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Build it and they will come?

by Heather Maloney

Two myths dispelled, and an explanation of how a
well-rounded approach to website marketing will help you
to improve the traffic and business generated from your
online presence.

Unfortunately, the answer is an emphatic "no". Simply having
a website will not automatically result in visits to your
website, no matter how compelling the content.

Another myth is that having your website optimised for certain
search engines, thereby achieving top rankings on particular key
words, will suddenly cause your business to be inundated with
new business through your site.

It is important for you to realise that getting great results
from your website, requires a well-rounded approach to the
promotion of your online business. In addition, while the
fundamental components of a marketing strategy will remain
the same, the approach you take will differ depending on:
. the type of products or services on offer
. your target market
. the current level and style of existing competition

In order to increase the traffic coming to your website, some
of the key things that you need to address are:

1. Fresh and useful content

You will have heard that content is king! You need to think
about why people may be looking for your website, and make sure
that you provide all the information they will need, when they
get there. For example, if you are a real estate agent, will
visitors to your website expect to be able to search through a
list of all the properties you currently have listed for sale?
Will they also want to know what services you offer re: property
management. What about the fees you charge for selling property
and perhaps tenants rights and obligations (or an easy link to
where this can be read)? How about your thoughts on the current
property market? You need to put yourself in the shoes of all
the different types of your visitors. You may certainly then
decide that you don't want to provide certain pieces of
information, in order to ensure that the visitor contacts you
and starts to build a personal relationship with you.

You also need to think about why you want
people to visit your website, and make sure that when they do
they receive the experience you intend for them. The real
estate agent may be trying to reach a younger market of first
home buyers, to encourage this target market to invest in
commercial property first, rather than buying a home. In that
case, the real estate agent may decide to include information on
their site explaining why buying a commercial property as
a first step into the property market is so attractive.

Keeping the content updated regularly, and relevant to the
current state of your industry, is crucial for ensuring that
visitors get the impression that you are active and up to
date. They want to know that they can get the latest and best
from you.

You should make sure that it is easy for you to maintain the
content in your site, without affecting the style and look and
feel of your pages. If you don't have the time or skills to
maintain your content, you should engage your web developer or
content provider to regularly update the content for you.

2. Capitalise on your offline marketing

Many businesses operate both offline and online, and therefore
they promote their business in the "offline world". Your
offline advertising may be as simple as a yellow pages entry,
or go as far as television advertisements. But it also includes
all your business stationary. If you are serious about
utilising your website to help build your business, then all
your offline marketing will tie in with your internet presence.

Our example real estate agent business should include their URL
on all sale boards and newspaper advertisements, letterheads
and business cards as a minimum.

3. Build an online community / reason to come back

Once you have been successful in getting a new visitor to your
site, you will want that visitor to connect to you and keep
coming back.

You need to think about your business, and your website, and
build a strategy for keeping in contact with your customer. It
may be that you have information of value that you can send
your clients via a regular newsletter. Or you might be able to
have regular online sales that can encourage customers to return
to take advantage of bargains.

Better still, if you can create an online community that adds
value to your customers experience with you, but doesn't
necessarily involve your time. Back to our real estate example,
if you are allowing your tenants to pay rent online via your
website, you might also provide a community notice board, where
tenants can seek people to share.

4. Online advertising

At the start of this article, I sought to dispell the myth that
search engine optimisation on its own will bring a flood of
traffic to your site. Search engines, however, are clearly
an important way that people can find your website. It is
reported that Google will no longer list a new website until 6
months after it is first launched. One way to still get your
site in front of people through the search results is to pay
for listings or advertisements on relevant search results pages,
such as via the Google Adwords program.

In the long term, having a website full of useful, fresh
content, and providing an online community, will go a long way
to getting you a better ranking in the key search engines.
This will in part be because of the many other websites that
will refer to your site, in one way or other, because of
your compelling content and interaction with visitors!

In building a community, you will be exposed to other ways that
you can advertise your site online. Our example real estate
business may be able to provide articles for the financial
services industry, providing valuable information for future
investors, at the same time as promoting the services of the
real estate business.

Summary

A well-round approach, tailored to your specific product,
service, mission, goals, processes, target market, competitive
environment and budget is required to bring people to your
website, and keep them doing business with you online.