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Digital Marketing

How To Start A Small Business Website: The Essentials

If you have a small business, or are thinking of starting one, you need a website. There’s a lot to con­sider though — and many small busi­nesses fail because they’ve over­looked one or more of the essen­tials. So here’s how to start a small business website.

Ready? Let’s begin!

What Every Small Business Needs

First, there are a few things every business needs. Hopefully you’ve con­sidered these already, but let’s cover them briefly, just in case.

A Good Offer And A Realistic Target Market

The key words here are “good”, “real­istic” and “target”.

Startups often hope to sell some­thing they like to “everyone”. That rarely works — espe­cially if no-one else sells any­thing similar. If there’s no com­pet­ition, the market may not exist, or may not be sus­tainable.… Read the rest 

Why Small Businesses Need Professional Websites

Professional web­sites can seem like big invest­ments to small business owners. Online mar­keting is such a huge topic that it can be hard to work out where to begin.

So why do small busi­nesses need pro­fes­sionally designed web­sites? Here’s an analogy that may help.

Professional Websites Are Marketing Vehicles

Your website is your main mar­keting vehicle in the non-stop race for sales. To extend that analogy, hosting is the garage you rent for it, and your domain is the address of that garage. Site vis­itors are pas­sengers that you pick up briefly, and some of them convert into customers.

However, your vehicle won’t get far without regular main­tenance (support and updates) and good driving (active mar­keting). Leaving it in the garage achieves nothing, no matter how pretty it is or how much work you put into it.… Read the rest 

Automatic WordPress Updates — The Pitfalls

WordPress updates and website maintenanceHere’s a great example of why auto­mating updates in WordPress is only smart for non-business web­sites. As I write this, one of the WP plugins pub­lished by Facebook just released an update with invalid code.

Not just a bug — code so wrong that it crashes sites. Code that wouldn’t have passed basic testing.

I’m sure “Facebook for WooCommerce” will be fixed promptly. However, over 900,000 online shops use it. If they were all running auto­matic updates, almost a million shops would be offline right now.

Other WordPress Update Problems

This comes on top of the GADWP fiasco earlier this year, too. In that, ExactMetrics changed the nature of their popular plugin without warning, through an “update”.

Version 6 of the “Google Analytics Dashboard for WP” plugin was “redesigned from the ground up”.… Read the rest 

Small Business Coronavirus Lockdown Help

Wales is entering another COVID-19 lockdown (as of October 23rd). Folks found this post helpful back in March, so I’m updating it with some new offers.

As small business owners in these dif­ficult times, we need to remember:

  • Adaptability is the small business advantage.
  • Negativity under­mines cre­ativity and planning.
  • Our fam­ilies and teams need to see con­fidence, not fear.
  • Stress under­mines the immune system. Breathe, and calm.
  • Mutual support, determ­in­ation and flex­ib­ility will win.
  • No entre­preneur sur­vives without being able to see hope in adversity. Silver linings may be a razor’s edge at times, but that’s where we find the silver.

Business Reality Check

Choose opportunityMany UK firms pan­icked at the first lockdown, fretting about remote working and scaling back on expenses.… Read the rest 

Top 5 SEO Myths Hurting Small Businesses

Even after over 20 years of search engine optim­isation, several SEO myths seem par­tic­u­larly per­sistent. With so much mis­in­form­ation flying around, it’s no wonder small business owners treat SEO with caution.

It’s one thing to see these myths sur­facing in small business net­working groups. It’s quite another when flaky “SEO spe­cialists” promote them in sales emails.

Yes, I get those emails too. So this article has bee prompted by yet another dodgy “SEO spe­cialist” site review listing fake SEO problems they’d “found”. Whilst real SEO reviews can help, spammers just send out cookie-cutter lists and hope you’ll bite. These can be hard to spot unless you keep up with current SEO best practices.

Asking non-expert friends and col­leagues may feel reas­suring, but unin­formed advice just increases risk.… Read the rest