There are several things you should do when taking your business online, if you decide to launch your business into the WWW..

First, understand your target customer base. You need to know who is most likely to buy your product and how to market it to them in a sea of other marketing. Create a plan of action to cover the entire process of getting your business onto the Internet. You’ll also need to choose a domain name. Make sure it’s simple to remember, easy to spell, and doesn’t contain any difficult characters. This will help people get to your site. It’s also helpful to make sure that your domain name isn’t too similar to a competitor’s site. You could find your traffic being directed right to the place you least want it to go.

Once you’ve found and registered an available domain name, you’ll need to find web space, and either design your own web page, or hire a designer. If you’re not very familiar with web design, you should probably ask a professional to help you with it. A little investment here can bring you a lot more traffic, since your web page is your first impression on the Internet. Make sure that there’s some kind of payment capability or shopping cart included in your website, so that customers can easily purchase products and services. You’ll also need an automated product database to list your products on the website.

Once you have your website and online store set up, you have to let people know about it! Promote your site on the search engines, promote your site in online forums that you frequent, and use other proven internet marketing techniques. Also be sure to post notifications in your store telling people that you’re now online. Even local customers might appreciate the convenience of being able to browse your inventory online before they come in to shop.

Be sure to maintain your site regularly. Out of date sites can drive customers away, especially if they’re littered with broken links and images.

Last week I wrote about how one of our sites had been bumped out of the number 3 slot by a competitor using unscrupulous SEO tactics. I’m happy to report that we are back in the number 3 position!

This competitor remains in #4, but I have a feeling they won’t be there for long. They have poor backlinks and loads of junky keyword text at the bottom of the page of interest only to search engines.

It still bugs me though when I see a site that clearly does not have as much to offer as our client and with less quality backlinks take such a high position. Google was acting a little strange last week. I thought it was odd that overnight our site went from #3 to #13 and then was back up to #3 within a week.

Change is the nature of search though. As search engines evolve, they will only evolve in a way that promotes high interest sites. Our theory is that by building high quality, optimized content that is of interest to humans, and solid link relationships that our strategy for achieving organic results is a long lasting one, regardless of how search engine algorithms may change.