I am working on the website for hubby's small business. They just wasted a bunch of money on a web developer who did not so much and now all they have is me - BIG Uh Oh!

Anyways, I was looking for more ways to get them to pop up when people search for their category of service (painting) but everything costs so much per month. Anyone run a website and have any ideas for promoting it on a budget? We updated it in the yellowpages and are updating all the stationary/business cards? I'm stumped, so I thought I would see if anyone had any ideas.

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Mom to Kaylee (10/2006) and Madalyn (1/2009)

I just did a Google search for "frugal, online marketing" and a lot of links came up that you might find helpful. At my job, we are working on the same issue (getting a small business's name "out there"), but our budget is considerable. I know that linking sites to other similar businesses (i.e. a friend who might have another home improvement business website, is a great idea, as it benefits both site owners).

I've seen painters post their services on Craigslist. Maybe you could try that and add the link to your website in the posting.

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Attaining financial freedom is like eating an elephant . . . it takes one bite at a time.

I can help somewhat. I built a website a few months ago and have quadrupled my visits but it takes a lot of work. You need to link your site to as many other sites as possible.
If you go to Internet Marketing & Online Marketing | HubSpot this is a website grader that will grade your site and then tell you what you are doing wrong and give hints and things. I found that this has helped tremendously.
Also you need to do some kind of search on google for directories. In my case craft directories. Then you need to submit your site to as many of these as you can. For instance I found Craft Site Directory - Your guide to arts and crafts on the Internet. I submitted my link and did and recipricol and once I got approved (took about 3 weeks) that is when the hits really started. There are others like ODP - Open Directory Project, Alexa the Web Information Company, Crafts Ideas | Craft Projects, www.topiccraze.com and so on.
Also you need to sign up for a free account with google and get the google adsense. This will help. Your goal is to get a google page rank (which I still don't have yet, but am getting closer every day). You can find out what your page rank is by installing the google tool bar.
Hope this helps.
If you have any other questions, I might be able to help. And if you have any tips for me, they would be greatly appreciated.

Good luck!

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Gourds By Lori

I recommend this book:
Amazon.com: Web Marketing For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech)): Jan Zimmerman: Books

If you read this and implement the strategies, you'll be doing just about everything you should be doing.

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Make sure your website has meta tags and meta descriptions being used. In the html code, there should be meta tags which give the key words that describe your website. If it is painting, it should have words in it like residential, commercial, the cities the business operates in, etc... the search engines use these words to query your site. The more descriptive you are, the more likelyhood your name will appear higher in the rankings.

Have you gone to any networking events in your area?? Many are free or little cost. Most networking groups I have been to, have alot of realtors.. What a great way to help homes sell, re do homes..

Check out BNI
it is a organization that has local events or check out your local chamber of commerce.. [may have ideas/classes for web exposure]
Some areas also have women sucess networks.. It would be a nice night out for you and to help promote your dh business.

Thank you for the link to HubSpot. But, I think you meant to link to Website Grader. Website Grader is a free tool that lets you analyze your website and gives you some pointers.

HubSpot is a paid service that helps you manage your website and online marketing so that it generates leads for the business. Here's an article about how many small business owners can accelerate the number of leads they can generate from their website and the web by putting all of the right systems in place.

Then sign up an account with google analytics which will help you see where people are that are noticing your site. Just remember that it takes time for the search engines to pick your site up.

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In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.Mother Teresa