Websites for the self employed: part 2, content

There are three kinds of websites that the self employed can consider: a "brochure" site, an article site, or a store front site. Ideally, your site will be all of these things.

The Brochure Site

This is a site that simply tells what you do. A few pictures, some text, it's simple and direct. It is a place to send potential customers for more information, and perhaps allows you to save money on other advertising by simply directing people to your web site rather than having a much larger ad. While useful for that, this kind of site isn't likely to bring you any new business. Search engines won't be interested in it and unless your business is extremely unusual, your site is just one of millions that will never be noticed.

The store front

If you have a product or service that can be sold from your web site, that can be a great way to increase your business income. However, this kind of site is only marginally better than a brochure site at attracting new customers. You'll usually have do other advertising to drive business to it. You can do that with traditional advertising methods and with on-line ads like Google Adwords and other similar programs.

The Article site

An article site contains helpful tips, articles, news and other resources. If you are a plumber, you want to put up pages about the latest products, about redecorating: anything that is related to the work you do. Whatever business is, there are helpful things you can write about. The purpose of this is to interest search engines so that people searching for product information might find your site because of your helpful tips and news. The more you can do, the more chance of being found by searches. Some people post regularly about certain subjects; that's called http://aplawrence.com/foo-web">blogging and, if you can keep up the pace, is what can draw the most traffic to your web site. A site that is regularly updated with new information usually gets rated well by search engines, which means that it is more likely to be among the top hits returned when people search for information in that subject area. If those people click on to your site, you may be able to sell to them. In effect, the web site advertises itself.

The Ideal Site

The ideal site combines all these elements. It isn't easy to do a site like that; it takes a lot of work and it is never ending: you need fresh material constantly. But it definitely can be worth the effort.

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