Everyone has a website these days. But how many ever get viewed by the people we want to view them. In business, this is crucial. If your website isn’t getting visited by people who need your goods or services, then you aren’t going to do much business. And, if your website cost a lot of money, that means you’ve just wasted your investment.
Spend your money wisely
This is a mistake made by a lot of small businesses. They spend a lot of money creating the website, but very little on the marketing strategy needed to drive traffic to the site. To make sure your site is a success, you should be spending just as much on your online marketing plan as the website itself. Even if you don’t have much cash available, there is plenty you can be doing to make sure more potential customers find their way to your site before that of your competitors. And in today’s fiercely competitive marketplace, that could make a vast difference to your bottom line.
Promote your site
First and foremost, you need to get your website up the Google rankings as that is the number one way most customers will look for the services and products you offer. If you’re not appearing in search engines until the fifth page, forget it!
There are some very effective ways to immediately improve your ranking. Keywords and phrases in your website will make a huge difference, especially when submitted to Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Make sure your web designer includes your keywords in your metatags. Any web designer worth their salt will be able to help with this. A word of warning here, however: don’t overdo it!
Many search engines will penalize listings for using keywords excessively. And a website crammed with the same key phrases doesn’t make easy reading for your customers. Stick to around 2% keyword density. There are free tools out there, such as Google Adwords, to help.
Online business directories really work
However, by using those same carefully selected words and phrases relevant to your company in an online business directory listing, the results can be stunning. So this is one of the first things you should be looking at. With links back to your own site, the impact on your search engine rankings can be very dramatic.
Write on!
Another way of getting more people to visit your site is by sharing your expertise. You can do this by submitting articles relevant to your business to article directories. The links back to your website help you of course, but you’re also showing that you’re an expert in your field and sharing that information helps build trust in customers. In fact, this method of driving traffic to websites is proving so successful that many companies will hire writers specifically for this purpose.
Blogs are another way of doing this. Again, if you’re a small business, you may need to do this yourself and it’s something that has to be done regularly (at least a few times a week) to keep people coming back. Which brings us to a final point, whatever action plan you devise to drive more traffic to your site, the most important thing you need to invest is time.
As a business directory enthusiast, Keith Barrett takes a keen interest in the world of online business. He also advises a number of small business owners.
