The Search For “Affordable” Websites

I see  it all the time. The word affordable. People are often looking for services that are “affordable”. That term is so subjective it is hard to pin it down. It’s like nailing jello to the wall or herding cats.

What is affordable to one company is not affordable to another. And yet…when you say affordable when you are talking about a website, or a marketing company, or a subcontractor to handle and important aspect of your business you need to beware.

The old adage “you get what you pay for” is around for a reason. I often have people inquire about websites. They want something “affordable” and easy to maintain. I get that. So do I. And if you are a brand new business your budget may be slim to none. Still I say beware of highly templated websites that you pay for monthly.

Some of these that say they are affordable or free are going to act as an online brochure for you but nothing more. What do I mean by that? They are great if you are referring people that already know you exist to them to see your services or that you have a web presence. But they do not get the job done.

Often times you don’t own your content. Or if you do you can’t optimize it for search engines. They may be built improperly and have lots of errors that stop search spiders in their tracks. Most spiders you’d like to stop in their tracks, but not search spiders. You want to make your content and your pages highly friendly to search engines so that they can be indexed and ranked.

When you are putting a website up most people think, “Oh, I’ll put up a website and then people will find me on the web.” That is like saying hey I have an apartment in New York City why don’t you make your way over for a visit? People do not find you simply because you have a website. If you are are trying to use your website to drive traffic to your business, cheap and easy is not the right answer. You need to make an investment into your future revenue.

This means a functional website with:

• Clean up to date coding techniques
• Well thought out research on key words
• Navigatable
• User friendly
• Investment into on page SEO as well as ongoing SEO
• analytics and constantly track your organic search results

We see it time and again that people are trying to cut corners with the least expensive website they can get, and then they don’t understand why it doesn’t lead to more business. A website is an appendage of your business. It is your store front. if people can’t find the address, they aren’t going to come. It’s as simple as that.

New prospects are only going to find you if you have a well built website by a professional and proper SEO is implemented along with other digital marketing techniques to increase your visibility.