Remember the line from the movie “Field of Dreams”? “If you build it they will come!” This does not work for websites! Attracting visitors with a well-defined marketing plan is only the start of the process. You need on-site and off-site SEO including content marketing, well defined keywords and a strong understanding of analytics to measure user demographics and tendencies once they are there.
Part One: You Have a Website; Now How Do You Attract New Clients?
Having a website doesn’t do much for your business if no one visits it. Try these initial steps to marketing your website online.
Whether a big corporation or a solo-entrepreneurship, there is likelihood some form of online presence is necessary. And for anyone dealing in business to consumer (B2C) space, a website can even be the business.
So you get a new website build, but what about getting qualified potential customers to it?
The truth is, traffic is the life blood of any business website and not having any can be very harmful to the bottom line.
This is where on-site SEO, off-site SEO, paid efforts, content marketing and social marketing can all work together (and should) for a complete online marketing approach.
What makes one component necessary is often the ability of the business owner to perform it. That can mean hiring marketing professionals, taking the time to attempt it themselves, or having a solid budget for paid methods and experts to navigate them for you.
Ideally you want it all so all bases are covered. Many businesses have none of these tactics in place, or have them done wrong and as a result are struggling to gain qualified leads and traffic.
This article covers what you need to gain traffic to your website and next week we'll get into more specifics of what to do once these preliminary steps are done.
Do These Three Things Before You Start Marketing
Before you start creating your marketing strategy there are three things you, or your marketing firm should do first:
1. Install Google Analytics
2. Set up Google Search Console (formerly webmaster tools)
3. Within Google Analytics (GA) set up a conversion (or conversions if you have more than 1 way to measure the success of a user’s experience on your website)
These three components are free and by having them set up, you can now measure how effective your marketing is.
These tools are great for showing you what is happening with your website traffic. While there are thousands of third party tools promising to give more insight and help you gain traffic, they are all simply more in-depth diagnostic tools who’s relevance is the promised importance of providing an edge over the competition by way of the deeper level of insight.
The argument against using them (aside from the often astronomical cost) is that Google is the one providing the tools listed above so it’s best to stick to what they have deemed of importance to your efforts with their free methods of analyzing user experience and website performance.
Another thing to do before you start is test your website’s speed. Also make sure it’s going to work well on mobile devices. Google has seen sharp and rapidly escalating mobile usage over the years and since late 2015 even have Accelerated Mobile Pages. Mobile is key to the success of your site so make sure your website loads well on mobile devices.
Key Phrases Are Your Business’s Best Friend
The next thing you will need is a key phrase list. This will be a guide on the terms you want your website to show up in the results for when searched. In the past, these lists were much firmer but since Google has grown, it can infer meaning behind words or even groups of words that lead to an implied purpose.
How to define keywords and phrases:
• Use the Search Console to check your existing traffic and see what has been searched for in the past that was clicked on.
• Check your competitor’s websites to see what kind of terms and phrases are coming up often (this shows you what they’re trying to rank for).
• Use a keyword tool to check volume of the phrases such as Google’s keyword tool.
• The best thing is to ask yourself and your team honestly what it is you do that provides value to your clients.
Your key phrases you want to rank for should all then be associated with a relevant page on your website. They should appear in the website copy (and in other on-site SEO signal spaces like Meta tags etc.).
Once you have these key components in place, you are now ready to create a marketing plan and start driving traffic to your website so your business can start reaping the rewards of your efforts.
And whether you're focusing your business marketing on local SEO, SEO with content marketing, Adwords, or usability assistance, it’s best to employ trustworthy online marketing professionals than to attempt it yourself. Be wary of tricks or anyone unable to demonstrate the efficacy of their efforts.
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