Congratulations! You’ve taken a solid step forward by creating your website. Notice how the whole process is hydra-like, where you tackle one task and a few more pop up? Such is the effort needed in setting up and growing your website! To help ease your mind, here are a few tips you’ll likely find useful as you journey to the top of search engine rankings.

Tip #1: Ease up on the ads! Cluttering your website with ad blocks may dilute your message. Instead, focus on developing a clear message through your blog, graphics, and original content and highlight it. Remember, your business website should focus on telling potential customers about you, your products, and your team.

Tip #2: “My social media page is useless; no one engages with it and it doesn’t bring in any revenue.” Sound like something you’d say? Well, before you say so, you should know that building your website requires investment to get more traffic and sales. Advertising tools such as paid Facebook ads and eBooks will greatly help to reach people interested in what you have to offer. Use them to build your brand, your customer base, and your list. Once established, you can begin monetizing your social media profiles through them!

Tip #3: Don’t overdo it – keep your web presence to one profile for every platform. Once you add a blog or a Facebook page, don’t add too many at once. The beauty of it is, you can go back and tweak your designs, your graphic design, your content, and your message. Focus on optimizing a single profile.

Tip # 4: Customers are the fundamental source of any business, which is why they are always right – even when they are wrong. Given this importance, always remember to set a friendly, warm tone on your posts. Majority of your customers are probably new to your business, so you should make it easy for them to buy from you.

Tip #5: Don’t use your web presence for spam. Remember, your business website is an extension of your business. Just as your store wouldn’t have an endless stream of redundant or inappropriate posters hanging up the walls, so do the same with your website. Keep it clean and concise. Use your blog to share information, not to post sales pitches.

Tip #6: Developing your graphic is really important. By having custom graphics, your pages will be more memorable. This alone makes your business stronger. Feel free to grab ideas (or the design itself) from various free websites available, but take the time to develop your own graphic that perfectly reflects your business and appeals to customer aesthetics.

Tip #7: Establish your web presence. This will help you get more traffic, because people who come from search engines will see your page through the results. Of course, having your own website is the best way to get more traffic.

Tip #8: Use your email extensively. Your email is a powerful tool and it’s not just for building your business. It’s also an effective tool to get your content to your audience. Your email will prove to be useful when you need to notify others when you have made changes to your page.

Tip #9: Know your rights. You should always remember that you are entitled to update your pages. Even if something as small as changing the color of the background or the text on your page. You should always remember that your web presence is yours and you are allowed to change it. Improving your website consistently will also help you increase your search engine ranking.

Tip #10: Don’t feel bad about charging for your services! Some people think they should just post a template on their page and be done with it. This is not true. You are using your hard work and are entitled to ask for appropriate compensation.

Tip #11: Don’t lose your cool! Never getting angry is a very basic rules to follow. A small thing happening now will affect you at a later date. It is also important that you should never be mad at someone else. The moment you allow your anger to get the better of you, your page loses engagement and ranking. Always remember that the whole point of web presence is to make money. To make money, you need customers, who will definitely not stay after witnessing negative outbursts on your page.

Tip #12: Be yourself. There is no point in trying to act or be someone that you’re not. Presenting yourself as someone you’re not will not hold up in the long run; you will eventually be found out and lose your credibility.

Tip #13: Be interactive. You should never forget to engage your audience. By engaging them, you are ensuring that your visitors are treated to enough content to be interested in you. There is no way you can lose your followers if you are always interacting with them.

Building a website is no simple task, but with these tips, you’re sure to get a head start. Keep these to heart and you’ll find your web presence growing steadily in no time!