Starter for 10... getting your business noticed online

  1. Get a website address you can reasonably guess. There are no prizes for being quirky. If your business is called Creative Print Solutions, then cps.co.uk is great
  2. Keep it simple with no splash pages or clever video intros. People just want tools to use your site: interactivity and forums to bring people together work well
  3. Encourage your customers and suppliers to provide links to your site from their online activities
  4. Register with internet directories. It will get you some links from some high profile domains
  5. Submit your site to search engines. Google and Yahoo! need to know you’re there and it gives you control over how you are listed
  6. Get tooled up, by downloading Google toolbars for example, to see the page rank of your site and others’ sites
  7. Check out what else is going on in your industry by visiting forums and bulletin boards on the industry
  8. Make sure each page on your site has useful, keyword-centric information in the titles
  9. Know your traffic. Google Analytics and Alexa are free and let you look at the traffic on and through your site, as well as your competition
  10. Don’t waste your money on paying over the odds for the top key AdWords. You’ll get better value using related words with less competition