yahoo at siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit and Google at google.com/submityourcontent/index.html. Or you can get your site submitted to multiple search engines by going to submitit.com or scrubtheweb.com. Note that when you submit a site to a search engine company, it is often looked at by a human reviewer. Your website may not be automatically accepted just because you submit it. And search engine companies may ask you to make some changes before accepting your site.
3. Once you've created a site and submitted it to major search engines, you need to get links to your site. This will increase your website's rank with certain search engines such as Google. There are several ways to get other sites to link to yours. Start by contacting everyone you know who has a website and ask them to link to you. This includes getting some of your customers or vendors to link to your site. Other ways to generate links include asking manufacturers of the products you sell to link to you or finding business associations or portals on the web that you can join. Also, search for your competition. If someone links to your competitor, they may also link to you. Finally, you may have to reciprocate by placing others' links on your site.
4. Use pay-per-click (PPC). You can sign up for PPC with Google AdWords. For AdWords, you create an account using a credit card and then create ads that appear on Google when certain keywords are searched. When someone clicks on the ad, it brings them to your site. The best thing is you only pay for the actual clicks you get.
5. Finally, tie it all together with other tools. Create a YouTube video showcasing your business. You can create a blog to talk about your business or service. If your business provides a particular service, you can use your blog to showcase your expertise in your field. Don't neglect your offline advertising. Put your web address on business cards, on signs and stationery, and remember that the best advertising is still word of mouth. Talk about your business and your website, and get your customers talking about it.
