How to create a simple website for local traffic?

[T]

Hello!

I sell kitchen cabinets wholesale to the public and this is a local business where 90% of my customers are within, say, 10 miles. I have seen the yp.com yellow page websites where the site is usually not more than a 1-page website designed to generate phone calls or emails from prospective customers. I really do NOT want to go the yp route as I believe you need to have a yellow pages ad. I work from home and I do not want people knocking on the door lol.

In summary-I am looking for a pathway here, where I can build a simple site myself and key the seo to my very close proximity customer base. When someone enters,"Kitchen cabinets-Santa Cruz, CA", I would like to be visible on the first or second results page. My goal is to generate phone and email inquiries, and to allow people to request a color brochure if they would like one mailed to them. Any suggestions about software and/or tutorials would be great!

Thank you SO much for your input!!!

[Go with the flow]

I learned how to build a website in just 2 short weekends with a good book from a bookstore.
Other option:
Do you know any high school or college kids in your family? Any neighbors?
Just about all kids know how to do this.
A cousin? A nephew?

[Jake]

There are plenty of free 1 page business sites available, a step up in quality would be ti use a free blog host with an official business web site name you obtain separately, like at Godaddy.comn or Namecheap.com, you can made an adaquate business site with a blog platform, who's big advantage is essentially no programming is required. The big old school names: Google's Blogger.com hosting some 1.2 Billion pages, with no paid upgrades and Wordpress.com, the free host version of industry standard blog platform that's probably a bit more versatile than blogger, but charges for adding on a domain name. Incorporating the city name in the domain name has in the past been a search ranking booster, though the advantage may be getting reduced.

Getting prospects to the site is your biggest challenge kitchencabinetssantacruz.com and santacruzkitchencabinets.com are currently available, a bit long for SEO optimizing guidelines, you might do as well with santacruzcabinets, no hyphen is generally better, you can capitalize words on your business card and the SantaCruzKitchenCabinets address form will still work.

Part of optimizing a site for search is having list of target search phrases to incorporate in your content to boost rankling. There are automated tools that will report your result position for each keyword (if in the top 100) you can't succeed just targeting a single search phrase. Ths tool identifies related searches people are actually making (local [exact match]) gives the most realistic estimates.
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Being to show a business address had powerful benefits, just the contact information on a web site is used by search engines as a form of documentation, the verify it by finding the exact same format address on the various business directories (many free to submit to) you can try non USPS box offices that look like street addresses, you can use suite in stead of POB, but the search engines recognize these and will give poor ranking to those using one. There are just too mane fraudulent operators trying to be listed in many different cities, those with a phantom address will have a hard time getting favorable search ranking.

The easiest way to be found in a local search is a free Google Places Page, try Google searching: cabinetry, your city, the A-G stick pins are the top 7 local results, there may be more, but those top 7 get the lion's share of business. Supposedly having lots of citations of the exact same address in other Yellowpage, superpage, yelp sort of sites, some reviews on the places page, a decent ranking company web site the places page points to all effect the ranking of the page, as does it's age.
There are services that will do the tedious citation creation over time, or you can pay someone $5 at Fiverr.com do do some (search for citations there) Getting a free social site presence on sites like Facebook, Google Plus, Pinterest all with links to your business site helps your credibility with the search engines as well as reaching more prospects.

Although internet advertising can normally be seen by anyone in the world, (a poor way to scatter your funds) you can geo target ads on many of the ad networks, 2 of the best self serve ad systems to try for starters, Google's Adwords, their "Sponsored Search" ads can deliver the best qualified prospects, if a campaign, including the keyword selection, ad copy and landing page design are carefully coordinated. There is a lot to learn to make these ads the most profitable, but if you went with paid internet instead of yellow page ads, the investment may be worth some learning/management time.
Facebook paid ads can target people in cities within a certain radius of your city, or only people who's profile says they live in your town. (Google's targeting, as most others rely on people's internet service provider's IP address and a not entirely accurate location lookup chart) While search ads are intercepting people who are specifically searching for something you have a solution for, Facebook is more like ads on the comic page of the newspaper, you have to interrupt someone's social meandering to just get them to your site or your Facebook Business page (also free) There are first time user coupons for $30 to $100 available for both Facebook and Google Adwords, don't miss getting one, Some web hosting companies and marketing companies offer them as bonuses, you can find Adword ad manager services that might be OK for a couple month test. (Some have held their client account for ransom, get a reputable one) While internet ads almost always send people to a web page, I believe you are allowed to put a phone number in an advert, if using pay per click you might get free prospects now and then,.

[faintcap166]

honestly you might want to consider getting a paid hosting account, domain name, and setting up a simple Wordpress site. The cost of a small hosting plan would be less than $75 year.

If all this seems too complicated please check out our article

http://computergeeks2go.com/101guides/ca...cs-series/

which runs through the basics. We would be happy to assist you with your site and hosting. Please contact us, we will be happy to work with you.

[zaquisimone]

This is a great question and it seemed no one was able to answer you correctly. There is no need to run around trying to figure out how to build a website. Site Build It is a great company that helps businesses build traffic generating websites. Tapping in to your local market using the web is a snap once you understand how to make it happen. Here is a great e-book. It is the Local Business Masters Course This book is so good. You will learn how to create a buzz for your Business, target your market and on the plus end learn how to use your site to get paid from Google using their ad sense program. The E-book is free. Enjoy and good luck with your website.

I was a total newbie to building a website but I was into Music Software and home studios so using the SBI Step by Step Process I built this site. http://www.thebestmusicsoftware.com/

[Gee]

Creating traffic is about generating the right factors for you to have tons of visitor and thus giving you a result of high page rank. For you to achieve it is by making your site with good contents first, research and learn about web development and then engage with other SEO works. And that would be back linking. Though keywords used in your site is also important, the issue of spreading the existence of your site is quote vital if you want to have good traffic. But, if you're only after with local traffic, there are certain options in which you can categorize your site towards the number of search engine sites you want to be visible as it is linked with which particular country you want it to be viewed. Those sort of things can be learned , so just explore the world of SEO and learn how to work with those techniques.=)

If you want to have a better understanding about SEO, check this site: http://infinity-web-solutions.com

[Greg Greenamyer]

Hi T,

I work with local business owners all the time and have a website providing a lot of free information
on developing a successful online presence. Feel free to take a look.

Greg

[Sultana]

To create a simple website you can use word press or blogger. This is very simple and easy.