You might be wondering what makes for really good business website design? The best business website designs focus on a specific target audience, contain compelling content, include strong calls to action and eliminate distracting graphics and images. This is not to say that the best business website designs  don’t look attractive, they do, but the emphasis is not on design, but rather content and other aspects designed to convert visitors into customers.

Affordable Small Business Website Design

Affordable small business website design  that grows with your business is one of the top concerns for many entrepreneurs. With website design prices ranging from 3k to 50k depending on your requirements, it's important for you to select an affordable small business website design solution that can be easily extended to support your ever changing needs.

B2B website design has its challenges. In fact, all website design projects have their own unique challenges. However, when it comes to B2B website design, extra precaution must be taken if your goal is to drive traffic, generate leads, and increase sales. A poorly designed website can backfire.

With proper planning, attention to detail, a little patience and commitment, you can get a properly designed website that will serve your business well into the future. Let’s get started with what makes for an outstanding website design.

Your Logo

If you’re familiar with Will Ferrell's infamous Saturday Night Live “More Cowbell” skit, then you understand what I mean when I say “More Logo”. One of the biggest mistakes made in B2B website design is when the size of the logo is increased to the point that you have to scroll down to read the content. It’s as if the logo itself is for sale. Please don’t do this.

No one cares about your logo beyond the ability to identify that they’re on the right website. After visitors have determined that they’re on the right website, they’re only interested in their problems, how you can solve their problems, and how to get in touch with you.

Distracting Animations

Although we don’t see distracting animations as much as we did in the past, occasionally we stumble upon a B2B website design that contains some silly animation running across the screen as if it’s being chased by Wile E Coyote. Before you add animations to your website, ask yourself, “is this going to help or hurt my cause?”. In most cases it hurts and BIG TIME!

Distracting Backgrounds

Have you ever seen a B2B website design and couldn’t focus on the content because the background made you dizzy? I sure have. Once again, stay away from busy, gaudy backgrounds. They are distracting and prevent website visitors from focusing on content -- and content is critical when you’re selling a product or service on your website.

Poor Navigation

KISS - this stands for “Keep It Simple Stupid”. If there’s one tip you should take away from this B2B website design article, it’s to keep the navigation of your website simple for visitors. Don’t try t

So you finally launched your new website, you even got a facebook page after all this time, and now you want to know why your website isn't generating business. The problem with most small businesses and their efforts to get found online is that they are searching around in this big abyss called the internet without really having the slightest idea about what is going on and how it works. By knowing a few key facts about how internet marketing works, you can get one step further in your marketing efforts and online footprint. In this installment of internet marketing 101, I will be teaching you how to use blogging in your online marketing.

Internet Marketing 101: Key Terms:

Inbound Marketing: Refers to the concept of earning the prospects attention as opposed to outbound marketing which is supposed to interrupting or distracting (think direct mail, tv ads, etc) the prospect from what they were otherwise doing.

SEO: Stands for Search Engine Optimization and is based on the concept of optimizing your web content so as to rate it better and bring you to the top of search result.

Blog: is short for weblog. This is basically an online journal of sorts that can be updated regularly. There are many free online blog providers. Wordpress and Blogger are probably the two most popular.

Internet Marketing 101: Business Blogging:

• >50% - The percentage of daily internet users who read blogs at least monthly!
• Most people read 5-10 blogs!
• Nearly 40% - of Companies use blogs for marketing!
• 55% - The percentage increase in number of website visitors for companies that blog!
• Mornings is the best time to blog!

Blogging is not only essential to Internet Marketing 101, but probably one of the easiest things you can do to increase website traffic to your website and set yourself apart from the competition. By creating a blog you give yourself an online platform to promote your expertise and set yourself up as a voice of authority on whatever it is your business does. You can post original content that you create as well as re-posting articles that your customers or clients might find interesting.

The main reason that blogging helps you increase website traffic is because of how the search engines catalog your online content. The days of cramming a bunch of keywords in to a meta tag to trick the search engine into rating you higher than you should be are well behind us. On most search engines, you are rated based on the quality of your content (videos and images are a huge plus). The frequency with which you update it is also an important criteria in their search algorithms. Enter the blog!

In our previous article Internet Marketing 101: Generating Leads from Your Website, we presented you with a general overview of all the internet marketing 101 tactics that consistently have the biggest impact on generating leads from your website.

Now it’s time to dig a little deeper and discuss keyword selection. But first, what is a keyword?

Internet Marketing 101: What is a Keyword?

Keywords are the words or phrases an online user types into a search engine. They represent the questions of the user, and generate one or more pages of results, or addresses for websites that include the keywords or answers to the initial question. You can attract qualified visitors to your site by carefully choosing the keywords they are most likely to include in their search terms. Qualified visitors are more likely to turn into new customers than random web surfers.

Driving traffic to your website begins with selecting the best keywords or keyword phrases. The question then becomes what are the best keywords and how do we find them.

Internet Marketing 101: What Are the Best Keywords for Driving Traffic to my Website?

Keywords fall into two categories: Short tail keywords and long tail keywords. Short tail keywords contain one to two words, and are usually very difficult to rank for on the search engine results, as the bigger and more established websites often hold the top spots for them. Newer websites can achieve a higher search engine spot more quickly by focusing on long tail keywords that contain three or more separate words.

The best keywords are:

• Not too broad
• Not too competitive
• Three or more words long
• Relevant to your business
• Representative of what your qualified visitors would type into a search bar

Here’s an example of both long and short tail keywords:

Long Tail Keywords:

• Nikon power shot digital camera 4MP
• 22 inch HD plasma TV free shipping
• Michelle Obama action figure

Short Tail Keywords

• Digital Camera
• plasma TV
• Mp3 Music player

As you can see, long tail keywords are much more specific and are likely being searched for by a more qualified prospect. This prospect knows what they’re looking for and wants more information in order to make an informed buying decision.

Internet Marketing 101: Keyword Selection Tips

Use these tips to brainstorm possible long tail keywords for your website. Once you have a list, use Google Adwords Keyword Tool to check how many people search for these terms locally and globally. The tool can also give you ideas for more relevant long tail keywords to include on your blog posts and web copy.