Looking to hire someone to build a website for your business? We’ve pulled together a few things to do on before getting started:
Discover other sites in your industry that you both like and dislike
The best way to find out what you might want in your new website is to look at what other people in your industry are doing. I usually ask my clients to give me about 5 websites they really like. I ask them to write down what they like but also what they don’t like about the site. If they have an existing site that we are redoing I also ask them to write down what they like and don’t like about their own current website. This practice allows us to think about a framework that we will develop to achieve your unique voice.
Write down what important features you want your site to have
Do you want to have video? Are you going to be selling products? Is social media a big part of your site? Is your site going to center around a blog? Are you doing an email lead generation (such as a report, quiz, ebook etc)?
Determine your who your ideal client is
An important part of creating a new website is figuring out who you want it to be for. You need to be really clear on who you are marketing to in order to create a website that does just that. This is often called your target market or ideal client.
Determine the purpose of your site
Many times I start a website and I say “what is your purpose?”. Some clients just say, “well I know I need a website”. I want them to be more specific. I recommend that you write out exactly what you want your site to achieve. Why do you have this site? Is it to sell X number of products? Is it to get ad revenue? Is it to bring in 10 new patients a week? Being very clear on your purpose for your site is important before it is designed.
Write out a sitemap
Another big one is to figure out what are the most important pages you want to start with. I recommend an about page, services, FAQ, testimonials, blog, and contact as the bare minimum.
Look at different color schemes to narrow them down
Having an idea of what colors speak to you the most (and your target market) is essential to be able to effectively represent you or your business within your site. Color is a very subjective choice. We like to get our client’s input as much as possible when it comes to color. If you are stuck on colors I recommending taking note of your design in your business office space. What types of pictures or colors are you drawn to? What represents what you are trying to accomplish? A designer can help guide you but it is helpful to have a starting point.
Write down any questions before you speak with a web designer
The last tip I have is that you write up all of your questions before speaking with web designers. In your consultation (whether it’s over email or phone) be sure that all of your answers are covered before you get started.
Citations and business directory listings continue to be one of the easiest and straightforward tactics to get links pointing back to your local business and NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) data online where search engines can find and verify your locations. These citations are still crucial because links and NAP from reputable and trusted websites contribute to how you rank in local search results.
With both Voice Search and Near Me Search on the rise, it’s critical that your local business have citations and business listings on online directories that help search engines like Google provide accurate this-is-what-you’re-looking-for-close-to-you local search results. The latest MOZ Local Search Ranking Factors puts Citations as the #4 ranking factor for Local Pack results, and #5 for Localized Organic Ranking. A study by BrightLocal found that Local SEO’s used “Citation Building” as their #1 tactic for growing backlinks to support their search engine optimization.
Why Citations and Business Directory Listings are Important in Local Search
Your business listing and local citation matter to search engines like Google, so they should be extremely important to you. Citations and business directory listings make your business visible online and the more quality listings you create, the better chance you have of customers finding you through online searches – both on search engines and industry or location specific websites.
Unlike earning backlinks from other websites when link building, citations and business listings don’t need to contain an actual link back to your website to matter. Search engines are citations in the context of confirming that your business is, in fact, a legitimate company and should be recognized, and even promoted, as such.
You know the amazing growth your business can see when you rank high in local search results. Topping local search results where new customers will find you is highly dependent on search engines being able to confirm you’re correct contact information and properly categorize your business. Managing your business listings is not something you risk leaving undone or haphazardly maintained.
Don’t have a fancy, optimized website or a blog attracting thousands of new visitors every month? Lacking a strong online presence for your business, search engines are going to pull whatever information they can find on the internet. Google My Business Optimization, Reviews Monitoring, and Listing Management are crucial to your growth in the local market.
Managing your Google My Business account, gathering five-star ratings and interacting with customers on review sites, and accurate citations and business listings on well-established sites like chambers of commerce and business association pages help create a positive online presence that a search engine can trust and use on its results pages.
Citations and Business Directory Listings are Your Online Business Cards
If you care about ranking in local search results (if you have local customers you really, really do) then business listings are the foundation of your local digital marketing campaign. When NAP or business listings are inconsistent, or you fail to manage their creation and maintenance, you may find that any other local search marketing efforts are a waste of time. Spiders are ever crawling the Web looking for new data to store and confirm to use in cross-referencing and extraction for search results. For you to be indexed as a local business listing there are four criteria that search engines require:
A Business Name – or DBA
A Local Phone Number – no toll-free or call tracking numbers
A Physical Street Address – no P.O. Boxes or shared addresses
A Face to Face Business – no virtual businesses
Your Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) has to remain consistent across the internet or search engines will distrust your existence and drop you in local search ranking. Typos and punctuation like including an apostrophe in “Sam’s Car Lot” only sometimes is disastrous. Take great care to make sure your NAP’s are identical in spelling, spacing, and styling everywhere your business is listed online. Take note that all this information needs to be entered text, so you can’t just copy/paste in your logo with your address in a directory and call it done.
The Best Way to Manage Your Citations and Business Directory Listings
Finding directories, creating citations, and maintaining business listings on authority sites that are constantly indexed ensures that search engines – these are all things you can manually. But smart local business owners (notoriously short on extra time) automate not only their citation and business listing creation but the maintenance that ensures their business listings stay up-to-date and consistent with one another across the web.
Time to Automate business directories and review sites, as well as hundreds of other websites
There are extremely cost-effective ways to automate the management of your business listings. You can get a complete digital presence control good reputation and review software. This allows you to automate most of these essential processes. These types of services provide almost hands-free customer review management and promotion, in addition to business listings management and branded feedback pages. They are all part of Reputation Loop’s comprehensive program to build a stellar five-star online reputation so when local searchers are looking for the best; they find your business first.
Whether you choose to automate or manually manage your business listings, the most important thing for you to remember and adhere to is remaining consistent with the data you use to build your business listings and citations. Mistakes and inconsistencies make it so that search engines distrust the legitimacy of your business and lower your ranking in search results. And people are even less inclined than search engines to try to figure out what conflicting information they found online about your business is correct.
