Many people were interested in my last blog--especially on how to improve rankings with the major search engines.

If your website is relatively new, then one of the ways to improve your rankings with the major search engines involves increasing the incoming links to you website. This is a difficult task. It is not a matter of simply adding some keywords or code to your website. You must attempt to get other websites to link back to yours.

Here are a few strategies to help increase your incoming links:

Ask for Referrals
If you have happy clients, ask them to write a nice testimonial and link to your website from their FaceBook pages or blogs.

Set Up a FaceBook Page for Your Business

Create a YouTube Channel
Believe it or not, YouTube is now more searched than Yahoo. Your business should be there with a short, well-done introduction video about your business.

Start a Blog
Blogging can do so much for your website ranking, and attract more viewers and ultimately more business. Quality is important, so write concise articles giving valuable information related to your area of expertise. Ask readers to share blog posts on FaceBook and Twitter. Be sure to keep the blog up to date. People generally won't spend much time on a blog site that is neglected.

Answer Questions
Being a source for reliable information in your area of expertise can bring you new customers. Join websites like Yahoo Answers, LinkedIn Answers, and Quora to answer questions related to the product or service your business offers. Always include a link to your main web site!

Link Your Own Websites
Most importantly, be sure that ALL your websites (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Blogs, etc.) link to each other AND to your main website.

Incoming links to your website will come over time, but you can help speed up the process by being proactive.

If you found this article helpful, please share it on Twitter or FaceBook!

In 2010 nearly 80 percent of all Americans had internet access. With more and more people using the internet as their primary way to find products and services, one of the best tools you have to promote your business is your website.

A wonderful first step to give you an edge over your competitors is to make sure you have a great looking, professional website filled with valuable content. If you already have a website up and running, there are a few things you should double check:

• Is it easy for the viewers of your site to understand exactly what your business has to offer? Have you clearly stated what you can do for them? This may sound obvious, but many business websites forget to do this.
• Have you included a clear call to action? What you want your viewer to “do”? For example: contact me for a free quote, visit our museum, call for an appointment. Look for this with a fresh eye, and don’t assume they will know... say it!
  
• Is your contact information and location is very easy to find? Too many business websites bury their contact information so that viewers can’t find it quickly. This risks your potential customer clicking away in frustration.
  

Once you have these basics in place, your next step is to check how easy your website is to find. It is extremely important to make sure that your website is optimized for internet search engines. Even the best designed website won’t do you any good if your potential customers can’t find it.

Check to see whether your website meets some basic requirements by using this handy search engine optimization anaylsis tool at Pear Analytics.  The tool is FREE and easy to use with no sign up or registration required. Check it out on your website—the results may surprise you.

The analysis tool will provide an instant report of your website’s optimization for search engines. The report provides fairly detailed information and makes suggestions on how to fix any problems found to improve your website’s search results.

If you are not technically savvy enough to fix the problems yourself, please contact me for a free quote to make the suggested improvements.

Your potential customers are on the internet to find the products or services you have to offer. To reach them, your website should:

• look professional,
• clearly state what you have to offer,
• provide a simple way to contact you, and
• be easy to find with search engines.

How many people have good information that they would like to put on the web, but currently don't know how? Maybe it's because they don't have a web host, maybe it's because they don't know how to write a web page and upload it. Thanks to my newest client, Heather Shea, of Sweet Rose Photography in Lynchburg, VA, I recently learned of a great new resource for small businesses that wish to have an affordable web presence that they can update and maintain themselves. Heather contacted me for a bit of help in adding some features to her new web site hosted at Weebly.com.

I went to the Weebly site to investigate how I could help Heather meet her goals for Sweet Rose Photography's web site. I learned that Weebly is a free online web site creator that allows users to create pages with only a few clicks by dragging and dropping different page elements (images, text, or interactive content, etc.) one of the many great Weebly webpage templates and filling in the content. In addition to adding page elements such as images or text, you can easily add a blog, image gallery, slide show, and more. Want a three-column layout? Drag and drop. Add Google AdWords to your site? Drag and drop. Then double click it, and set your options from easy drop-down-menus. I was immediately impressed with the extremely user-friendly interaction, and within a matter of a few minutes I had learned what I needed to know to place the features Heather wanted on her website.

As I worked on Sweet Rose Photography's website, I realized that Weebly might be a great option for several other client sites I am in the processing of developing… so I used it for my client Cameo (www.ohcameo.com) and my own web site which you see here now. I investigated Weeby a bit more to try to find limitations or problems. I was glad to find that they have a policy of no forced advertising on even free accounts, and that they are compatible with major web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome. Weebly was named by Time Magazine as number four of the fifty best websites of 2007, and currently has over a million users.

If you want more advanced features not offered on the free account, Weebly also offers a very affordable Pro account that includes more capabilities such as:

• allowing users to create password-protected pages
• upgrading file size limits
• adding of in-site audio or video content,
• providing site statistics, and
• "premium" support

The Pro account also allows you to remove the small link to Weebly placed in the footer of free accounts.

If you want a web site for your small business, sign up for Weebly and give it a try. If you are extremely comfortable with technology, you may be able to create a web site for your business without having to hire a web designer at all. They have a very comprehensive and easy-to-follow help section on their website where you can learn all about the features of Weebly and how to use them to create and maintain your web site.

Why would I tell you about this? What's the catch? After all, giving you this information is like blogging myself out of work, isn't it?

The answer is that perhaps I am losing a bit of work here. However, not all people are comfortable with technology. Like my client, Heather, you might get your site mostly completed and need help adding features. Perhaps you need a logo design or custom web banner for your site. There are many people who are not comfortable with technology at all and would like someone with professional training to set everything up from scratch. Or maybe you want your web page customized beyond the many web templates Weebly offers.

If you have no experience with CSS or HTML, I can customize the code for you so that your page looks exactly as you wish. I can also:

• help with page optimization so that your site receives good ranking with search engines,
• give advice on image optimization for faster page loading,
• provide hints on great content ideas specific to your business,
• teach you how to utilize social networks such a FaceBook or Twitter to promote your business,
• and much more.

I am here to help small business clients obtain an affordable and professional web presence that reflects who they are and what they have to offer in the best possible way. I encourage you to give Weebly a try, and then contact me if you need any help with making your business web site the very best.