So should your business have a website, even if your business is small and sells products or services you don’t think can be sold online? My answer is Yes, if you have a business, you should have a website. Period. No question. Without a doubt.

Also, don’t be so quick to dismiss your product as one that can’t be sold online. Nowadays, there’s very little that can’t be sold over the internet. More than 20 million shoppers are now online, purchasing everything from books to computers to cars to real estate to jet airplanes to natural gas to you name it. If you can imagine it, someone will figure out how to sell it online.

Let me clarify one point: I’m not saying you should put all your efforts into selling your wares over the internet, though if your product lends itself to easy online sales, you should certainly be considering it. The point to be made here is that you should at the very least have a presence on the web so that customers, potential employees, business partners and perhaps even investors can quickly and easily find out more about your business and the products or services you have to offer.

That said, it’s not enough that you just have a website. You must have a professional-looking site if you want to be taken seriously. Since many consumers now search for information online prior to making a purchase at a brick-and-mortar store, your site may be the first chance you have at making a good impression on a potential buyer. If your site looks like it was designed by a barrel of colorblind monkeys, your chance at making a good first impression will be lost.

Online advertising isn’t as confusing as many small business owners think. Just like in the brick-and-mortar world, the goal is to acquire new customers as cheaply as possible. It’s the same with online businesses; only the methods are different. And just like in the offline world, knowing where to place your ads will determine the success or failure of your ad campaign.

Generally, the products you sell will dictate where you should advertise. If your ad budget allows it, advertising on Web portals — Yahoo, MSN, and the like — is an option. But this untargeted advertising is out of the reach of most cash-strapped small businesses.

How can you maximize your advertising budget and still reach the customers who would be interested in your products?

Putting your ads in front of motivated purchasers is the best way to spend your advertising dollar. Targeting your ads to these potential buyers is easy.

Keyword advertising is the easiest and cheapest way to target your ad buys. Buying keyword advertising with Google or Overture lets you target customers before the ad even displays, making it a great option for companies without extensive advertising resources.

E-newsletter advertising is another inexpensive but effective way of reaching targeted customers. There are thousands of e-newsletters published every week on almost every subject imaginable. Try to find at least five different e-newsletters that cover topics that tie in with your products.

Banner or button ads are still an option, of course, as long as you advertise on sites that your potential customers are already visiting. Continuing our example of selling digital camera supplies, we would look for sites that offer tips and advice about digital photography and approach them to see if they are willing to sell advertising space on their site.

If you are having trouble coming up with ideas on where to advertise, try browsing through some of your favorite sites and take a minute to see who their advertisers are. See where your competitors are advertising, and look for other, similar venues that your rivals haven?t thought of yet.

No business can afford waste money on ineffective advertising. Research all your options, and target your ads whenever possible. Regardless of where you advertise, targeting your ads is the key to a good return on your ad spend.

The MMOW.biz team can help you out with all of your websit advertising needs, contact one of our suporf staff today to find out more.

MMOW.biz straight out of the box, comes ready to embrace search engines and automatically submit your site to Google Yahoo, MSN and other search engines.  With this in mind it is still necessary you understand what search engines are looking for so you can optimize your pages for best results.

The formula

The general rule of thumb is that most engines use a “formula” to determine keyword relevancy. Each  search engine has its own unique formula that it uses to rank pages.

Generally, this magic formula consists of your page title, overall body content and the number and quality of links pointing back to your site, how long people stay on your site, etc.

It’s important to note that every engine is different. Some may look at inbound links (number of people linking to you), others may place more emphasis on your body content.

Content Talks

Search engines can’t “see” a site. They can only “read” a site. Pretty does not talk to a search engine. What “talks” to a search engine are the words, the content, the material in your site that explains, shares, informs, educates, and babbles. Make sure you have quality word content for a search engine to examine and compare with all the parts and pieces to give you a good “score”.

Write Your Content with Searchers in Mind

How do you find information on the Internet? If you are writing something that you want to be “found” on the Internet, think about the words and phrases someone would use to find your information. Use them more than once as you write, but not in every sentence. Learn how search engines scan your content, evaluate it, and categorize it so you can help yourself get in good favour with search engines.

Content in Links and Images

Your site may not have much text, mostly photographs and links, but you have places in which to add textual content. Search engines look for alt and title in link and image tags. While these have a bigger purpose of making your site more accessible, having good descriptions and words in these attributes helps provide more content for search engines to digest.

Link Popularity

It is not how good your site is, it is how good the sites are that link to you. The more site that links to you and the better they are the higher your search ranking.

Good Navigation Links

A search engine crawls through your site, moving from page to page. Good navigational links to the categories, archives, and various pages on your site will invite a search engine to move gracefully from one page to another, following the connecting links and visiting most of your site.

The Big three

There are a handful of engines out there that bring traffic, but the reality is a very large percentage of search engine traffic comes from Google, Yahoo and MSN.  Yes, there are other engines like AOL, Netscape etc., but they pull their results from the Big 3.

So in other words, once you start getting traffic from Google, Yahoo and MSN, you’ll rank well in the others automatically.

Do you think blogs are a passing fad? Think again. One peek on popular blog-tracking site Technorati reveals more than 112.8 million blogs in existence. Experts estimate 175,000 new blogs are created every day.

Especially in the corporate world, a blog is an easy, effective way for a business to stay in touch with current customers and reach out to new ones at the same time. It acts like an ongoing conversation, allowing you to communicate directly to your buyers and build brand loyalty and trust.

Plus, maintaining an active blog raises your company’s online visibility, driving traffic to your Web site, meaning increased sales for you.

Consistency: Whether you update once a week or once a day, sticking to a regular posting schedule is crucial. Just like any other form of marketing, the success of your blog depends on the relationship you’ve built with your audience. Developing that relationship requires frequent communication. Regularly updated blogs score higher in search engine rankings, making it easier for potential readers (and customers) to find you online.

Write for your buyers, not yourself: Save your stream-of-consciousness poetry or Grandma’s apple pie recipe for your personal blog. Your buyers don’t care. Instead, stick to the topics your customers care about. Offer solutions for their problems, or analyze news stories and market trends that impact their lives. That’s not to say you can’t show personality in your posts. But generally, readers don’t visit a company blog to find dessert recipes. They want information and interactivity. That said …

Don’t advertise: Treating your blog like another Yellow Pages ad won’t net you new readers. Instead, provide the info your reader really wants to know, like tips and tricks, checklists, DIY guides, interviews, etc. Suppose you’ve planned an upcoming promotional event. Instead of posting a schedule or price list on your blog, run a Q&A with one of your presenters or a series of posts about a topic explored at the event in more detail. Remember that a blog is a conversation with your buyers, not an advertisement.

Comments = Traffic: Keep comments turned on, even the negative ones. Healthy debate indicates a healthy blog. Comments from those who disagree with you “add credibility to your viewpoint by showing two sides of an issue, and by highlighting that your readership is passionate enough to want to contribute to a debate on your blog.”

Make it easy for your readers to find you: Give your blog prime real estate on your company Web site. Mention it in newsletters and e-mail blasts. Be sure to use tags wisely, including social media tags for aggregators like Technorati, DIGG and del.icio.us. Finally, be sure your blogging software handles RSS (Really Simple Syndication), a feature that delivers blog updates directly to subscribers. That way, it’s even easier to keep your readers posted.

In today’s technological era, businesses have a very difficult time functioning well without a website. It used to be that people would drive to a store to get information about a product or service, but today people turn on their computers and scan the Internet. The Internet allows people to research business, check out products, compare business practices, and compare competing company/business prices. If a business does not have a website, they are missing out on a lot of exposure to potential clients.

MMOW.biz is the easiest way for you to run your site and keep it up-to-date. You can now update your website from any internet-connected PC in the world – you don’t even need to know HTML! It has tons of features so whatever you want from your site, chances are this script will be able to do it for you.

Among the features of MMOW.biz are support for as many content pages as you want; blogs, which can have files attached to turn them into podcasts, or video clips easily embedded; multiple templates, as well as the ability to easily create your own look; guestbooks, galleries, mailing lists and polls. You can have as many users allowed to update your site as you wish; can offer up RSS feeds so users can subscribe to parts of your site; and the site even automatically maintains a WAP version so people can view your pages on the move via their phones.