BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Monitor Editor
KEYSTONE HEIGHTS— A senior consultant and marketing manager for the Small Business Development Center at the University of North Florida taught a Lake Region business group about the best practices of marketing businesses on the internet.
Taylor Kennedy reviewed principles for obtaining a domain, working with website builders and hosts, web design and development, search engine optimization and other topics during the April 28 meeting of the Lake Region Prosperity Partners.
Domains
Kennedy said that when looking for a domain, businesses should use a “.com” domain like BcTelegraph.com. He also recommended owners use the name of their businesses in the domain,
“Sometimes you have to get a little creative,” he said. “You’ll see a lot of times people are putting in like LandscapingJax.com or LandscapingKeystone.com, using that defined geographic area because as more and more people are purchasing domains, the one that you may want may be gone.”
Kennedy added that investors are now buying up domains, marking up the price and then flipping the names to business owners.
“I’ve even had people contact me saying: ‘Hey we’ve got this website available if you want to pay $2,000,” he said, adding that his answer to the inquiry was “no.”
Kennedy advised avoiding hyphens and numbers in domain names, to pick something memorable and to keep the name to 15 characters or less.
Website builders and hosts
Kennedy said a website host is a company that hosts websites on their servers while a builder is software that enables people to create and edit the content of their sites. Some organizations like GoDaddy.com, Wix.com and Squarespace.com operate as both hosts and builders. He said one of the most popular builders: WordPress.com is a builder only.
Kennedy added that while WordPress is highly customizable and looks professional, it is not easy to use, and many times business owners hire web developers to assist them with their WordPress sites.
Wix.com, on the other hand is easy to use and has excellent email support, but the templates look dated, and the code is not search-engine friendly, making Wix.com websites more difficult to discover on Google.
“With Squarespace,” he said, “some of the pros are the templates are really nice. They’re very up to date, they’re very modern and they’re very professional looking. As a business you want your website to be very professional looking.”
Kennedy said the downside to Squarespace.com is that it limits users to only one level of sub navigation, forcing the structure of the website to remain simplistic.
He also recommended that before building a website, business owners scout the competition to see what kind of content competitors are publishing, what format they are using and how the website is structured.
‘When you’re looking at these competitors, you want to take notes,” he said. “What do you like? What don’t you like? By the end of you doing this research on your competitors, you’ll have some really good information.”
Search engine optimization
Kennedy said the hottest topic of business internet development is search engine optimization: getting a business page to rank high on Google.
He added that because the company keeps the details of its algorithm secret, businesses have to use trial and error in trying to achieve a high ranking.
“We don’t know what their rules are,” Kennedy said. “We have to speculate and test.”
And even if a website finds success with Google, that’s no guarantee the success will continue.
“You’ll see people (who) had a thousand visitors last month and then it may drop to 400 the next month,” he said. “You’ve got to keep up with Google. Sometimes this is changing your keywords on the page, or this could be updating your content, or just even updating the little copyright at the bottom of your website.”
Kennedy said his organization offers free website audits using SEMrush, a website analyzer.
