Small Business and Web Sites

In the United States there are a good amount of small businesses. Most of us Americans refer to these as Mom and Pop shops. I am going to discuss how, why, and approximately how much it is to set up your small businesses with a web presence using a web site on the Internet. As a small business owner myself and an IT professional, I know first hand how important advertising is. Most small business have money budgeted for advertising. Some more than others. But one thing that small business owners overlook is the power of a lot of low cost or free advertising on the Internet.

A web site for your small business is a must, along with signing up for google places. Signing up on Yahoo as well is a good idea. Today most of us use and have access to the Internet at home or via our smart phones. When we need something we pop open google and search for it. For example, you need a virus removed from your laptop. You go to google and do a search for computer repair or virus removal in your area. The search engine results are shown, and then you start making some calls from the list of businesses that are relevant. This is a powerful way for you to receive calls to your business, and the cost is very minimal. It’s usually around $2000 to get a good website set up for you, it’s $12 a year for the domain name, and then hosting is around $60.00 per year. If you add all that up and then divide by 5 years, your total cost of advertising with your web site is $39 a month. You can’t touch that price per month for advertising with any other advertiser for 24/hr per day advertising and showing up on the worlds number one search engine.

Now just getting your web site set up isn’t the last stop. You’ll have to Search Engine Optimize (SEO for short) your site, otherwise your search engine results won’t get you the business you desire. The explanation is when you first set up your web site, it first has to be submitted to google for indexing. After indexed, you have to use strategic methods to raise your search ranking for certain keywords. Otherwise, you will never reach the first page of results for the keyword your targeting. I suggest hiring a SEO company to do this for you. In most cases, they can do it for you in 3 months for fees ranging from $750-$1000.

If you add that fee in with the previous fees, your total cost of advertising for your website would be $56 a month for a five year period. Obviously I’m on using 5 years as a baseline, if you factor in a longer period of time, your cost will go down. It is very small price to pay to have a good chance to increase your monthly sales when done properly. With the new age of technology, and the way we use the Internet to find products and services on the Internet, it would be in your best interest to use this tool to your businesses advantage.