UK business ideas

Advice on starting a business

Starting your own business can be very daunting. You need help and advice along the way, even if you don't think you do!

A good place to start can be your accountant if they use a business advisor. They should offer you good advice since you are their customer and it is in their interests to make sure that your business grows.

If you are going into partnership with someone, no matter how well you know them, make sure that you get a very good agreement put in place. I don't think that you require a solicitor to go over it but you might want to check that. You certainly need some sort of signed or email acceptance to the agreement.

Marketing your business

Having tried most marketing ways myself, such as local directories, email marketing, telemarketing and mail shots I have found my website to be my best marketing tool. You can't just write a website or have one done for you and hope that it will make you rich but if you promote it correctly it can bring you in a lot of work.

By website promotion I mean getting the right company that you can trust to ensure that your website appears at the top of the major search engines. IT Magic offer website promotion and follow Google guidelines therefore don't try any black hat tricks to get your website to the top of Google.

What do they do:

• Check your website for errors
• Analyse your website for onsite optimisation
• Submit your website to relevant directories
• Submit a sitemap to Google
• Research the best keywords to use to promote your website
• Make sure that the meta tags are correct and relevant
• Start a link building campaign