{"id":314,"date":"2011-08-30T09:24:00","date_gmt":"2011-08-30T09:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/?p=314"},"modified":"2014-08-27T07:45:58","modified_gmt":"2014-08-27T12:45:58","slug":"get-professional-website-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/2011\/08\/get-professional-website-help.html","title":{"rendered":"Get professional website help"},"content":{"rendered":"

Small businesses struggle with website options. With all the do-it-yourself tools available, it’s tough to know when to turn to a professional for help. Long ago, Martin Kelly put this up as a comment here. I think it’s still relevant and helpful to small business owners.
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A few of the do-it-yourself website choices<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

A few website basics, and why professional help can be worth it<\/b>
By Martin Kelly
martinkelley.com<\/a><\/p>\n

I think the do-it-yourself tools have been great. The more that goes up online, the more useful the Internet becomes.<\/p>\n

The most important things to have up on a website is your contact information<\/b>, of course. After that I always recommend pictures or something else that will give potential customers an idea of what you’re like.<\/p>\n

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Get your own domain.<\/b> The biggest advantage is that you can easily move the site to some new system a few years down the road if you grow or something else becomes available. As useful as the DIY website tools are, I always think there’s got to be a better way to do it. <\/p>\n

And blogs can be a great way to get lots of different, keyword-rich content up there. I recently converted a rarely updated “News” section of a site over to a blog (just cutting and pasting the existing items) and put three excerpts on the main site’s homepage. That alone increased the site’s “keyword relevancy” score (as measured by domaintools.com<\/a>) by about twenty percent. I wouldn’t even worry about keywords. If you talk about what customers are interested in on the blog, then people interested in that will start finding your site.<\/b><\/p>\n

I used to work as the customer service person in a small bookstore with about 50% internet sales and would find myself fielding the same questions every few months. I started copying my email answers into my personal blog, and it generated tons of interest.<\/b> This was no extra work, it was just remembering that an email I was writing was a conversation others might be interested in.<\/p>\n

DIY sites that are kept up to date, quirkily revealing and fun are much more interesting (even when they put white text over lime green!) than tasteful high priced sites. <\/p>\n

But I do want to remind everyone that small design houses can also be a vital part of the local small business eco-system.<\/b> The owner of a small design shop I started working at recently seems to know everyone in town, goes cheerfully to every charity event, and recently signed up to sponsor a little league team! A simple professionally-designed site costs a lot less than remodeling a bathroom, say, or any one of a hundred of other normal business expenses. A lot of self-built sites (or worse, nephew-home-from-college-built sites) have major problems that keep them from being visible to Google or make it hard for visitors to get to the information you want them to see. Sometimes a professional touch can make a difference.<\/p>\n

New to SmallBizSurvival.com? Take the Guided Tour<\/a>. Like what you see? Get our updates<\/a>. <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Small businesses struggle with website options. With all the do-it-yourself tools available, it’s tough to know when to turn to a professional for help. Long ago, Martin Kelly put this up as a comment here. I think it’s still relevant and helpful to small business owners. A few of the do-it-yourself website choices A few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7155,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions\/7155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}