There are tons of mistakes you can make with your small business website or blog. There are very few true masters of the art of internet design that are able to make a great site or blog that converts well and offers the correct search engine optimization opportunities for your company. Many times small business owners are designing their blog or website by themselves and are not aware of all things that can go wrong.
Here are our top three problems when designing your small business website or blog:
Thinking fancy blog or website design is good for your company
When most entrepreneurs start building their website or blog, the first thing they do is pick a special layout or choose their colors. They make sure they know what kind of fancy flash header they are going to use or which animated gif will work best.
That is NOT the most important thing about website or blog design! The vital thing is to know what the goal is for your small business blog or website. Are you trying to get visitors or are you looking to collect email addresses. Are you getting visitors to buy something online or are you trying to get them to click through to your online store?
When someone visits your blog or website, they should know IMMEDIATELY what you want them to do. There should be an obvious button that directs them to your goal or there could be a popup box that offers something for free in exchange for their contact information. If you look at most sites, there is so much going on there that your visitor doesn’t know what to do!
Not having the right SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for your website or blog
There are tons of companies out there who say they will get your website or blog to the top of google for a specific search term. That may be true but it will not get you consistent, targeted visitors. Ranking well for one or two terms is not going to make the difference - ranking well for multiple terms is possible now with thoughtful planning.
Have a qualified keyword company do a keyword research analysis report for you and then use those keywords throughout your posts and pages. Be mindful that your first paragraph, description and title all match. Use a free keyword research tool to make sure that your site is showing up the way you intend.
A big red flag about those cute flash websites that every small business owner thinks matters. When you have a landing page to get to your website, google does not know anything about your company. When you have a beautiful site with all kinds of images, the search engines do not have any words to spider. Please make sure to focus on what matters, having lots of keyword rich information on your blog or website!
Attempting to do it by themselves
This is not a plea for your blog or website design business. There are lots of great web design companies out there who spend a lot of time and money keeping up with the latest search engine information and who do great work. Your Uncle Steve who knows how to sort of make a website is not spending all of his time researching the current internet info. Your buddy John would be great for building a personal page but we are talking about your company, you need a professional blog or website.
You may be surprised at how the cost of blog and website design has gone down lately. What used to cost a fortune now costs significantly less and most small business owners can afford a professional!
If you cannot the cost of a professional, make sure that you take some classes on how to use HTML correctly. There are great classes {both in person and online} {online and in person}, just know that your timeline will be longer than if you have someone do it for you.
Well there you go, our top three mistakes that we see small business owners make with their website or blog design efforts. Some of these might make sense to you and some might make you uncomfortable, but they are all fact. We work with many different kinds of businesses and see lots of business owners making these mistakes.
If you would like to find out about 10 More Mistakes Small Business Websites and Blogs make, please visit our site!

