The House That JAC Built - Just Add Content Blog

How free website content hurts your business

As content marketing gains popularity, small businesses are seeing the value of website content to generate traffic and increase sales.

But not all content is good content. Good content is difficult to consistently produce, so some businesses resort to adding free content to their website.

This is a bad idea. Free website content is very bad for your business.

If free content is found on your website it could hurt your search engine rankings and lower your website traffic. This can translate to substantial financial losses and has even forced some companies out of business.

Why free content will hurt your business

Google succeeds by providing the best search results to its users. If Google stopped providing high quality search results people would start using a different search engine. Therefore, it’s in Google’s best interest to give high quality search results.

If content is free, it’s likely found on other websites like the place you found it and websites using the same free content. This is not quality content because it’s duplicate content and is found elsewhere. If you really want to share it, just link to it, don’t copy it.

Free content is typically of very low quality because nobody gives away their best content for free. Low quality, poorly written content is of little value to website visitors and provides a bad user experience.

Some businesses try to get around this by making changes and swapping out words. This is called “spinning” content and it doesn’t work very well because it’s still low quality content. In fact, the “spun” version of content is often worse than the original (which was probably bad to begin with).

There’s no way around it. If you use free content on your website you’ll eventually be penalized.

If free content is bad for business, why is it so popular?

In the past it was fairly easy to rank for certain keywords by throwing any kind of content on your website, even free content found on another website.

Over the last few years Google made changes to its algorithm to penalize search results for websites with low quality content like this. Sites penalized include websites with:

Low quality content (of little value)
Duplicate content (found elsewhere)
Thin content (insufficient length to be of value)

Free content typically falls into two or more these categories.

These low quality penalties even extend to websites using their own content multiple times because this is also considered duplicate content.

Unfortunately, some so-called “SEO experts” haven’t done a very good job at keeping up with these changes and still recommend or offer services with these tactics. You can also still find plenty of websites recommending these tactics, so beware.

How to win

Remember, Google’s goal is to give high quality search results to users. If you want to rank in Google, your goal should always be to give value to your website visitors. Do this by offering high quality content that they can’t find anywhere else. If you always do this, you have nothing to worry about. It’s also the best way to protect yourself from future changes in the Google algorithm.

To lean more about how SEO really works, check out our article on the truth about SEO for small businesses.

How small businesses should think about mobile

Across the web around 1/3 of internet traffic is from mobile devices and that percentage is growing. How should your business handle it?

Most small businesses are late to embrace mobile and they’re missing out. At the other end of the spectrum are small businesses that are wasting money on mobile technologies they don’t need.

For example, we get small businesses asking if they need a mobile app or if they should have a different website for each device. Some businesses rush into each new mobile fad they hear about, but there will always be new fads. This is the wrong way to think about mobile.

Think back to around 2006 when the mobile revolution was just beginning. What was the big thing? It was .mobi domains. Too many businesses wasted thousands of dollars on .mobi websites.

The.mobi craze seems silly now, right? But remember that .mobi domains kind of made sense back then. Anything can make sense when it’s new because there’s so much uncertainty. Remember this, it’s a very expensive thing to forget.

Mobile matters, but rushing in and chasing fads is the wrong thing to do–especially for small businesses on a budget. Unless your business has a specific use case for a mobile technology, a responsive website is probably good enough to satisfy your mobile needs.

The best new responsive websites are built with HTML 5 and work seamlessly across all devices, from desktops to tables and smartphones. This means you only need one website to serve ALL of your customers, this is what sets responsive websites apart. We’re big fans of HTML5 responsive design and use it in all of our business website templates.

Updating your website to a responsive design will allow you to serve all your customers on any device without wasting thousands of dollars. Though we’ll continue to see new mobile fads come and go, a responsive website is a smart bet for now.

Why small businesses absolutely need to check out ‘Google My Business’

Google My Business is a free Google product that makes it easy for businesses to manage their online presence.

Rather that individually managing business listings in Google+, Search, and Maps, businesses can now manage them all in Google My Business.

In Google My Business you’ll also be able to manage Google Reviews, Insights, Google Analytics, and start a Hangout. I wouldn’t be surprised if more features get added in the future.

In the past small businesses often neglected their Google presence because it was all too complicated to manage. Though Google My Business isn’t perfect, it makes it easier for small businesses.

If your business already has a Google+ or Google Places Page, you’re automatically upgraded to Google My Business when you login, so you won’t have to create another account.

While Google My Business is not a replacement for a website, it’s a great compliment to any business’ online presence by making it all easier to manage!

Reasons why small businesses DON’T NEED a website

We scoured the earth on your behalf for legitimate reasons a small business doesn’t need a website. Here’s what we came up with:

You’re a spy agency and don’t want to be found (I’m looking at you, NSA)
You have too many customers
You’re making too much money
Your primary customers are The Flintstones

Well, we tried.

The most common reason we hear from small businesses for not having a website is: “we don’t need one.”

That’s unlikely due to the many uses for a business website including customer support, lead generation, task automation, and more. But when it comes down to it your website isn’t for you, it’s for your customers.

If a customer has ever asked for directions, about your products, what time you close, about your return policies, etc. then a website can help your business. This kind of information could all be on your website.

If you don’t have a website, imagine how many prospective customers have searched online for your contact info, hours, location, products, etc. If prospective customers can’t find this information about your business, then your business doesn’t exist and they’ll go elsewhere. Wouldn’t you?

Some older business owners still believe a Yellow Pages listing is enough. While Yellow pages are still used by older audiences, there are many younger people who’ve never even used the Yellow Pages. Times are a ‘changin.

The best reason to have a website is that there’s no reason not to because these days getting a website is easier than ever.

If you want a free DIY solution, go with WordPress.com and upgrade as your budget allows. Their small business product needs work, but it’s the best free long-term solution out there.

If your business can spare $69 and you’d rather have the hard stuff done for you, try our premium business website services.

Heck, even if our services aren’t right for you, but you have questions or need help reach out and we’ll point you in the right direction. All we think about is business websites and we love helping other small businesses.

Whatever you do, just get a website. Do it for the children…you know, the ones that have never used the Yellow Pages.

How to grow your business by integrating your website with AWeber

Aweber Website Integration What’s the single best way to keep in touch with your customers and stay top of mind? Email marketing.

What’s the best way to make repeat sales? Email marketing.

What’s the best to grow your audience and build your brand? Newspaper ads. Just kidding! Again, it’s email marketing.

If email marketing is so important, why isn’t every business doing it? I’m not quite sure, but we can identify with them. We don’t even do a great job at email marketing ourselves, but we’re doing it and getting better all the time.

I guess it’s just one of those things that you just start when you’re finally ready to. Well, when you’re ready to start consider AWeber.

AWeber is a great choice because they focus on serving small businesses like us. They were also founded in 1998, making them one of the oldest email marketing companies around. AWeber also offers auto-responders and email sign-up forms.

After integrating AWeber with your website you can add an email sign-up form to any page of your website, in the sidebar, below blog posts, or anywhere else you want it. This makes it easy for those who stop by your website to get on your email list and grow your audience. If you’re not capturing these visitors, they’re gone forever and you’re losing sales.

So, do yourself a favor and kick your business into high gear by adding email marketing to your arsenal. We feature an AWeber website integration that makes connecting your website with AWeber super easy.

If you don’t use AWeber, we also have website integrations for Constant Contact, MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, and more.

Why small businesses need a content management system (CMS)

Remember back when small businesses needed a web designer to make even the smallest of changes to website? Well, unfortunately there are still millions of small businesses that still believe they do.

Almost 50% of small businesses still don’t have websites because they believe it’s 1) too difficult, 2) too expensive, or 3) too time consuming to do themselves.

There’s also a large percentage of businesses that believe they “don’t need” a website, but that’s not the real reason they don’t have websites. If getting and maintaining a website was quick, easy, and affordable enough they’d have one.

For example, you probably don’t “need” your chimney swept or gutters cleaned right now, but if I came to your door and made it convenient and cheap enough you’d probably say yes.

This is what content management systems (CMS) do for small businesses, they make creating and maintaining a website convenient and cheap. They make creating posts and updating websites as easy as sending email.

Some CMSs come with website builders to create your own business website. Others are all-in-one hosted platforms and take care of all the setup, security, maintenance. Most offer customization options so you can build it yourself to start, then hire a web designer later when your budget allows.

Whatever your needs, there’s a CMS out there for your business. Just beware of CMS that lock you in by making it difficult or impossible to transfer your content.

Learn more about content management systems and what they can do for your business in our small business CMS guide.

Choosing website hosting for your small business website

So, you’re finally ready to make a website for your business and you’ve already picked a domain name (if not, here’s a free business domain name guide).

Or maybe you already have a website, but learned the hard way that the $5 a month website host might be fine for hobby bloggers, but not business websites like yours.

Choosing the wrong website host is expensive and time-consuming because it’s so painful to move your website. So let’s talk about the right way to pick a website host. Here are some factors to consider:

Cost
Time
Maintenance
Security
Technical expertise
Reliability
Performance
Features

Let’s talk more about each one and how they relate to your business.

Time

As a business owner, you can always make more money but you can never make more time. The time you waste struggling with your website is time away from your family and building your business. It might only be a few hours here and there, but it adds up quickly.

What’s your hourly rate? Even if you value it at only $50 an hour, if you waste 10 hours a month messing with your website you’re down $500 when you could’ve just paid someone $100 and had it done right. Time is money, especially in business.

Maintenance

This also ties into time, but how much maintenance is required to keep your site running well? Every website requires updates (especially software updates) of some kind. Depending on your hosting setup, either you’ll do these updates, your host will do them, or you’ll pay someone to do them for you.

As you move upstream to higher quality hosts you’ll get more of the maintenance done for you. Ideally, you want a host that does it all for you so you can focus on growing your business. You shouldn’t even have to think about it.

Security

Most businesses underestimate website security, but 30,000 websites are hacked every day and most of them belong to small businesses! If a personal blog gets hacked, it’s not such a big deal. But if your business website gets hacked, you lose money.

Not only will getting hacked lower your customers’ trust in you, but it can also get your business website removed from the Google search results. If you don’t show up in search, then you don’t exist.

The security of your website depends on a number of factors, so hosts have different levels of security. Ask about the security measures a host has in place before trusting them with your website. As an example, see our security measures.

Reliability

If your website is always down, nothing else matters. Find out how reliable your website host is before switching.

No website host can promise 100% server uptime, but 99.9% uptime is a reasonable expectation. 99.9% is what we and other high quality website hosts aim for.

Performance

Performance is a broad category and covers everything from how fast your website loads to how well you rank in search engines (SEO).

When it comes to website load speed, every extra second it takes for your website to load costs you sales. In fact, speed is so important that Google made it a factor in their search engine rankings.

Search engine rankings are another performance metric. In addition to speed, how your website is built (structure) and marked-up (schema data and meta/html tags) determines how well you’ll rank in search results.

With the low-cost website hosts it’s up to you to make sure your site is set up properly for SEO. On the other hand, we and other high quality hosts do it all for you.

Technical Expertise

As you’ve probably figured out by now, doing all the above requires a certain level of technical expertise.

With lower priced website hosts you’re stuck doing most of this stuff yourself. If you enjoy it and don’t mind taking the time to keep up with it all, this might be perfect for you.

But if you prefer not to do it all yourself, consider a fully managed (full-service) website host like us (small businesses), Happy Tables (restaurants), or Shopify (online stores).

Features

Features vary widely between website hosts based on whether it’s a fully managed host, or a low-cost, all-purpose website host. Here are some less common features and are especially useful to small businesses:

Automatic software updates
Content delivery network (CDN)
Built-in server-side caching
Hassle-free maintenance
Security guarantee
Daily website backups
Business tool suite

Since we’re a fully managed host, all the above features are included in our hosting packages. Budget hosts don’t include these features so you’ll have to do it yourself or pay someone else to do it, but you’ll also pay less for your hosting.

There’s a perfect website host out there for every businesses, just decide which factors are most important to you. If you place a premium on quality and want it all done for you choose a fully managed website host. If price is you biggest concern, go with a low-cost host but make sure you keep your website updated.

Why It Matters

We often meet business owners on low-cost hosts who say they’ve never worried about these things and everything seems fine. They’re either unaware of the risks or they believe these things just happen automatically. Don’t end up like that.

This is why 30,000 websites (most belonging to small businesses) are hacked everyday. Of these hacked website, out of date software is by far the leading cause. It never seems to matter until your website is the one that gets hacked. But if your website isn’t secure, it’s only a matter of time.

Businesses with a neglected website will also never realize the true potential of their website to increase sales. A website is potentially the most cost-effective marketing tool a business has. But if it’s slow, unsecure, poorly designed, and doesn’t rank well in search engines then it won’t do much for your business.

To learn more about website hosting for small businesses, check out our free web hosting guide for businesses.

Integrate your website with MailChimp to grow your audience through email marketing

MailChimp Website Integration
The best way to grow your audience and increase sales is through email marketing. Email marketing is so effective because it allows you to speak directly to those who want to hear from you.

As you add quality content to your website and establish yourself as an expert in your field, your audience will grow. Your readers will share your content, which lets even more people find you. By allowing your audience to subscribe by email, they can more easily keep up with and share what you publish.

This is valuable to businesses because you can share new products and specials with this same list to increase sales. But to do it all right, you need a solid email marketing app.

One of our favorite email marketing apps is MailChimp. MailChimp is great because it’s easy to use, has a generous free plan, and stays affordable as your email marketing efforts grow.

MailChimp is also integration friendly, so it integrates well with our opt-in and custom form builders so you can collect email address and grow your email list anywhere on your website.

To learn more about how MailChimp can integrate with your website, check out our dedicated MailChimp website integration page.

If you don’t use MailChimp, we also have website integrations for Constant Contact, AWeber, Campaign Monitor, and more.

Need help picking a domain name for your business website? Here’s a free guide.

If you’re trying to choose a domain name for your business website, you probably feel in over your head. You have questions like:

How long should it be?
Does I need a .com or are the other domain extensions ok?
How much should I pay?
Is it ok to use numbers or dashes in my domain name?
Should I buy a domain name from someone?
What is domain privacy? Do I need it?
What other factors should I consider?

These are great questions, but unfortunately most new businesses don’t ask them.

The result? Low quality domain names that reflect poorly on a business. By the time businesses owner realizes their mistake, it’s expensive to fix since the domain name is already established.

Spare yourself from these mistakes and start right with our free guide below!

Domain Name Guide

Free WordPress plugin for small businesses

Which WordPress plugins to use?

The biggest issues we hear from businesses starting with WordPress is knowing which plugins to use. With tens of thousands of plugins in the repository, it’s a difficult task.

So, for those new to self-hosting WordPress we created a free plugin that recommends the best-in-class plugins for each category and tells the user if they’re installed and activated.

The plugin may seem overly simple to an experienced WordPress user, but we often forget what it’s like to be brand new to WordPress. That’s who this plugin is for, those who are brand new to WordPress.

Now instead of answering the same questions over and over when helping new WordPress users, we just point them to this plugin to get them 90% of the way there. If you often find yourself answering the same basic plugin questions also, try recommending this plugin.

Where to get it

Learn more about the plugin here or get it from the official WordPress plugin page here.