Online Marketing – Are You Marketing Your Website?

online marketing strategySo, you’ve decided to build a new website for your business. You know how you want it to look, you’ve written the text for each page and found a web design company to make it all happen. Job done!

Well… not quite.

A Needle in A Haystack

There are currently 644 million websites on the internet (March, 2012). That means the chances of your customers finding your website by chance are negligible (at best). If your shiny new website is going to be seen by anyone, you need to do some marketing.

Online Marketing

When it comes to marketing you should view your website as if it was a business card or company brochure. You could spend lots of time and money getting the information and design exactly right, but it’s not going to deliver any business until you put it in the right hands. That’s the tricky part.

Firstly, in order for a website to attract targeted visitors and convert those visitors into loyal customers, you need to build your website with this marketing in mind. This means integrating elements of social media into your website, building it in a way that allows the search engines to index each page quickly and easily and building in elements of dynamic content – such as a blog. These things need to be considered right from the word ‘go’.

Secondly, the moment when your website goes live is only the beginning. It’s what you do after that which will govern the success or failure of your website. Successful online marketing requires using a range of channels on a regular basis to target and attract visitors to your website. Some of these channels might deliver short term results and others might invest in the long term value of your website.

The marketing of your website can be roughly divided into three key elements:

Search Marketing – Visibility in the search engine results is crucial if you hope to get targeted visitors to visit your website. By optimising the pages on your website for your most valuable keywords, and by building the overall authority of your site, you can gradually climb the search engine results, increase traffic and generate revenue.

Social Media – The social web is a relatively new development. This allows you to connect and converse with a community of followers using a variety of online channels. This can be a very valuable way to build a community, develop relationships and generate traffic.

Content Marketing – Both search marketing and social media rely on content. If you are going to attract targeted visitors to your website and successfully convert them into customers, you need to produce high quality content for your visitors. There are many ways to do this but the most effective is to start a blog on your website.

We don’t pretend that online marketing is easy. To do it well you need to have time, resources and expertise. However, unless you do it, your website will always be a needle in a haystack and deliver almost no value.

Read Also: What’s the Lifespan of My New Website?

We understand that most companies don’t have the time, resources or expertise to run their own online marketing campaign. That’s why we offer a fully managed online marketing service to help our customers get the greatest possible value from their websites.

Interested? Why not give us a call?

By Angus Findlay