Is Your New Website a Ghost Town? Use Online Marketing to Increase Traffic to Your Website

“I have a business website, now what?”

Many business owners ask this question once their websites are launched. There’s no denying that it’s an important one—what should you do now that your business website is up and running? The answer is simple: drive targeted traffic to your website.

Once site visitors arrive on your website, you’ll want them to perform a series of actions: fill up a lead capture form perhaps, or browse the content. You’ll want to convert your site visitors into leads and customers, with the end objective of boosting your conversion rates, increasing your sales, and growing your business. Sounds easy, right?

But we’re getting a little too ahead of ourselves. Before you can drive targeted traffic to your website, you need to promote it online so that netizens will be made aware of the site’s existence. While promoting your website might appear to be an easy thing to do, when faced with so many different promotional channels and tools, going forward without a clear-cut strategy is indeed a recipe for disaster.

Just about the only thing an Internet marketing consultant can promise you is that once a large traffic campaign has been rolled out, things are going to change. Anything else that is guaranteed to you by the Internet marketing consultant is just snake oil.

On the other hand, let’s focus on the website itself. You’ve spent a great deal of time, effort, and money getting your website just the way you want it. It looks great! You’ve added some great content to your site. You might even have added a video on the home page, as well as some glowing customer testimonials.

Then you get the dreaded report. Search results show your ranking of >150. These questions begin to rattle around in your brain: What happened? Why isn’t my business on the first 15 pages of the SERPs for certain keyword searches? Why did I pay all that money for web design and development, only to get nothing in return?

This is the problem. Your shiny new business website is like that new sports car you’ve always dreamed about sitting in your garage. For me, I’m thinking a Ferrari. It looks wonderful, all shiny and new. You “ooh” and “aah” over the curves of the body, the soft feel of the leather interior, as well as the gleam of that prancing horse emblazoned on the hood.

But where is everybody? The garage door has been bolted and no one else can see your bright, shiny new toy.

You need to get that baby out on the road so that it can be seen. For that you need a key ingredient—benzina, petrol, gasolina. Yep, gasoline. Your hot new Ferrari needs FUEL if you want to get it out of the garage and into the wider world for all to see. Where am I going with this analogy? Your website, just like your Ferrari, needs a unifying online marketing campaign to attract site visitors and meet all your end objectives.

A great website is not worth very much if no one can find it and if no one knows about it. You need to market your website effectively and with focus.

Keep these things in mind once you’ve begun to market your website and your business online:

• Have a plan.There are so many options out there for you to try—search engine optimization, social media optimization, content marketing, local marketing, just to name a few. You might end up feeling all giddy with excitement and willing to try everything out. DON’T. That haphazard approach is like throwing spaghetti on the wall. Consult your Internet marketing consultant, who will most likely recommend two or three approaches to get you started.
• Measure your marketing efforts.One of the greatest benefits of Internet marketing is that you can actually see what works and what doesn’t. Traditional marketing platforms—like television, radio, and print ads—cannot really demonstrate ROI. The beauty of Internet marketing is that it provides accurate ROI as well as data that can be analyzed and measured to determine the performance of your marketing efforts.
• Fine-tune your message to keep it fresh. You’ll need to update your website regularly with new content and new offers. You’ll also have to perform on-page optimization to ensure that your web pages are indexed and ranked by the search engine bots. If you want to attract targeted traffic to your site, you’ll need to update your content regularly and give Google a reason to pay attention to you.

Gratifica: Changing or updating the content on your website is something that search engines like—no, love! Fresh content will help you move up the rankings. Take the time to do this, at least once each quarter.

Armed with this basic understanding of online marketing and website promotion, you can proceed with a clear sense of direction.

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