Why Every Business Should Be Online
Do you own a traditional bricks & mortar business but until now have resisted putting your business online? Perhaps you've thought "Hey, my business is doing fine, why complicate things?" Or, you haven't seen the connection between your products/services and the online world. Or maybe you thought "My business services local customers only. Why do I want to promote it to a world-wide audience?".
In fact, the Internet offers un-paralleled opportunities for every business owner - no matter what type of business you are involved in.
Let's look at an example... John's Carpet Cleaning Service
This business operates in Anytown servicing local customers. John runs Yellow Pages ads, at no small cost, in competition with several other services in his area.
To start with, for a fraction of the cost of Yellow Pages ads, John could build a website which targets the keywords "carpet cleaning Anytown". When online searches are made for products/services in a specific geographic area, competition is often relatively low. Why? Many small business owners don't yet see the value of the Internet to them. When competition is low it is far easier to rank well in the search engines on your specific, targeted keywords. And with the growing acceptance of broadband, which gives you an "always-on" Internet connection, many people are using the Net as their first choice for locating goods and services, rather than a cumbersome phone book.
Even if there are quite a few existing websites which the search engines have indexed for those keywords, many of them were built by website designers who had no idea how to get a website to rank well. Or, the sites were built by their owners who fell for the lure of "quick and easy", bought a template, some cheap hosting, and "put up a website". Those owners were left wondering what all the fuss was about when no one visited their site, except them!
How else could John harness the power of the Internet? As well as generating leads for his business he could also use his website to create additional income streams. John could sign up to a few carefully selected affiliate programs (this costs nothing) and earn commissions when sales are made, by other vendors, to customers which he referred. For example, a link on John's site leads to a store which sells carpet cleaning products. Or, he could sign up for Google's AdSense program (again free) and get paid every time someone clicks on an ad on his site. AdSense works by just inserting a few lines of special code on your site and your site will display "in-context" ads to your visitors. It works best when you build great content, e.g. carpet cleaning advice, into your site.
Bottom line for small businesses like John's....
Get the jump on your competitors while you can. Find a website designer who understands how to build a website which ranks well in the search engines, and delivers a constant stream of free, targeted visitors. Diversify your income streams by putting your website to work with affiliate programs and pay-per-click advertising programs.
Written by Steve Pronger of stevepronger.com Web Business Solutions
We have been a Pole Position customer for three years now and we are definitely a customer for life. We have found Pole Position to be at the top of their game in SEO and have found them a valuable team 
member that cares about our success.
