How A Small Business Website Can Boost Your Success: Tips for Setting Up Your Online Presence

As a small business, I have been using a website for years to attract customers, but when I started building websites, it was back in the days of archaic website design. You pretty much needed to be a programmer to get anything decent online. Today, that's a different story as it is much easier to build an online presence and increase the digital traffic to what you have to offer.

When writing blogs, my goal is to always try and provide value to people by delivering the message in a way that others can understand it. Building a website can be overwhelming for someone, but it's a necessity in today's business world. So I am just going to pour out to you, exactly what I do with my website and maybe it will help spur you to take this on.

First of all, I am not a computer programmer or pretend to be up on the most recent technology. I'm just a guy trying to help out those that are small businesses like myself. For cryin' out loud, I am fifty plus now and my kids run circles around me in terms of tech.

Point being, I am giving you some basics on how to build a website for your small business, that you can take with small steps. Eventually, if you keep walking, you'll have something to show the audience that you are proud of and, ultimately, that feeds into whatever you do for a living, or in life.

Now that we have that cleared up, the first actionable item is to find a software to construct the website on.

I know your mind is racing with the "how to's" of "find a software" comment, but after trudging the road of building websites the old fashioned way, I can't believe how easy it is to create a beautiful website today, so don't be intimidated.

As for the website software to use, I am sure that there are several out there that work just fine, but I just happened to run into Wix as the one that captured my attention. PS-I do not get paid by Wix.

Wix has been an absolute pleasure to work on. There are drag and drop principles combined with plenty of buttons that make sense, which makes the building of a website experience, a lot less cumbersome.

Wix also provides a ton of tutorials and easy guides to do things like Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which is basically how your website is rated in the search engines and the biggest determinant of how much traffic will actually go to your site.

Whether it is Wix or another website creator software, the point is to pick one and get started.

When I am building a website, I start with this question; what is the most important information I can convey to people about my product or service or whatever information I am trying to get in front of the planet?

That is the information that my pages are built from (pages are usually the strip of selections at the top of the home page) and are the foundational infrastructure of the website.

Once I have my information laid out in my mind or on paper, I start building the pages.

Notice on my website the top row of selections from Home to Blog. All of those are the pages of my website that contain the information that I absolutely want people to see.

Each page is different. The home page is your front yard. It's where people meet you or your product. It's where a lot of your traffic is going to flow to and from, so you want to get people's attention by having something that pulls them into interest with who you are and/or what your product is.

I am a "no beat around the bush" kind of person. So, for me, I put my best video explaining exactly how I can bring them value with what I do, front and center, with text built around it to articulate my main message. Again, it's straight to the point.

I do realize that many people don't have a ton of experience doing videos or cringe at the very thought of doing one, but don't sweat it for now as you can build your home page many different ways.

Who is your target audience? I guess that should be our very first question because everything built from then on, revolves around this central audience.

For Blue Collar CFO, my main target market is small to midsize businesses that need accounting help. My home page reflects that as best as I can do without hiring a professional marketing agency (I don't spend money easily).

Back to the question...who is your target market? Once you have that answered you can let your imagination flow in how to present your value to the world. There are beautiful websites out there that you can pull ideas from if need be, but just realize that this project is yours and how you see your product or service benefitting the world.

Blue Collar CFO's home page is very straight forward. I want to show that there is no "wiggle room" in accounting and having a site that is concise and clean, is how to match that message. You have to find that for yourself.

The remaining pages are detailing out the rest of the story or backing up what you have on your home page. Things like a list of services, product details, contact form, etc, are something that people need to have quick access to and get a downloadable amount of information to help them make efficient decisions.

Really, your pages can be as different as the amount of websites in the world, just make sure you are telling people, in terms they understand, how you or your product can make their lives better. That's your overall goal.

After the pages are built, I start writing blogs or posts.

Don't freak out, but you obviously need to know how to write, at least a little bit.

I get it, when I first started doing this, I was horrible at writing blogs. As the years have passed, I have become a better writer, but it is still based on my way of thinking so, for some, it may be taken in very easily, others will blow by the information because some aspect of it was not digestible for them. It is what it is.

The best thing I can say is that you be you, in your writing. Too many people try to write all fancy to attract certain audiences (or let AI do it for them). You know the audiences that you should want to attract? It's people that are real, that have a purpose. I will listen to them all day long.

Once you have your blogs rolling, you will want to learn some basic SEO tricks and start spreading your blog links, page links, and home page on different social media platforms. I use Alignable, LinkedIn, and Facebook as my main avenues.

As for the true Search Engine Optimization of your website, there is a lot more entailed to it than what the original intent of this blog was, but I will say this...search "learn basics to SEO" on Google and start to learn about these different ways to help generate more traffic to your site.

My overall suggestion is to start writing. Who cares what it looks like in the beginning. Don't get me wrong as you want to give quality information, but also don't beat yourself up because you're not writing like Shakespeare.

If you have a small business, or any business that doesn't have a website presence, you should have one. Our world is exponentially attached to each other via the internet and you want to mark your place on one of these digital highways to help you build, whatever your trying to build, a place where the value is in front of those you want it to be in front of.

It's a journey, but don't lose faith.

Golden Pathway Accounting

Managing Director Golden Pathway Accounting