Is your Online Business set on a solid foundation? Just like a building, without the proper base you could easily find it so unstable that it collapses like the proverbial house of cards.
A firm foundation is essential for creating a company that can withstand the storms of an economic downturn, loss of customers, increased competition and any of the other pitfalls you might encounter in the course of business. But unlike building a house atop concrete, building a company uses a strong online presence and good SEO along with the basics of customer service and quality products.
Start With The Basics
Every successful Online Business is founded on the basics of providing a good product and uncompromising customer service standards. Sure, you may be able to sell a cheap item that won’t last past the first use but is that truly the way to establish yourself as a reputable, trustworthy company? Perhaps you will even cheerfully refund your customer’s money upon request, but does that increase your bottom line?
If you found your company upon moral, ethical, and honourable principles, you have already won the first battle. Consumers are savvy. Offer them a high quality, useful item and back it up with excellent service. This is the strongest foundation upon which your online business can expand and grow.
Your Online Presence
There are literally millions and millions of websites on the internet offering any number of products and services. When you create your little corner of the world wide web, it is necessary to make it stand out from all the rest. With good basics, you have a strong online business foundation, but it needs to be shored up with branding, advertising, and design.
Consider your website aesthetics very carefully. This is your one chance to make a good impression on a visitor. Make it look spammy or unprofessional and chances are that visitors will quickly leave, never to return. Ensure that it is well designed, easily navigable, informative, interesting, and compelling and the website will serve as your virtual salesperson.
Optimisation
Once you’ve got your website up and running and looking good, you must optimise it. This is the part of your business foundation that gives it good positioning, away from the severe weather at the bottom of the search engine results heap.
Start with keyword research and then add those relevant keywords and phrases to all of your content, titles, headlines, and meta tags. Be sure to update content often (a blog is great for that!).
Build this piece of the foundation with the strong materials of audio and online video content in addition to text.
Use links as the mortar between the bricks. The more quality inbound and outbound links you can build, the sturdier your foundation will be. As part of your linking strategy, remember to include links to and from all pages of your website in addition to exchanging links with other, high ranking pages.
When you, as the Online Business owner, have put all this work into creating a firm foundation, you will find that simple maintenance is all you need to keep it standing strong.
Have a most outstanding day.
Sean RasmussenAussie Internet Marketing
www.AussieSEO.com 2010
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Awesome post!!!
This will be very helpful for those who are going to start their online business.. We must make use of good SEO.. First we must provide good products and customer service to make ourselves standard..
In the case online business, the site content must be effective and getting relevant links is also important.. Additional relevant information must be added frequently to the site to get good rankings in search engine.. Optimize the site every week..
Very Very Informative!!!
Thank you, Ashley. I appreciate your feedback.
Hi Sean,
These are great tips for building a solid foundation for our online businesses. We have to offer quality products and provide excellent customer service.
Our website has to look professional and convey trust to the visiting customer. Everything we do online has to reinforce to our customers and prospects that we are full of honesty and integrity. Also, we have to convey that we’re a stable business and not some fly by night operation.
Jazz Salinger´s last blog ..Learn and Earn – It’s a Marathon Not a Sprint
Hi Sean
This article offers wisdom for any business person both online and offline.
For the online business owner, the aesthetics of the website are very important, A nice clean site that ’s not too overcrowded but has relevant content that is well laid out and easy to read with copy, images and a video relating to the product is very eye catching.
Inbound and outbound links are mentioned here. As yet I have not capatilised on this with my blog building but this is a great reminder to do this, as I realise it is integral to the marketing of my business.
All this information is vital to building and sustaining a healthy, attractive and profitable online business.
Thankyou.
Blessings,
Elly
Elly´s last blog ..
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Solid foundations is the perfect recipe for future success. We require our business to constantly evolve. with this stability it has the best chance..
Hi,
Finally, I am doing something right! I can spend hours and hours checking out whether something looks “just right”; and while I can learn to be more efficient with my time doing this, I do know a couple of people at least, who will not even look at a site after the first glance – the click on the mouse on the ‘get out of here’ button is faster than their thought of what they were doing there in the first place.
One of the great things of an online business that attracts me, is as you say: “all this work into creating a firm foundation, you will find that simple maintenance is all you need to keep it standing strong.” Suits me just fine.
Jo Carey-Bradshaw´s last blog ..Wealth Creation – Coffee and Internet Marketing
Building a strong online business foundation the first time will save you a lot of time and money in the long run as if you haven’t done it right you won’t get very far and will have to start again. This is especially important when you are selling products and not just providing information.
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