The Wall Street Journal online recently posted an article titled “How To Create A Successful Website for Nothing (Or Almost Nothing).” In it, writer Vauhini Vara explains how small businesses owners can build their company website for as little as $10.

This reminds me of the television commercial where a guy is sitting at the dinner table with a very sharp knife in one hand - cell phone in the other - and his surgeon is instructing him on where to make the incision. Oh, the horror!

Courtesy of www.webpagesthatsuck.com
If you are serious about your business, you should be serious enough to hire a Houston web designer/developer who also has a search marketing and usability mindset. Better still, hire a professional internet marketing firm to tailor a marketing/branding strategy that match your business objectives. But I digress…

After I composed myself and continued to read through Ms. Vara’s article I was happy to discover that she included a section on “getting known”:

We asked two experts, Bruce Clay of Bruce Clay Inc. and Alan Rabinowitz of SEO Image Inc., to reveal some tricks about search-engine optimization — moving your site to the top of search-engine results.

Start with your site itself. You should use language on the site that is associated with the business. Let’s say you’re a florist. Most likely, you’ll show up prominently in search results if people search for the exact name of your business. But the trick is to show up when people search for complicated terms related to your business, like “wedding flower arrangements.” That’s because you want to attract people who might not know about your business but are looking for something that you provide.

The piece also touched on Keyword Research and the benefits of tracking your site using Google Webmaster tools.

But the most surprising tidbit was this…

In a survey published last year, JupiterResearch LLC found that just 36% of online small businesses — that is, businesses with fewer than 100 employees, where managers access the Web at least once a month — have Web sites.

It’s hard for me to imagine any company not having a website. To effectively reach customers in the 21st Century you need an online presence. Or should I say, an effective online presence. Even if you do have a website, has it become obsolete? Is it full of animated flag gifs, and heavily coded with tables and javascript rollover navigation? Are you asking your user to download huge pdf and video files? Is your site full of link rot?

If you’re not sure if your website falls into any of these categories, check out the Web Pages That Suck top 10 lists. Or, go through the web design checklist to see if your site sucks.

According to the Houston Business Journal, you can add marketing punch to your site by simply re-tooling it through effective search engine marketing. Don’t settle for a $10 website.