Choosing a new look and style for your website is one of the most exciting parts of creating (or recreating) your online presence. Fortunately, there are a several great places where you can find professional website templates (commonly referred to as “themes”) that will have the flexibility to fit into your vision.

Before choosing a new theme, you need to commit to what platform your website will be built on. I always recommend WordPress. It’s flexible, simple to learn and has some great SEO benefits. Best of all WordPress developers are constantly putting out new themes that you can use to make your small business website look great. This means that you don’t have to start from scratch with your website design and you don’t have to be a professional designer in order to have an incredible looking website.

There are hundreds of themes out there for you to choose from and even the higher-end themes cost under $100 (a great investment).

Here are my favorite places to find professional WordPress themes for your website or blog:

•    WooThemes – www.woothemes.com
•    StudioPress – www.studiopress.com
•    Perfectory – www.perfectory.com
•    Thesis – www.diythemes.com
•    ThemeForest – www.themeforest.net

As you search through these websites, save the links to the themes you like best (copy and paste from the address bar to a Word doc) so you can compare and share all of your top choices at once when you’re finished searching.

Even if you pick a WordPress theme that looks unique to you, you will want to visualize the new theme you select as a base layout that a web developer change elements of…such as images, colors, or even font sizes.

Freaked out about using a template or theme, instead of an original design? Don’t be. For more than 10 years, I’ve reviewed hundreds of websites and have visited thousands more. And only a few times have I looked at a website and realized that I had seen that same theme on another company’s website.

So what are you waiting for? Explore these sites and start building your list of potential candidates to create or recreate the look of your new website.

The best advice for the success of your website and online marketing is much like the rest of our lives: Sometimes the best ideas come in small packages. Glance through these 33 quotes from marketing pros and see if you agree. If you’ve been looking to increase the ROI of your website and online presence, very often it’s just a single concept or simple idea that can make the entire process more focused and tangible. Read on to see if a few end up making a big change and bigger profits for your business.

In today’s business environment, a company’s website is the key to their entire business.
- Marcus Sheridan, Author of The Sales Lion

Remarkable online content and great sales copy are pretty much the same — plain spoken words designed to focus on the needs of the reader, listener, or viewer.
- Brian Clark, Founder of Copyblogger

One way to understand all social media is to consider each platform to be a new kind of public space.
- Danah Boyd, Social Media Researcher of Microsoft

Increasing your website ROI begins with never forgetting three simple words of action; attract, persuade, and connect.
- Gregg Murray, Author of Website Blueprint

People share, read and generally engage more, when content is surfaced through those they know and trust.
- Malorie Lucich, Facebook Spokesperson

Think about what a user is going to type.
- Matt Cutts, Google

The internet has turned what used to be a controlled, one-way message into real-time dialogue with the masses.
- Danielle Sacks, Fast Company Writer

The very first piece of social media real estate I’d start with is a blog.
- Chris Brogan, New Marketing Labs Founder

Give them quality. That’s the best kind of advertising.
- Milton Hershey, Founder of the Hershey Chocolate Company

People shop and learn in a whole new way compared to just a few years ago, so marketers need to adapt or risk extinction.
- Brian Halligan, Co-Author of Inbound Marketing & CEO of Hubspot

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about.
- Benjamin Franklin

The Web is like your Hollywood agent: It speaks for you whenever you’re not around to comment.
- Chris Brogan & Julien Smith, Authors of Trust Agents

Search, a marketing method that didn’t exist a decade ago, provides the most efficient and inexpensive way for businesses to find leads.
- John Batelle, Founder of Federated Media Publishing

Doing well with blogging is not about writing one key post, it is about performing day after day and helping a few people at a time.
- Aaron Wall, Author of The SEO Book Blog

Word-of-mouth marketing has always been important. Today, it’s more important than ever because of the power of the Internet.
- Joe Pulizzi & Newt Barrett, Authors of Get Content Get Customers

Corporations must answer questions about why they should be in the blogosphere. Small businesses need to answer questions about why they shouldn’t.
- Paul Gillin, Author of the New Influencers

Twitter is not a technology. It’s a conversation. And it’s happening with or without you.
- Charlene Li, Co-Author of Groundswell

Companies are learning that it’s much better to offer customers a place to give direct feedback at their virtual doorstep than to ignore complaints and let them crop up everywhere.
- Brian Reich & Dan Solomon, Authors of Media Rules

Marketing isn’t magic. There is a science to it.
- Dan Zarrela, Social Media Scientist at Hubspot

By publishing content that shows buyers you understand their problems and can show them how to solve them, you build credibility.
- Ardath Albee, Author of Emarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale

Authenticity, honesty, and personal voice underlie much of what’s successful on the Web.
- Rick Levine, Co-Author of The ClueTrain Manifesto

If you have more money than brains, you should focus on outbound marketing. If you have more brains than money, you should focus on inbound marketing.
- Guy Kawasaki, Co-Founder of Alltop

The attention economy is not growing, which means we have to grab the attention that someone else has today.
- Brent Leary, Co-Founder of CRM Essentials

Increasingly, search is our mechanism for how we understand ourselves, our world, and our place within it.
- John Batelle, Founder Federated Media Publishing

What happens online is you are constantly dealing with invisible audiences.
- Danah Boyd, Social Media Researcher for Microsoft

Clarity trumps persuasion.
- Dr Flint McGaughline, Director of MecLabs

I can take what I learned from writing articles, educate a new audience with a new channel, and leapfrog other companies who aren’t embracing this now.
- Brian J. Carroll, CEO of Intouch

Traditional methods of sales prospecting are grossly inefficient.
- Jill Konrath, Author of Snap Selling

What we really need is a mindset shift that will make us relevant to today’s consumers, a mindset shift from ‘telling & selling’ to building relationships.
- Jim Stengel, Former Global Marketing Officer of Procter & Gamble

To be successful and grow your business and revenues, you must match the way you market your products with the way your prospects learn about and shop for your products.
- Brian Halligan, Co-Author of Inbound marketing & CEO of Hubspot

In this age of microblogging and two-second sound bites, almost no one has the attention span, or time, to read more than a few sentences.
- Tim Frick, Author of Return to Engagement

Hyperlinks are the twenty-first-century equivalent of the name-dropper.
- Chris Brogan & Julien Smith, Authors of Trust Agents

When you break down all the fluff, there are two ways to promote and market your business: dumber, slower, and expensive —or smarter, faster, and cheaper.
- David Siteman Garland, Host of Rise to the Top

Six up-and-coming online marketing experts were recently interviews for a series of audio blog posts at Website Blueprint. The interviews covered over 50 questions most frequently asked by small business owners and entrepreneurs. It’s now available free (on this very page) as the Website Blueprint Online Marketing Audio Series. Take a listen to the interviews below.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) 101
Craig Fifield of www.craigfifield.com discusses simple way to get your website to appear higher in Google.

Local SEO 101
Jon Rognerud of www.chaosmap.com discusses ways to be appear in Google’s local search results.

Email Marketing 101
Justin Premick of www.aweber.com discusses how to get started with email marketing.

Social Media 101
Laura Roeder of www.lauraroeder.com discusses which social media networks may be the best match for your business.

Business Blogging 101
Wendy Maynard of www.mavendiary.com discusses why a blog is so important for small businesses web sites.

Online & SEO Copywriting 101
Erika Napoletano of www.redheadwriting.com discusses how website wording can persuade visitors (and Google).

Interviews were conducted by award-winning website consultant, Gregg Murray. Gregg Murray is a website strategy blogger for AllBusiness.com, a website marketing contributor to The State Journal, and author of Website Blueprint: The Beginners Guide for Small Business Owners.

On May 1, I’ll be selecting 10 websites for a free video review. Be sure to get your name on this list today.

Wonder if you’ll get some good (free) advice? See what other folks have said.

Click Here for Your Chance to Win Now

How valuable is your website if it doesn’t generate new business for you? Today’s economy makes it more crucial than ever to maximize your business online. Most small business websites contain elements that make a site engaging to both visitors and the search engines (the two audiences you always want to keep in mind). However, there are dozens of mistakes that small business websites should avoid. If you can keep in mind these seven-sins, your web presence will be much more inviting and profitable.

1. Bad Navigation
Ever gone to a website and been overwhelmed with the drop down menus and confusing navigation? Consider your customers when building or recreating your links or navigation. The process of finding anything a customer may need on your website should be no more than one or two clicks away. As a reference, find someone who calls themselves “tech challenged,” then ask them to go to your website and find a few items that would be important to your customer base. If your test dummy can’t find the information, it’s time to simplify the navigation process.

2. No Opt-In Email Marketing
A website that does not include opt-in email marketing is just an online business card (not an online marketing tool). In order to build business with your website, you need to get visitors into a sales funnel. The only way to get prospects into that sales funnel is to persuade them to give you their email address in exchange for something of value – most often, a special report or piece of helpful information. When someone arrives at your physical location/business, wouldn’t it be great if you could find a way to stay in touch with him or her even after they leave? That’s the power of incorporating opt-in email marketing into the online side of your business.

3. Too Much Information
Unless you run an e-commerce or news-based website, your online presence is simply a marketing tool that should be presented to further a sales process. That’s why you don’t want to overwhelm your visitors with too much information. Just provide enough so visitors get the basics of what they want to know, so they feel it’s necessary to contact or visit you for more information. If your web pages (and especially your home page) has a word count over 500, it’s time to do some editing. Make sure your copy is written in short paragraphs and bullet points wherever possible.

4. Not Enough Information
A website isn’t a business card. It should be like a brochure on steroids. If you don’t offer enough basic information, the visitor may feel you’re not important enough to visit or call. In addition, you want to have enough copy so that there are enough keywords on your site to be recognized by Google and the search engines. I would shoot for a minimum of 250 words per page. Just remember the points you read in #3 and you’ll find the right balance of information for your customer or prospect.

5. Lack of Google Juice
If your small business website doesn’t appear on the first page of Google for the proper search terms, you’ve got a serious lack of Google juice. There are many unscrupulous SEO (search engine optimization) companies that make all types of claims to get you on top of Google. Ignore them. Take care of the basics and you’ll do well. Make sure that you add your business to Google maps (for local search), that you have good content on your pages that include keywords that prospects would use to find you, and that your website has unique titles and descriptions in the HTML for each of your website pages.

6. Outdated Information
Every month, you should go through each page of your website to make sure that you don’t have any old information. Nothing can make you look less professional than having outdated content on your site. You may also want to have an employee do a run-through as well. Many times you may overlook something that they may catch.

7. Lack of Social Media
Blogs, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and Twitter are a few examples of social media that can build up your website presence. Best of all, they are all free to set up and use. No matter where you share information about your business and website address, it will help extend your brand and name recognition. You don’t have to be a social media maven, but it’s one of the free ways that you can get out the word and drive more consumers to your website, store, and business.