Everyone buzzes about social media, blogs, and search engine optimization, but what about email? Most companies just forget about the old email newsletter. (Even us. We haven’t sent one in a while. Whoops!)

The printed newsletter was an old standby to keep customers up-to-date, involved, and feeling valued. It translated nicely to email when the Internet started, but it seems today many businesses have dropped the newsletter in favor of other marketing methods.

The newsletter sign up box used to be ubiquitous on most websites. Now, many customers never ask for one. And if they do, they generally never use those email addresses. Maybe once a year for the holidays, when most people are so jammed full of spam they usually delete everything anyway!

Is that the best move? Should we all just move on from email like it’s an out-dated technology?

How Email Stacks Up

Are more people using Facebook and Twitter than reading email? Why is your email address so valuable to large companies?

Our friends at RedWriteWeb put together this handy infographic comparing email to those other methods of communication:

original source: http://m.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/09/the-value-of-email-infographic.php

Yeah, so email is kinda kicking all sorts of buttocks here. More people use email, and they use it more often. It’s not even close.

Conclusion

If you have a list of customer email addresses, it’s time to use them by sending out regular emails. Make sure to include valuable information and reminders. In other words, say, “Hey! We’re still in business, and we’re awesome!” (Yep, we’re gonna work on doing that ourselves.)

Customers who aren’t interested will unsubscribe. Maybe they’ll come back on their own, but if not then you haven’t really lost anything.

If you don’t yet have an email list then it’s time to get one going. Add a sign up box to your website, collect emails on paper sign ups in store or at conventions. Just don’t purchase a list; that would be bad.

And if you need some help, we’ve got you covered with our Email Marketing Service. We’ll get you signed up with MailChimp, integrate the sign up form into your website, and build you a custom template so you can email customers in style.

And, of course, you can sign up for our email newsletter here: http://eepurl.com/b_UWL

Originally posted at Vantages Media Blog - Tips & Tricks for Small Business Websites

Have you heard about Google+? It’s the newest social network to join Facebook and Twitter. It came out a few months ago, and it has the backing of a very powerful company behind it, Google.

So  is Google+ something you need to worry about for your small business? Should you add it to your website or get a Google+ profile? Yes to the first, and no (for now) to the second.

While another social network might seem superfluous, there is one key reason you need to know about Google+: It will impact your website’s search ranking!

While we don’t know exactly what the impact will be, it is clear by the appearance of the “+1″ button in Google’s search results that it will play a role. In fact, you can already test this by “+1″ing a website that shows up low on the rankings, and then watch how it magically rises in the rankings over time. Sadly, for now, this is only visible to you and not everyone else. (Yes, Google’s rankings do change for different people depending on many factors.)

So while a lot of websites are still slumbering, it’s a good time to add a Google+ button to your website and get ahead of the curve for when that “+1″ does matter.

But should you get a Google+ profile to go along with the “+1″ button? Not at this time. Google is going to release a Google+ profile for businesses soon, but they don’t want personal profiles used for businesses right now. While you could sneak under the radar, you risk having the profile shut down at some point.

Check out this great article from Forbes.com giving you the low down on Google+ if you want to learn more.

And if you want to get started on adding a Google+ button to your small business website, contact us today or check out our Social Networking Service.

Originally posted at Vantages Media Blog - Tips & Tricks for Small Business Websites

While nothing is perfect, and there is always room for improvement, there are some very common and easy-to-fix small business website mistakes.

Small businesses take note! You can’t afford any easy-to-fix mistakes on your website.

#1 Contact Us?

The #1 reason most people visit a small business website is for contact information. Leaving out that information or making it hard to find is a no-no!

It’s important to provide multiple methods of contact. The most popular ones are phone, fax, email, and mailing address. Additionally, it’s common to include a simple contact form if people don’t want to open their email client.

#2 GPS Needed

Make sure the navigation bar and buttons are easy to locate.

The nav links should be clear and well organization. “Services” is great! “How Can We Help?” is kind of vague. And if you have a lot of pages, use drop down menus and sub navigation links to better organize the small business website.

#3 Clutter

A small business website needs to be easy to read. It’s not the New York Times!

Decide what action you want the customer to take. Is there a special? A well-known service? Maybe contacting you? Make that the focus of the page. Don’t point the customer in a hundred directions.

By keeping the content clear and organized, you can lead the customer to drink the Kool-Aid.

Conclusion

Remember, the key to any small business website is delivering information. Make that information easy to find and understandable, and your clients will be grateful.

If your existing website is failing, please check out our Website Rescue package so we can make it succeed for you.

Originally posted at Vantages Media Blog - Tips & Tricks for Small Business Websites

As a small business, your website can be the largest advertising weapon in your arsenal. But how do you advertise your website?

There are two common methods for using search engines, such as Google or Yahoo, to attract visitors to your website: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay per Click Advertising (PPC).

We discussed the differences between SEO and PPC in Part 1 of our series on Search Engine Optimization. But don’t stray too far, because we’ll cover the differences and benefits to each right here:

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization is considered the natural search results, or the most relevant websites to a search phrase. Search engines use a variety of factors to rank websites, including keywords in your website, links to your website, and even local and social network data!

Optimizing your small business website often means competing with other businesses in your area, country or the world! You’ll need to make your website more relevant, get more links and overall become more attractive to search engines — But without doing anything “illegal” in the eyes of the search engines, which could get your website banned.

Benefits

• 75% of all web traffic from search engines comes from the natural results (compared to PPC).
• Long-term benefits as months build on past months until you reach the top. SEO work should continue, but won’t need to be as aggressive, or costly.
• Greater ROI as SEO costs fold into future conversions over time. PPC costs are always per single conversion.

Pay per Click Advertising

PPC has the benefit of being similar to existing forms of advertising where you create an ad and then pay for its placement on search engines and other websites.

On search engines, your website ad will appear near the top or bottom depending on how much you pay for each click. Clicks are bid on, like an auction, with the highest bidder generally getting the highest placement.

Benefits

• Instant results. Your ad can be placed in hours, whereas Search Engine Optimization can take months to see any results.
• Guaranteed clicks. Except for research and management fees, you will only pay when someone visits your website.
• ROI tracking let’s you quickly see which keywords have the highest conversion rate so you don’t waste time optimizing your website for keywords that just won’t bring in business.

Conclusion

Choosing Search Engine Optimization or Pay per Click will depend entirely on your website situation and budget. However, it is generally recommend to start with PPC as it allows you to quickly research effective keywords. As your budget increases, you can then optimize your website for the best keywords without wasting time or money on the wrong ones.

If you’re interested in improving your small business website’s search engine performance, check out our Search Engine Success services, which include professional SEO and PPC management.

Originally posted at Vantages Media Blog - Tips & Tricks for Small Business Websites

When building a website, is it better for a small business to go with a template or a custom design?

As web designers who provide both services to small businesses, we get asked this question a lot. Customers want to know what the benefits are to each design, especially if there will be any disadvantages to choosing a template over a custom website design.

Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of each website design:

Template Website Designs

A template website is a design that is sold to and used by many companies. They are often generic, but more and more template designs are creative and unique. There are many template directories across the Internet, but be careful when choosing a template. Some templates are overpriced and use outdated technology and standards.

Surprisingly, some of the cheapest templates are also some of the best. Theme Forest offers a wide range of templates that are well-developed, modern, beautiful and cheap ($10 – $20 on average.)

Pros

• Inexpensive. Our standard packages include a free design template.
• Selection. There are thousands upon thousands of templates across the Internet to choose from.
• Speed. Your website can be delivered weeks, if not months, sooner.

Cons

When looking for something unique and creative for your small business, a custom design is the best option. Having a web designer create something special for your business will improve your business’s brand and create more personal relationships with your customers.

Pros

Originally posted at Vantages Media Blog - Tips & Tricks for Small Business Websites

Here we are again, back for more search engine optimization tips. It feels like we’ve barely touched more than the basics.

In previous articles, such as Search Engine Optimization: The Website (part 3), we discussed how links can be a very helpful element to optimizing a website for search engines. We talked briefly about internal links, and alluded to outbound and inbound links.

Without further ado, let’s get right into how links affect your optimization and what can be done to improve your rankings.

Internal and “Call-to-Action” Links

Internal links take customers from one page of your website to another page of your website. Your navigation bar is typically the largest set of internal links on your website. You can also have links within your copy, called “call-to-action” links. Action links might read something like, “Click here for more information on our silver hammers,” or,  “Get your free copy of our guide to silver hammers here.” Note the inclusion of our sample keywords, “silver hammer,” within the linked text.

sample of a tooltip over an image with a title tag

On each link, we can also add a title tag within the HTML. With most web browsers, if you hover over a link with a title tag, you will see the title appear in a tooltip next to your mouse cursor.  This is good for giving some extra description when readers mouse over the link, and it’s also good for search engines. Google, for instance, will look at the keywords in the title tag and apply those keywords not to the page they’re on, but to the page the text or image is linked to. So it’s a great way to add keywords to other pages.

You’ll want to include internal links frequently on all pages of your website. Ideally, you want search engines to read every public page of your website, and they can only do so if they have links to follow. Think of each link as a door to a page on your website. Without doors, search engines can’t get to a page. The more doors you have, the easier you make it for the search engines to do their job.

Tips & Tricks

• Search engines don’t read images well and often ignore image links. Because text links are the most effective links, you should try to make your navigation links text instead of images. This might limit the fonts and style of your navigation text, but they can still look good to your customers and to search engines!

Outbound Links

Outbound links are links on your website to other websites. These links can be helpful or hurtful, depending on various factors.

Search engines like to see outbound links to websites that make sense. If your page is about silver hammers, linking to The Home Depot’s hammer section or an article on the origins of the hammer would make sense. Linking to pages about saving the manatees would not make sense and will hurt your optimization, even though it is a good cause.

Additionally, you want to link to pages with a high Google Page Rank. Page Rank is a specific number that Google assigns every web page based on the inbound and outbound links (and another topic for another day.) Since Google uses Page Rank to determine a website’s overall significance, linking to a low Page Rank website will just bring down your own Page Rank.

Think of Page Rank like social circles in school. You want to associate with the most popular kids to bring up your own popularity. Anytime you interact with a “loser,” you are bringing down your own reputation. Sometimes it’s worth it if you have a lot in common and get along well, but be careful not to interact with too many losers, or you’ll become one of them.

Tips & Tricks

• Generally speaking, you get no benefit from outbound links unless there is a link exchange and the recipient of your link also places a link back to your website.
• When linking to other websites, be careful not to lose your audience to someone else. Always open the other website in a new window so the viewer can easily come back to your website. And never link directly to a competitor!

Inbound Links

Inbound links are the real crux of the matter, because this is where Google and other search engines really decide your website’s worth. Unlike every other element of search engine optimization, this is the one you have the least control over and must work the hardest to achieve.

Getting other websites, and the right websites, to link to you can be very difficult, time consuming and expensive. Think again of links as the social circle in school. You want the popular websites to link to you, bringing up your own popularity and reputation in the process, but why would they want to deal with someone less popular than them? Linking to your website will pull them down, so you need to give them a good reason.

It is helpful (and necessary) early on to get inbound links from less popular or equally popular websites. Having friends, no matter how lowly, will still make you look better than being alone. But eventually, you will plateau with no hope of going higher unless you get those popular kids to link to you.

Sometimes, those popular websites are directories looking to link to other websites. There are free directories, like DMOZ, if you’re lucky enough to get listed, and paid directories, which will gladly take your money for a link. You can also post your link to forums, social networks and comment sections on blogs. But that’s often considered link spamming, unless your website is very apropos of the discussion.

The easiest way to get an inbound link from a popular website is to have them write an article about your website. You’ll have to give them something to write about first, and then get their attention. A publicist can help with this, as can writing your own press releases and sending them out via a service like PRWeb. You can also get someone’s attention via social networks, like Twitter. Become an overnight sensation and they’ll be begging to write about you.

Tips & Tricks

• With link exchanges, always check the Page Rank of the specific web page your link will be posted on. A website might have a Page Rank of 5 on their home page, but your link could end up on a Page Rank 1 page.
• Make sure inbound links include title tags as well, including your keywords.
• Be careful of SEO companies promising hundreds or thousands of inbound links. They usually spam your link on other websites. These links usually get taken down very quickly, or end up hurting your website because search engines are smart enough to know when you’re spamming.
• Don’t get too many inbound links too quickly. Search engines think it’s spammy if you suddenly have 100 new links. Acquire inbound links at a steady and constant pace.

Conclusion

Without links and the Page Rank they bring, your website will never truly be optimized for the search engines. Unless your competition is light, you will need Page Rank to make it to the top of the rankings. It can take time and resources to acquire the links you needs to rise up, making SEO a far more expensive and time consuming endeavor than most people first realize.

The key is to make sure you’ve done your research first and optimized the website itself so that you are ready to get the right links when the resources are available. We include these elements with our free Search Engine Optimization service, and we’ll be here to help you when you’re ready to take the next step into the link frontier!

Originally posted at Vantages Media Blog - Tips & Tricks for Small Business Websites

With almost every new client starting out with a website, we get this question. Every other web design company offers domain registration for small businesses, usually free for the first year.

Your domain, which is your .com, .net or .org address, is like your business’s phone number. After awhile, it’s just how people know to contact you. They have your business card and flyers. They bookmarked your website. You come up on page 1 in Google. Losing that domain name would be devastating to your business.

The U.S. government has passed laws protecting your phone number when you switch telephone providers. They have to let you move your phone number to the new service, but that wasn’t always the case, and people would stick with terrible phone service just to keep their phone number. Well, today we see the same issue with domain names and web design companies.

So why doesn’t Vantages Media register your domain name? Because we’re protecting you from us.

Imagine these horrifying scenarios:

Scenario 1

You decide it’s time to move to a new web design company. Maybe you didn’t like the service or lack of success with your previous web designer. Either way, your business needs to move on.

You find a new web design company, you pay a deposit, you move along with the process. The new website is beautiful and you just know it will make you tons of money! You tell your previous web designer you’re leaving and ask for the keys to your domain name. Uh oh!

Apparently, your previous web designer, who you thought was so nice for registering that domain for you, even doing it for free, is now claiming they own the domain. They bought it; they own it. If you want it, you’ll have to pay them $200.

What are your options?

• You can take them to court and probably win, but you’ll likely get stuck with the legal fees and months of waiting with that old, stinky website.
• You can register a new domain, but lose the traffic from search engines and existing marketing.
• Or you can pay. Ouch!

Scenario 2

You like your web designer and website. Everything is great. You even got your domain name covered for a full year!

Now that year is up, and you suddenly see a $50 charge on your credit card. Huh? Oh, that’s how much it costs to register your domain for another year, says your web designer. Don’t like it? Too bad. They own it.

Truthfully, a domain should cost between $10 and $15 to renew each year. But your web designer really has you over a barrel.

What are your options?

• Refuse to pay the renewal fee. Let the domain expire and wait 3 months for it to become available for purchase again (assuming no one else buys it). In the meantime, your website will go down.
• You can buy a new domain. But if your web designer also controls your hosting, they might not let you use it.
• Or you can pay. Ouch!

Scenario 3

You have had enough of your web designer! You only just started the website, but they are over budget and doing a poor job. It’s time to cut your loses and find a new web designer for your small business.

Sure, they say, just pay this final bill for the work they did. They’re charging you $500 for a website you will never use. You refuse to pay! Too bad they have your domain name. You used to control it, but they offered to cover a year renewal if you just transferred the domain to them. Oops!

If you ever want to see that domain name again, you’ll pay them in full what they claim you owe, or else!

What are your options?

• You can take them to court and maybe win, but you’ll likely get stuck with the legal fees while your website hangs in limbo.
• You can purchase a new domain, but yadda, yadda, yadda.
• Or you can pay. Ouch!

But this doesn’t happen, does it?

Sadly, these are all true stories from customers who switched to using our service. Their previous web designers were upset for losing the business and decided to make whatever remaining money they could.

So what happened? Did the clients pay? Sometimes they paid because the alternatives were more expensive, and their previous web designers knew that. Other times, a well-written letter from a law firm was enough to shake the domain free. It all depends on who you deal with and how strong they’re willing to be. In most cases, if you look like you’re willing to fight, the web designers give in. They don’t want to go to court either.

So would Vantages Media do the same?

We’d like to think not. In fact, we’ve been very fair to clients who left us for other web designers. (We’re not always a perfect fit for every company.) As long as everything is paid up, we’re more than willing to give you every file, email, code, etc. for your website. But even we can’t predict the future and every possible scenario.

It’s just better if you control your domain name and we don’t even have the option of withholding it. As long as you control your domain, there isn’t anything we can do to stop you from leaving. And that’s how we like it. If you’re not happy with our service, please do find someone better.

We’ve lost some clients, and have had quite a few come back later.

Originally posted at Vantages Media Blog - Tips & Tricks for Small Business Websites

Every year or so, the expectations and competition for small business websites become more fierce. A year ago, the world was laughing at Apple’s choice of the name, “iPad,” and no one knew the power of the Like button.

To maintain an edge over business rivals, small business websites need to constantly improve and evolve to stay ahead. Here are 5 things every website should have in 2011:

1. Social Media Widgets

It’s not enough to just have a Facebook page or Twitter account. They need to be integrated with your website, creating that connection so customers can seamlessly glide between your web presences.

In addition to visible links on your website to your Facebook and Twitter sites, make sure to also include a Facebook like button or box on each page. You can also import your Twitter feed to your website, posting the latest news for all to see.

These social widgets not only keep you connected to your customers, they also help your customers spread the word about your business virally to all their friends. They can like and share your website, or tweet about your latest products. It’s all free advertising, and word of mouth is the best kind of advertising.

Check out our Social Networking upgrade to see how we can add this to your website.

2. A Blog

Why do small business websites need blogs? Blogs will help your website connect to your customers on an ongoing basis. It’s a forum to tell your customers what’s going on, what sales or discounts are you offering, what new products or services will be coming, or just stories about the business and the people to create a more personal connection.

Blogs can even be integrated with your Facebook and Twitter accounts, so customers can follow your blog on the platform of their choice, wherever, whenever. Plus, with comments, a blog can become a 2-way forum, allowing your customers a chance to leave feedback and even talk to each other.

Most important of all, blogs are great for search engines. They can really help boost your small business website’s ranking by creating lots of keyword rich content. By creating blog posts with more specific keyword focuses, you can branch out from your main keywords and find new customers.

Check out our Blog upgrade to see how we can add this to your website.

3. Local Search

Statistics from the most recent census in 2010 have said, “87% of adults online used a search engine daily to find information on the web” (census.gov). More and more, people are searching specifically for small businesses near to them, especially when they use their mobile phones or tablets.

In 2010, Google started pushing Google Places, a service which allows local businesses the chance to create profile pages with images, videos, coupons, etc., all tied to Google Maps. Google Places results usually come up at the top of every local search results, and can sometimes be tied to a computer’s IP address, even if the person does not explicitly search with a local phrase.

With a Google Places page and a website optimized with local keywords, your small business website will have a better chance of beating the local competition and ranking higher in search results.

Check out our Google Places and Search Engine Success services to see how we can add this to your website.

4. Video

Most people today grew up with television and have an unfortunate aversion to reading. Video is a way to capture the attention of that audience. Studies have shown that video can keep people on a website longer. Plus, it’s a more convenient way for customers to learn about your small business, and your products and services.

WSI Superior Web Solutions report that “52% of online video ad viewers take action and 16% make purchases” (Marketing Sherpa). We’ve been trained from a young age to react to video, so why not take advantage and add it to your website?

5. An Active Web Designer

With the face of the Internet changing so rapidly, you need a web designer standing behind you and ready to quickly make the changes you need.

A good web designer knows what’s going on and how best to improve your website over time. Plus, they’re available to update information or add new pages when you need it.

Vantages Media is one such web design company. With our Aftercare Service & Support, you are never alone on the Web. We provide affordable maintenance and support solutions to help keep your website running and succeeding!

Originally posted at Vantages Media Blog - Tips & Tricks for Small Business Websites

And we’re back, with the third part of our Search Engine Optimization series. In Part 1, we talked about why you need to optimize for the search engines. In Part 2, we discussed the right research for your keywords. Now, we’ll cover what actually gets optimized for the search engines — Your website!

So once we have our keywords, where do we put them? Somewhere in the website, sure, but exactly where? How do we optimize the text, images and meta information of our website to rank high in the search engines? Let’s see.

Website Text

Descriptive text and copy is extremely important, especially on your home page. Most search engines read your text and attempt to learn what your site is about.

Often, search engines determine your relevancy based on the number of times certain words appear in your text. This is called, “keyword ratio.” It’s basically a comparison of the number of times a certain word or phrase appears in your copy. For instance, if you have 500 words in a web page, and “hammer” appears 9 times, its keyword ratio is 9:500 or 1.8%.

There is no magic number for what ratio to go with. Having too high a ratio can actually hurt you if it looks like you stuffed your keywords into the content. You don’t want to try to cheat the search engine by repeating the same phrase redundantly. Instead, integrate your phrase into your text naturally and seamlessly.

Tips & Tricks

• Write approximately 250 to 500 words for your home page. Describe your business and use your search phrase. Truthfully, very few customers will actually read your home page text, but that doesn’t mean you should only write for the search engines.
• Make sure each page of your website has plenty of text and call-to-action links which incorporate your keywords. (We’ll discuss website links in Part 4.)
• Repeat your search phrase often, but don’t overdo it. Consider whether your customer can still read the text and understand your message. For example, “Kitchen cabinet hardware has been our business for 50 years. Over the years, our selection of kitchen cabinet hardware has grown, and you can now view our entire inventory in our kitchen cabinet hardware catalog.“

Website Images

sample of a tool-tip over an image

The search engines can’t read images like they read text. If you use an image of a hammer, search engines have no way of knowing it’s a hammer just by “seeing” it. Fortunately, you can label your images, and the search engines read those labels.

When you roll your mouse cursor over an image on a website, you might notice a tool-tip pop up with some text describing the image, like “silver hammer.” Depending on the browser you use, that descriptive text is either in the alt or title tag.

Alt tags are primarily used for screen readers for the blind, and all images are required to have descriptive alt tags. Search engines used to value alt tags highly, but not so much anymore. Still, if you have a picture of a silver hammer, add “silver hammer” to the alt tag. It will help the blind read your website and the search engines will still pick it up.

Title tags are more appropriate for adding descriptions of images that go beyond the visual. Modern browsers will use this information for the tool-tip, whereas outdated browsers, like Internet Explorer, will still use the alt tag. Title tags are also frequently used to describe a link, and search engines really like title tags on links. (We talk more about links and title tags in Part 4.)

Tips & Tricks

• Don’t use alt tags for keyword stuffing! Search engines don’t weigh alt tags highly anymore, and it’s not fair to the blind. They don’t want their screen reader repeating, “silver hammer,” 100 times.
• Alt tags can be visually descriptive and a good source of keywords, like, “Man holding silver ball-peen hammer used for installing kitchen cabinet hardware.”
• Don’t put text inside images unless you have to. Search engines won’t be able to read it!
• Don’t make your navigation bar with images. Again, search engines won’t read it!

Website Title

There's your website title

The website title is what you see in the top-left corner of a web browser. It’s also the name of your site displayed in the search results in big, bold letters.

You can imagine how important the title is just to a customer who is searching for kitchen cabinet hardware and sees several websites listed. Does the customer click “Happy Homemade Hardware,” “The Best Site for Kitchen Cabinet Hardware,” or “Kitchen Cabinet Hardware for Less”?

Tips & Tricks

• The title is one of the most valued properties for keywords. Because it’s so prominent, search engines assume you will only put relevant text here.
• Your title should not be longer than 64 characters. Google will crop words from longer titles.

Website Meta Tags

The meta tags tend to be the biggest myth in search engine optimization today. They used to be big business for SEO, but not so much anymore.

Meta tags are tidbits of code placed inside the head of your HTML, invisible to your customers, but very visible to the search engines.

Many people have heard about the keyword meta tag, which seems like a great place to put those keywords, right? No longer. People abused the keyword meta tag so much that search engines virtually ignore it now. It’s still a good idea to put some keywords in for older search engines, but don’t put much faith there.

The other popular meta tag is the description tag, which is still checked for keywords by the search engines. Additionally, the description displays in the search results as the brief text describing the web page. It definitely serves a marketing purpose by convincing searchers your page is what they’re looking for.

Tips & Tricks

• Keep your description tag to less than 150 characters. More than that and search engines will start chopping off words.
• Don’t stuff your description, but try to get you main keywords in at least twice if you can.
• Sub pages don’t need a description as search engines should be allowed to grab the description from the page’s content instead.

Website Domain Name

Your domain name is the .com (or similar extension like .net or .org) people use to pull up your website. It’s your website’s address, but it’s also the most valued property for search engine optimization.

Search engines assume your domain name will be very relevant to your website and business. If your domain name is silverhammers.com, of course you’re going to sell silver hammers, right?

If possible, include your keywords within your domain name. Also, try adding a local keyword to your domain if you are a local business. It will help your rankings when people search locally and also help you achieve higher quality prospects coming to your website.

Tips & Tricks

• You can have more than one domain name: One for search engines and one for marketing purposes, which would be shorter and easier to remember.

Next

In Part 4, we’ll discuss links and search engines. We’ll see how important links within your website and links to your website can be to search engines.

Until then, happy optimizing!

Originally posted at Vantages Media Blog - Tips & Tricks for Small Business Websites

If you’re starting an online store, don’t forget the four things every store needs to set up before going live: Payments, Security, Shipping and Taxes.

Payment Processing

You want to get paid, right? The most common method of online payments is credit/debit cards. Some shops choose to take electronic checks, which can have smaller fees than credit/debit cards but can still bounce. Other options include money orders, personal checks and COD, but those are rarely used and don’t require any special processing software.

To accept credit/debit cards, you will need a payment processor. PayPal is the most common payment processor on the Internet, but you can also ask your bank or search online for some alternative options. (We can even recommend a few to you.)

In terms of speed and ease, PayPal is the easiest to set up. There are two options most businesses will look at: PayPal Website Payments Standard and PayPal Website Payments Pro. The Standard version is free and quick to get started, but can look unprofessional since your customers will pay through PayPal’s website, not yours. The Pro version works like every other payment processor in that you pay monthly fees, but your customers will pay on your website and never even know they’re using PayPal.

PayPal is the cheapest for new stores because they don’t have any contracts or minimum fees. However, their overall  fees can be higher than other payment processors. Eventually, you will see enough business to save money with other payment processors. When that time comes, we’ll be here to help you.

Security

If you take credit/debit card information through your website, you MUST have an SSL certificate installed. SSL encrypts the information so a hacker can’t see your customer’s personal information. That would be bad and could result in thousands of dollars in fines per incident!

For our Aftercare Service & Support customers, we include a 256-Bit SSL Certificate and a dedicated IP address. If you host with other companies, you should contact them to see which SSL they recommend and what they charge to install it. Usually, GoDaddy has some good prices. (It’s possible their sale might expire, but the regular prices are usually pretty good, too.)

Shipping

Don’t forget, you have to deliver whatever your customers purchase. The three major carriers are The United States Postal Service (USPS), UPS and FedEx. Check with each carrier and compare prices, policies, pick-up locations, etc. Most stores pick one, but it’s possible to work with multiple carriers for different shipping rates.

Most E-commerce software automatically integrates with the major carriers to access their standard rates and generate shipping costs for your customer. Usually, this requires you create an account with the carrier and know the weight of your products. If you do a lot of shipping, you can negotiation different rates with the carriers and integrate tracking codes with your website.

If you’re unsure of which carrier to use, you can set up flat rate shipping or table rate shipping. With flat rate shipping, there is a set shipping cost for all orders or for each item. With table rate shipping, there is a variable shipping cost depending on one of three factors: Item weight, number of items or order subtotal. These shipping rates are not accurate, and will either go over or under for each order, but hopefully balance out in the end.

Taxes

We know taxes are one of two guarantees in life, but it’s also guaranteed for E-commerce. Except for certain products or stores, you will need to pay sales tax to your state and/or county of business. How you charge tax will depend on your state’s laws. (We suggest checking with a CPA.)

Many states only require you pay sales tax if you ship a product to a customer in the same state as your business. Some states use a set tax rate depending on the county your business is physically located in, but more and more states are implementing variable tax rates depending on the county you ship the product to. Some states can have hundreds of counties with their own tax rates, and your store needs to take that into account. (Luckily, we do that for you as part of our E-commerce Website package.)

Don’t Forget!

It’s easy to forget about Payments, Security, Shipping and Taxes until the end of a website build, but you can easily delay your website’s launch by weeks if you wait until the end. As soon as your web designer starts building your website, start looking into these four requirements and have them ready by the time your designer needs them.

Originally posted at Vantages Media Blog - Tips & Tricks for Small Business Websites