But if you won’t take my advice and hire a writer, at the very least follow these guidelines for writing your content yourself.

• Write in short, punchy paragraphs and include lots of lists.  There is nothing more likely to make a potential customer click away from your site than presenting them with a long page of solid text.  Large paragraphs are SCARY to a web surfer.  Therefore to keep their attention, you need to give them short bits of text that they can digest quickly.
• No keyword stuffing!  Keyword stuffing is cramming keywords into your text until it hardly even makes sense, in order to try to improve your search engine rankings.  Even if the search engines don’t catch you doing this and penalize you for it, you are sure to lose customers by making your website appear not worth reading.
• Use keywords that make sense.  No matter how frequently it is searched for, “ADT Phoenix” is an awkward phrase and difficult to work into your copy.  You won’t earn any points with your customers for sounding uneducated, and in any case you need more than hits on your site — you also need sales.
• Provide lots of good content that your customers will find useful.  The way to generate more traffic to your site, and therefore more sales, is to make your site useful enough that people who come to it keep reading, and hopefully even come back.  Articles and a blog are great ways to do this.  So, for instance, you might provide an article on your website as to why you recommend ADT Security over other brands.

A good website is vital to your business, because it is often the biggest factor in a customer’s decision to buy from you, rather than someone else.  You are best off hiring an experienced content writer, but if you can’t or won’t, by following these tips you should at least be able to write web pages that won’t embarrass you!

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For instance, say you sell airsoft guns online.   There are tons of sellers of these on the Internet, and chances are most potential customers have never heard of you before.  Having testimonials — not only to the quality of your airsoft pistols, but also to the quality of your service — in the margins of your website’s pages is a great way to give a little nudge to a client who is on the fence, and hopefully tip the scales in your favor.

But don’t just throw a few testimonials up on your page and forget about them.  It’s in your best interests to change out your testimonials periodically, so that there are always fresh quotes from new clients on your website.  Customers often save a site and come back several times before finally making a purchase, so changing out your testimonials regularly reassures them that you have a steady stream of satisfied clients!

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Many local, service-oriented businesses seem to have a hard time understanding why they need a website, especially mom-and-pop shops that have been open for a long time.  They just can’t understand why they might need to do things differently, change the way they market themselves.

But the truth is, the business world is changing rapidly.  The Internet is a valuable marketing resource, and businesses are catching on: Traditional marketing is less targeted and more expensive, and is therefore being used less than ever.

It is important for all businesses these days to have some sort of web presence — yes, even the small businesses that only operate locally.  Even if you do not do any business online, having a business website enables potential customers to look up your hours, find out more about your business, get your contact information, and decide whether they want to take their business to you — whenever they are thinking about it, even if that is the middle of the night.  Not having a website in this case would mean lost sales, something small local businesses can’t really afford to risk.

For example, a local business that installs cheap hot tubs and/or services portable hot tubs might assume that they don’t need a website, because they only deal with a very small local clientele.  But what about the people in your area that are searching for information about hot tub installation and service online?  And what about potential customers who need information after hours?  People in these scenarios are going to go with a company that can provide them with the information they need when and where they are looking for it.

Don’t get left out by not having a website.  Even if your business is not in any way, shape, or form an online business, you still need a website!

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Here are a few suggestions:

• Make it clear, on the home page, that you do business in bail bonds.  This may seem obvious, but you would be surprised how many business website attempts don’t highlight what the business actually does.  Make it painfully obvious on yours.  Your visitors will look for it as soon as they get to the site.
• Include some informational articles.  These articles should highlight keywords that you want to pick up, such as “bail bonds Salinas” and “bail bonds Los Angeles.”  This gives visitors additional information, AND helps the search engines to find your website.
• A blog.  Blogs are becoming quite popular, even necessary, in the business world.  They pull in traffic, provide a reason for visitors to keep coming back, and increase your search engine rankings.
• Contact information.  You also need to provide a way for customers to find you.  With a business such as a bondman’s office, I suggest leaving your phone number, address, and an email address for visitors to use.

Technorati Tags: bail bonds, bail bonds Los Angeles, bail bonds Salinas, blog, business world, website