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Tips For Improving Small Business Websites

Maintaining a website for your small business is a necessary step in today's increasingly online world. However, even if your business has a website, you may not be fully taking advantage of it. Below are a few tips to take your site to the next level.

Track your progress. The key to maximizing the benefits of your website for your business is determining which strategies work and which ideas are less successful. Information like website traffic, duration of visits and location of customers can help ensure that you are maximizing the effectiveness of your site. Since many tracking services—most notably Google's analytics tools—are free or inexpensive, setting the analytics tracking up on your site is a breeze.

Review and optimize. Is your website achieving the best possible visibility when your potential customers are searching for you? If you haven't put in the work to optimize your website for search engines, you may be missing out on valuable business. To successfully upgrade your SEO, first take some time to discover which relevant keywords your customer base will be using to search for your services. With those keywords in mind, review the content on your website and make sure you've incorporated the relevant terms into your site's text.

Take it mobile. Increasingly, people are searching for businesses from their mobile devices. This is great news for small business owners, since it means that you can literally be in the palm of a potential customer's hands. However, mobile only works to your advantage if you've taken the necessary steps to make your website available on tablets, phones and other devices. Your website provider should be able to help you get the project started. By taking the steps to take your website mobile, you'll open your website up to a whole new base of consumers on the go.

In addition to making sure you have implemented tracking features, SEO and mobile-friendly design, be sure to refresh your website periodically to keep it relevant and engage your visitors. With these systems and features in place, your website will be accessible—and your efforts trackable—as you continue to grow your business and your online presence.

Emma Sledge is a freelance writer. Her work can be found on Examiner.com.

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