Keep It Simple, Stupid. One of the definitive characteristics of Web 2.0 is its simplicity of design.  The less is more approach applies in designing websites to compete in today’s market.

The old way was to fill up your pages with as much content as you could, letting people know that you were online and legitimate.  With the amount of websites and competition increasing exponentially today, your website has a limited amount of time to grab attention and accomplish a goal.

How long do you give a website before you go somewhere else?  2 seconds, 5 seconds, 10 seconds,  longer?  Seriously?

Forget the flash intros, background music, Adsense, widgets, gadgets and random pictures.   Keep your website  and posts minimal and clutter-free. A prospect should be able to look at your website and in 5 seconds know how to contact you or purchase a product.  Make sure you have a clear Call To Action.

A quick read, (really, I read it in under 2 hours)  is Seth Godin’s The Big Red Fez: How To Make Any Web Site Better.  His take is surfing on the web is like a monkey looking for a banana. Websites should be kept simple and easy for anyone to immediately identify what the site is about and quickly grab the banana.

For small business website design, contact thereferralgeneration

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I once read an e-book from an internet marketing company that said they created 50 different pages for a local business website.  The idea was to have a targeted page for each town in the coverage area to increase search engine rankings. 

I thought this was a great idea, so I went to work on it immediately.  I mapped out the local towns and created a couple of pages, but soon abandoned the project because it was boring, time-consuming and I was creating ‘hidden pages’ with ‘duplicate content.’ 

But after converting my wife’s property management website to WordPress, I had an alternate strategy.

With WordPress I am able to add a new blog post for each town in our coverage area.  This creates a new page for the search engines to index, with keyword rich URLs.  The content of each post includes zip codes, keywords and links.

This improves our search engine rankings by adding new, relevant content to the site. For smaller, more obscure searches, we are able to dominate the rankings.  If there is a certain area that we want to focus on to get more leads, we can simply write more posts about those particular areas. 

In our case we created Property Management Perspective which is a series of local reports on the towns and neighborhoods in our coverage area.  We give quality insider information on the area and current rental market. 

This strategy can be applied to any type of local business.  The posts should not be hard to write since you already know the area and can give some expert advice.

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Keywords are basic necessities for websites. You do some research, find the right ones and add the keywords to your content, title and tags.

On-page optimization and your internal linking structure are very important to any post .  This is easily completed by using WordPress.

What you need to know in your SEO campaign is…..

the harder a link is to get, the better your search rankings will be.

Having one quality link could be worth more than 1,000 garbage links.  Focus on quality over quantity.  If you can easily add your link to the site, then it probably is not going to do much for you.  In some cases, easy sites could be viewed as link farms or bad neighborhoods. These links could negatively affect your search engine rankings.

Is it easy to get a link from a .gov or .edu domain?  No. A .gov or .edu are seen by search engine companies as trusted sites.  In order to have a link to your business from trusted sites, you have to be involved with an organization, have a membership or make donations to trusted organizations.

Businesses are not going to join the local chamber of commerce just to get a link. Join the chamber or any organization because you believe in it.

The 80/20 rule comes into effect, where 20% of your links will create 80% of your traffic.  Focus 80% of your time on:

Getting Creative – Think of ways to help other websites, review their products, write a guest article or link to them.

Writing Great Content- If it is unique and interesting, you will naturally attract quality links.

Being an expert- getting links from Yahoo! Answers, Wikipedia and reviews on Amazon will increase your rankings.  Focus on contributing to these sites by being a trusted advisor in your field.

Contributing to Conversations-  Find high ranking blogs and forums and don’t just write, “great post” and add your link.  Share some of your expertise and insight, write comments that will contribute to the readers experience.

Don’t  spam websites and add to the noise.

photo by viZZZual

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Does anyone have time to talk on the phone anymore?  Do your prospects really want to talk to you?  Are you cold calling?  Seriously?

With Facebook and the other million social media sites, your customers have plenty of friends.  They are not looking for someone to get to know, they want someone who is going to get the job done and not waste their time.

The internet has changed the way people buy forever.  The consumer now can do research, compare prices and make purchases online without ever talking to a salesperson.

As a customer, I would prefer not to hear a sales pitch, have an awkward conversation, feel pressured or listen to some slick salesperson trying to close the deal. 

As a small business owner, I would rather communicate by email.  This gives me a chance to edit the conversation, give my full attention, not be surprised or need to rely on thinking on my feet.

When people visit my website and are interested, they fill out the contact form (where only name and email are required fields), which sends an email to my phone so that I can immediately respond.  From there, we will email back and forth a couple of times to work out the details. By the time we actually talk, it is a done deal.

Customers today only want to talk to you after they have made a decision to buy, and only if buying requires that they talk to you.

If your website is visible, with a powerful message and clear call to action, closing the deal is just a matter of getting out of the way and not saying anything stupid.

Once you have a happy customer, then you can sell, up-sell, deepen the relationship and ask for referrals.

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Over on Search Engine Guide there is a definitive checklist for online marketing.  Definitely worth checking out.

The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period! – Search Engine Guide Blog

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