What type of websites should you use for your SoMoLo Campaign?

What type of website should you use for your business to capture online search traffic from search engines like Google?

You will want a website that fits the needs of your business.

How to decide what type of website is best for your business?

Below are questions to help you determined that.

Do you plan on having an online cart to sell products or services? – If yes then you will want eCommerce functionality (Plugin) . This will have a shopping cart to display your products or services.
Will you be post new content like: Coupons, weekly offers, change in products regularly, lots of events? If so then you want a blog. WordPress is the best, and it’s free.
Do your customers  need help often with product/service like trouble shooting or advanced help? –  If so you’ll that to include a forum in your site. Customer service through Archive form threads is a great resource for your customers and also will cut down on your service trouble shooting calls and overhead.
If you won’t be adding much content regularly? –  You only want a website because you know you need one. Just couple pages then the micro of mini will serve you fine. This is the type that most small business use. Main Page, Contact US, Service, Bio I would suggest Google Sites if you have never build a site before and want to do it yourself. Your site can be built in 1 hour it is really that simple.

Your site should be unique with its own unique content text, picture and video.  Make sure and add the meta text to pictures and videos it will help with your SEO.  Common fields for meta Data are Alt and Alt Description there are many others. Micro-sites content should be renewed or added too regularly if possible the will make Google update your index on a regular basis. A better practice is to upload routinely, weekly that way in the search engines index the content is always fresh and relevant  simply because it has changed or been added too. Follow this routine up by resubmitting Google site map for indexing.

So what if you want your website to have a eCommerce shopping cart, Forum and Blog?

Relax no problem.

Now days most website CMS allow you to add on other features to your website through Plugins or widgets.  WordPress is what I build with, it’s free, easy to use, and has thousands of plugins to make a any word press site that can do anything you have seen online including a social network like Facebook. Its FREE, open source. There are over 1600 themes to choose from.

Type of Websites

Here are the different type of websites you can use for your Business. There are more but these are the most used type of websites.

Micro Site: Small site usually consist of one or two web pages. It is used to create sniper sites, landing pages, opt in pages and sales brochure or letters.

Mini Site: Slightly larger mini sites have more pages, usually about 4-5. This type of website is commonly used by small businesses to build an online presence. The site normally includes a homepage, a page about their services and products, a contact page, and maybe a pricing or rates page. These are also commonly known as brochure type websites.

Content Site: Content site is filled with content. Content sites are sites that provide news, article, how to sites. Many content sites offers visitors various ways to interact with the site. You could comments on their articles, for example, or rate them and cast your votes.

Blog: Smaller version of a content site is a Blog. This type of website is commonly used by Affiliate marketers. The distinguishing feature of blog site is the way content is added chronologically by post instead of by page. Blogs also have pages, but most of the content will be add by Post.

Forum Site: Forum websites are for a community of online users that discuss a topic publicly for others to learn and reference to.You can add a forum to an existing site, such as a content site.

eCommerce Site: This website consist mainly of a shopping cart that showcases products. They may have a Forum or Blog attached to them depending on  their need.

There are other types of websites like: Informational, Content and Affiliate websites. Above are the type of websites that businesses most often use.

Site Design with Plugins

Micro-Site or Mini Site Consist of  2-5 pages / Three posts / two videos/trust logos/pictures/text/links/social. Social accessibility to networks important for users. To share, post, subscribe, like is why they a surfing, to not allow them to share your content is silly.

Try this: Make an impression on your site maybe with a video or pictures, show something to capture your audience so they will share it. Put a unique keyword or phase in it so it is track-able  Wait about two or three weeks. Now search for it, using the unique phase on Google Search. You will see results from people sharing your content. This is very useful for seeing in to your social insights.

Plug-ins I use with WordPress Sites

Jetpack by WordPress.com – Multi-functional plugin it is a must have.

Another WordPress Classifieds Plugin – Classified Ads plugin is easy to use and setups in less than 1/2 hour.

Strictly Auto Tags  – Automatically converts keywords to tags and categories hyperlinking the keywords with preset “ keyword +URL + Tag+ category “ relationship.

Google XML Site Maps – generate site maps and submits them to Google. There is plug-ins for Yahoo and Bing.

WordPress SEO by Yoast – Multifaceted plug-in providing extra interface throughout WordPress.

Share buttons by Lockerz  – Allows user to share to over 100 social platforms. Only use the ones you want.

All In One Event Calendar – Displays full-size calendar with individual events linking to appropriate page on website.