You do not require code to create a beautiful and functional website. Whatever technology you use, there are a few simple concepts and ideas to follow to make your website look professional, make it easy to locate, and present your organization in the best light possible.
Whether you're a freelance photographer, own a hardware store, or run another form of small business, you'll need a good website to succeed. Here are 7 critical stages to getting started and helping your small business website compete effectively in the online marketplace if you are trying to construct a new startup website or make your present site more effective. This is our step by step guide on how to build, launch, and market an effective website.
Of course, there are hundreds of different niches out there, everything from tools and lawn equipment to pets, nutrition, fitness, and so much more.
The trick here is of course to select a niche that will allow your website to get good traffic, as well as a niche that you can actually be profitable it. What we want to do right now is to provide you with a detailed guide on how to choose the best niche for your purposes.
The first step here is to choose a niche that you actually have an interest in or knowledge of. When you have interest in a certain field, it automatically becomes much easier to create an effective website and to market it.
For instance, it really wouldn't make sense to create a website about breeding dogs when you haven't even every owned a dog. Of course, there does also need to be an interest in the niche in question, but that said, choosing a niche that you have no knowledge of is nothing more than a recipe for disaster.
Of course, the main point when you build a website is to make money. Therefore, you need to do some research in terms of how easily monetized the niche in question is. Ideally, you want to find the top 10 or 20 competitors in your niche, and see how they have monetized their websites, which will most likely be through paid
advertisements and sponsored content. Moreover, if you are doing some kind of sales or affiliate marketing site, then you will need to see what kinds of products you could possibly sell and what the demand for these products is like. The bottom line here is that you are creating a website to make money with, so it better be within a niche that is actually profitable and provides you with plenty of monetization opportunities.
You then need to choose a niche that has a good amount of search volume on search engines. The simple fact here is that you do want to choose a fairly popular niche. There is simply no point in choosing a niche that has a very low search volume across the board, whether it is a broad niche or something more precise.
If there is nobody searching for products or services related to the niche that you plan on building a website around, then the profit potential is going to be extremely limited. This also means that you want to do some keyword research for some of the main keywords that might be associated with your niche.
Generally speaking, you want those keywords to have a minimum search volume of 10,000, with a cost per click value of $2 or more. This will help ensure that your niche actually has enough interest to drive traffic and sell products.
Something else to consider when choosing a niche for your website is how many traffic sources it has.
So, what you need to do here is to research your top competitors within the chosen niche to see where they get all of their traffic from. For instance, did you know that blog posts and blog websites only get roughly 30% of their traffic from big search engines such as Google?
The reality here is that you need to choose a niche that has multiple traffic sources. This could mean that your site can be found on YouTube as well, that it is linked back to by authority sites, that you have the ability to pay for advertisements, and even having a big social media presence is going to help too.
When looking for the best possible niche to build a website around, another crucial thing to do is to see what market deficiencies there are out there.
In other words, you want to look for a niche where there are certain problems that just aren't being solved. Maybe you want to provide valuable information to people on a topic that doesn't have many trustworthy information sources out there. Maybe you want to sell a new product that is better than any other product out there. The point here is that you want to look for some kind of market deficiency, expose it, and then take advantage of it.
The other thing that you can do to choose the right niche for your website is to do some research on previously sold and purchased websites within the chosen niche.
The important thing to remember here is that if many people are selling and buying websites that are a part of a specific niche, it means that there is great interest in that niche, and moreover, that there is a very real profit potential within that niche as well.
Renting someone's skills and knowledge to build your website is a good option if you're new to an online business. A skilled web developer can assist you in quickly developing your site and giving you suggestions on making it appear beautiful and pleasing. Accessibility is a must for smartphone and other mobile devices users. By optimizing your website for mobile use, you can reach out to the growing number of portable users to access the internet while on the go.
One of the best and easiest ways to market your website and to increase overall traffic is to take advantage of SEO or search engine optimization. Of course, this mostly has to do with using the right keywords that people search for, the keywords that search engines tend to really like. However, what also matters is that you have real content and relevant content. There are plenty of analytics tools out there, things like Yoast SEO, that can help you determine the best possible keywords to use on your website. This is a tool used by millions of websites, and the reason for this is because it actually works.
Another great way to increase website traffic and to get the word out there is to engage in a solid email marketing campaign. If you are running ecommerce stores, for instance, then your sales are going to rely on how many people you can reach, contact, and lure in on a regular basis. Well, an email marketing campaign is the perfect way to go about this. The bigger your mailing list gets, the more people you can reach, and the higher your chances of getting more website visitors and making sales.
The next great way to increase website traffic is to also use social media to your advantage. The simple fact is that social media has quickly become one of the best marketing platforms out there. Whether we are talking about Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or anything in between, these are all great places for you to promote your business. For instance, you can always create a business page on Facebook, and then do regular posts. You could even take things one step further and hire a social media manager that is going to take care of all the hard work for you. Whether you just want to make some posts, or even take advantage of paid advertisements, social media is always a good place for any business or website to be.
If you are looking to promote your site to increase traffic, another good idea is to submit your website to a number of online directories. People often search in online directories to find the best sources of information about a given topic. For instance, you might find a directory that lists the top 20 sites for information on how to groom a dog. Whatever the topic may be, being a part of such an online directory will go a long way in increasing website traffic and increasing community outreach.
If you are running some sort of online retail site, whether affiliate marketing or otherwise, another good idea is to start your own blog. A good blog can go a long way in driving traffic. If you have a good blog, you can constantly link back to your main site that you want people visiting. It's a great way to do some easy backlinking. On that note, you can also try doing some guest blogging. It is best if you can do some guest blogging on popular blogs that have many viewers. This makes for a good way to plug your brand, website, and products. It will also help you build a relationship with some other bloggers out there. Even posting on forums can be a good idea, particularly if they are related to the niche around which your website is centered.
Something else that can help you create a much more functional website is having a search field present. If you have a search field on your website, somewhere it is easy to see, people can quickly search and find the main things on your site. Remember, people are generally impatient, so you do want to make your site as easy, straightforward, and easy to navigate as humanly possible.
Remember that you do also want your website to look the part. What we mean here is that many people are visually driven. If your website just doesn't look good, it's not going to inspire confidence or trust with the people whom you are trying to reach. Therefore, all throughout the creation process, you need to pay attention to visual details, not just the content. For one, the color palette that you choose can make a big difference.
Having a good background image or two doesn't hurt either. In terms of visuals, remember that there are also plenty of themes to choose from. Sure, you can always go with a boring default theme, but a bit of theme customization never hurt anybody either.
