Marketing for Small Business

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Creating a website for your small business may seem like a daunting task. But in reality, creating a website is much easier now with templates and tools available to small business owners. You don't need to be a programmer to create one. Some website builders are easier to use than others. I ended up using godaddy for my own website because I find it easy to use. And no, I am not being paid for this comment.  I signed up for free trial on three website builders and found godaddy the easiest for me. I was able to create a nice looking website in less than an hour using my cell phone.  Yes, my cell phone. It is also easy to navigate and make changes using my cell phone. I was having issues with my website not loading. I am still not sure if that was an issue with godaddy or my own issues.  :-)  

Some things that you should consider in creating a website: What do you want to do on your site? Are you planning on selling products or services online? If so, make sure you research your options for merchant service providers, meaning how you will be able to accept payments. Some website providers offer their own merchant services.  If so, make sure you understand how you will be charged for products or services sold online. Don't forget to research for objective reviews on the one that you are considering. If you don't have a website and are considering building one, sign up for a free trial, explore and have fun. You may be surprised how good it turns out.

How to improve search engine optimization (SEO).  SEO is what you can do on your site so that your website shows up when people are using keywords on google, yahoo and other search engines. Although google and other search engine providers will not reveal what they look for and are constantly changing their search criteria, SEO experts offer recommendations on what to do to improve your website's ranking. Search engine optimization is quite complex. It is one of those things that the more you know, the more you realize how much you don't know.  Articles like this one from wikihow gives good information on what you can do to improve your website's ranking.

This is another good article on SEO. 15 best keyword research tools for SEO 2020.  This article is more technical and a little intimidating to read. Basically, it lists some tools that claim to identify important keywords that you could add on your website to help improve your website's ranking.

What is affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing is a marketing tactic that could help boost sale of your product or service using another party i.e. the affiliate. As an analogy, imagine someone you know that has lots of friends and knows a lot of people who is willing to talk about your products or seevices. Won't that be great? But this friend wants something from you in return. :-)  Online, an affiliate is a site that has lots of visitors and will send traffic to you and/or help sell your products or services. And yes, the affiliate gets compensated. As a small business, you may benefit from affiliate marketing to help sell your products and services. Or your small business may be the affiliate that gets compensated for helping sell other people's products and services. It's called passive income because the income comes even while you sleep. Wouldn't that be nice???!!!