In this economy, any marketing tool you can use to find new customers is worth considering. But perhaps the best marketing tool available to many small businesses is a yellow-pages-style web site. Such a site means prospective local customers looking for a business like yours know that you’re in business and ready for their patronage.

But a word or two of explanation… While the traffic statistics of the typical small business web site may not impress Google, eBay or Amazon.com, many small business web sites do generate significant numbers of prospects compared to the other marketing tools available. Commonly, for example, small business web sites can attract anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred new unique visitors on a daily basis. And that’s a lot!

Increasing online visibility is the goal of most online business owners. After all, without visibility, you have no traffic and thus no business. However, when you start to research how to improve your online visibility, you discover many options, but find that there is little time for research and implementation. Where does an online entrepreneur turn first to get the visibility (and traffic) to promote an online venture?

Making simple changes to a website to improve search engine rankings and drive traffic is not as complicated as it sounds. This article details the factors that can be simply manipulated yet produce big improvements if implemented correctly.

They are worth bookmarking or printing so they can be used in the future as a checklist when creating new pages or reviewing your website.

1) Keyphrase Research

Before you can begin implementing any of the optimization techniques mentioned in the rest of this article, you will need to know which keyphrases you are going to optimize your site for. Once this is decided, everything becomes a lot clearer.

While millions of people run some sort of website, only a few - it’s estimated at only 1 to 2% - are really successful in accomplishing what they want on the Net.

The main reason for this is the lack of well defined goals and the necessary focus to achieve them. A great plan goes a long way. Part of a good plan is web design.

Successful website design lets your visitors focus on the most important part of your website: the content.

Whatever the content is, sales pages or valuable information, great website design makes your visitors feel comfortable taking notice of your content.

Sometimes it is not about what you can find, but what you can’t find that makes Google more interesting. In the highly competitive world we live it, here are some Google hacks for Amazon that will let you know what is not currently being carried by Amazon.

This is a reverse engineering process for Amazon, in that normally you want to find out what is being carried by the company, but for some resellers on Amazon, knowing what is not being carried that can help give you a better competitive edge.

The Internet has come a long way in 30 years, but it is still very much in its infancy. Vint Cerf, Google Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist, who in a former life was one of the principle minds behind what we know as the Internet today, is looking far beyond just the next thirty years. He’s thinking about the next thousand years.

“Ninety-five percent of the universe is stuff we don’t understand,” Cerf told WebProNews anchor Abby Prince Johnson in an exclusive 20-minute interview. “The Internet is like that.”

Tips for Starting a New Online Business

One of the biggest mistakes that many businesses online and offline make is that they do not have a plan for success. Even though it is an online business, you should still have a business plan and you should have a search marketing strategy and know that you are targeting a large enough market. You should do searches online on Google, and Yahoo, and MSN, and see which of your competitors come up for that search term.

“So, what do I blog about each time?” is a question I often get from clients. To keep your blog active and healthy, I recommend blogging at least 3 times per week. However, that notion is overwhelming for many. Even though you may be an expert in a topic, your mind may go completely blank when it comes time to blog, and then at other times when you’re not blogging, your idea cup runneth over.

Wondering what pages to include on your website and why? Here is a list of important information that should be included on your site.

Before you start thinking about what to write, it is important that you create a plan, which outlines what each page will contain. That way you won’t repeat yourself or forget vital information. The most common pages on successful websites include:

1. Home Page (First Page)

This is your “sales” page and should provide information about what you can do for your customers. It should also give your visitors a brief overview of what they can find on your site.

If you own a business, chances are you do. But don’t pat yourself on the back too quickly.

By now it’s widely-accepted that if you have a business card you should probably have a website. It doesn’t matter what your company is selling - a website, however modest, has become a standard.

The real question is: what is your website doing for your business?

As a web marketer I often put this question to the business owners I meet. Not because I’m trying to lead into my sales pitch, but because I’m intrigued to hear the answer.