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As a new business owner with a website you need to consider the bottom line at all times.  Launching a new business is not an easy thing, it takes money, and time, and sweat and tears.  I have recently worked with many small businesses who dream of being big businesses really fast.  They get a website designed and launched and assume that because they have built it…. customers will come.  This is totally the wrong expectation.  Driving customers to your website takes dedication and cash.  When you are a start-up every dollar is precious, and the peril that any business faces is making the touch choices of where to invest marketing dollars. 

Every start-up knows that they need to drive customers to their site, but they don’t always know what the correct things are to achieve that goal.  A common mistake is to invest dollars into the Yellow Pages thinking that this investment will fill the pipeline with customers.  While this investment has an impact on your business, we prefer to build a solid foundation of backlinks and proper SEO before engaging Yellow Pages services. There are so many ways to drive traffic to a website and increase Google ranking that it is hard to know where to start. I thought that I would share some of the tips that I give my clients who have to watch their budget while in the start-up phase.

Small Business Start-up Marketing Survival Kit

1. Hosting services- I do business Development for Q College and North Studio and the first thing that anyone does when looking at a website is access it on their tablet or phone.  The reason for this is to look at load time.  We live in a society accustomed to instant gratification on the internet, and if a host has issues with server uptime then it means that potential customers may see more 505 Error Pages than they do your site.  For the couple of dollars that it costs, enlist the services of someone reputable like GoDaddy or Bluehost.  Both companies have outstanding customer support services and around a 99.99% uptime.
   

2. Going local- Odds are that your business needs to source customers local to its location.  If that is the case then greater local exposure can be found by integrating an SEO dashboard into your site like www.brightlocal.com and then conduct several targeted Google AdWord campaigns to drive not only traffic to the site, but also move your site into a high ranking position on search engines for people looking for your products or services.
   

3. Dedicated Pages- Creating pages on a website that are very specifically targeted to feature a product or service.  Their sole purpose is to leverage the Google Webmaster Tools and increase the site’s keyword ranking.  This is achieved by using extremely targeted content and custom contact forms embedded in these pages. The intention of these pages is to provide pre-qualified customers for your products or services that can be called immediately for a sales call.
   

4. The use of Articles-  Google loves targeted content and the creation of several 3000 word articles about specific products or services will enable Google to index the site and rank the articles very high for its specific content.
   

5. Social Signals- Customers love to contribute to their favorite company websites with positive product and service reviews, but even more they love to post negative reviews.  Social Media campaigns have proven highly effective in generating new clients and sales mainly because those are the mediums where your customers are looking for you.

These are just a few tips that will enable start-ups to start getting back links created and increase traffic to a company website.  Low budget, but high return strategies that require a little elbow grease but controllable capital work excellent for start-ups. The bottom line remains controlled, yet the process of lead generation and lead qualification continues.  New customers and visibility on search engines early in the game is an instant win for a start-up business’ success.

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