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Creating a Website for Your Business: Affiliate Marketing Tools and Strategies

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Having a website increases awareness for a business and generates more opportunity for it to succeed. According to Search Engine Journal, business websites that were on the first search results page of Google owed 92% of their traffic to the search engine. Even though the benefits of having a small business website are clear, challenges and difficulties may be preventing these companies from creating a business website. Leaders may not know what steps are needed to create a website or if they have the proper technological tools available.

Managers may believe that a website is too costly of an investment or that there aren’t enough benefits. And those organizations that have looked into creating and maintaining a website may have become discouraged because the process was too difficult or time-consuming. Thankfully, various resources and affiliate marketing tools can help.

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Qualities of an Effective Website for Businesses

When building a small business website, leaders and managers need to consider the elements that are fundamental to its success.

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Affiliate Marketing Tools and Strategies for Building a Website

After small business owners have an understanding of the elements that make up a high-quality website, they can use various tools and strategies to help maintain that site’s strength and performance throughout the future.

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Website Building and Optimization Tools

There are numerous affiliates and tools that can help small business leaders when creating and optimizing a website. According to PCMag, the top-rated website building tools for 2019 include Wix, Duda, Gator Website Builder, Squarespace and Simvoly. Each of these tools has certain functionalities and features that the others may not have. Company leaders need to consider their objectives before selecting a business website creation tool to ensure that it has the functionalities that are most needed and most beneficial to their audience and customers. Small business owners can also enlist the help of professional website developers when building a site, although their fees may be higher than those for platforms such as Wix and Squarespace.

When maintaining a website, small businesses can perform A/B testing, which essentially looks at how specific elements of site performance would be impacted if certain elements were changed, such as if more visitors would come to the site if the text in the page title was reorganized or if different colors for buttons on a page would lead to more clicks. HubSpot, an inbound marketing software company, offers a list of different A/B testing and web optimization tools, such as Optimizely and VWO, that may be a strong fit for small businesses. Additional tools, such as Google Analytics and Google Optimize, may also be beneficial to small business owners.

As with website building tools, there’s not necessarily a “best” optimization tool for small business owners, but more depends on the specific needs and functionalities of an individual company’s website.

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Connecting with Outside Partners and Influencers

Affiliate marketing, which Entrepreneur magazine describes as “a way for a company to sell its products by signing up individuals or companies (‘affiliates’) who market the company’s products for a commission,” may be an effective channel for growing a business. An example of affiliate marketing is a company that creates partnerships with influencers: individuals with large social media followings who can post information about the company on their own social media accounts. Then, if a user signs up for that company’s services based on the link or other information that an influencer has provided, the influencer can receive a commission. The partner doesn’t always have to be an influencer; the partner can be another business or organization that has the ability to create awareness of the company’s services. For example, company A can promote an upcoming event or a product release by placing an ad on company B’s website. Clicking on this specific ad on company B’s website will redirect visitors to a specialized landing page for company A. Because the landing page is specialized, this will enable the individuals at company A to see how many visitors clicked on that specific ad. The individuals at company A can then determine how many unique visitors they received thanks to the ad on company B’s website, and then company B will receive a commission from company A.

Even after building and maintaining an engaging website, leaders at companies and organizations still can benefit from additional marketing tools, affiliate partnerships and unique services outside of website creation and optimization.

This can include search engine marketing (SEM), which helps to promote and raise a website’s ranking within the search engine results. A common way of doing this is through Google Ads, in which companies pay for ads that can appear when certain audiences search for specific keywords. For example, a medical supply company in Boston can create a Google Ads campaign that targets keywords that residents in that area are searching for and help to increase the frequency of the company’s website in the top search results. Social media optimization (SMO) is another strategy that can help small businesses increase awareness. This can include purchasing ads on social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, that would appear to potential customers as they navigate these platforms. SMO can also include creating social media pages for a business itself, creating partnerships with influencers, and actively engaging with followers and communities to build awareness. Businesses must evaluate their objectives for their website SEM and SMO strategies, as well as the brand messaging and persona that company is trying to maintain. It may be appropriate for one organization to adopt a more casual tone when communicating on social media, but for another, that casual tone may negatively impact the company’s brand value and reduce the number of potential customers as a result.

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Additional Small Business Website Tips and Resources

There are also tools that may help organizations in specific industries as they’re creating and maintaining their websites.

As technology continues to evolve, so will industries as they adopt new tools in their efforts to reach new audiences. Entrepreneurs and small business operators and managers can now easily create effective websites and leverage affiliate marketing and other strategies to propel their success.

Sources

Amazon Pay
Capterra, Appointment Scheduling Software
Duda
Entrepreneur, Affiliate Marketing
Fundera, “How to Accept Payments Online”
Gator Website Builder
Google Ads
Google AdSense
Google Analytics
Google Optimize
HubSpot, “8 of the Best A/B Testing Tools for 2019”
Mailchimp
Optimizely
PayPal
PCMag, “The Best Website Builders for 2019”
SEJ, “60+ Mind-Blowing Search Engine Optimization Stats”
Simvoly
Squarespace
TradingView
Veem
VWO
Wix