The Internet is a powerful marketing tool. It's immense power comes from the fact that it is used by billions of people across the world. And the number of Internet users is increasing day by day as its penetration is increasing in emerging markets like China and India. Today, people use the Internet not only for information and entertainment but also for shopping. Online shopping and e-commerce are not something new. They have been there ever since the Internet came into existence. However, the recent years have seen an exponential growth in e-commerce.
Taking the popularity of Internet and its potential into consideration, it is a very essential step to take your small business online. You can do this by creating a website and promoting your services online. Taking your business online will instantly expand your horizons to all of the world. An online presence is a must and should if you want to stay in the competition in the coming years.
It is not very difficult to create a presence on Internet. Creating a website used to be somewhat complicated many years back. However, this is no longer the case no. There are many software applications that allow you to create webpages without knowing how to code HTML. You can also hire a freelancer developer to create your website for you. A domain name costs around $10 per year and hosting costs around $5 or so per month. Overall, it won't cost you much to create your website.
Once you create your website, you should not stop there. Just creating webpages are not attract potential customers to your site. You have to promote your site actively. You can start by search engine optimization. Search engine optimization or SEO involves making changes to your webpages in such a way that they rank better in search results. Search engine optimization is a very powerful web promotion technique because it provides very good return of investments. If your bank for a popular keyword related to your business, you will see a good increase in the number of potential clients. You can either do the search engine optimization yourself or take the services of a company that specializes in it. It is better to go for the latter because it provides better results.
There are also other promotion strategies that can provide good results. Some of these include pay per click advertisements, paid reviews and article marketing. In PPC, you have to pay per click or every visitor. It provides instant results but it is costly because you have to pay per click. You need to have a specific advertisement budget if you want to use PPC ads to promote your services It is also not suitable for all types of businesses. In paid reviews, you pay someone to blog for you or promote your services by writing reviews of your products. Article marketing involves writing articles and submitting them to article directories and blogs. All these methods provide good results.
About the Author: Aditya Venkatesh is a computer-enthusiast who is fascinated by computer technology, gadgets and the Internet. He writes frequently on computers and other topics on www.AdiWebs.com. In the past, he worked as a technical writer at a leading web development company in Hyderabad, India. His other interests include photography and DIY projects.