As we've written before in our humble blog, building a website for your business is not the same as the baseball field in Field of Dreams. If you build it, they won't necessarily come. It may be the best, most user-friendly website in your industry, but if you don't promote it properly, few potential customers will find it - making your site more akin to the lost city of Atlantis.
This is even more important when you consider that your website is pretty much synonymous with your business. Even if your enterprise is strictly brick-and-mortar and doesn't engage at all in e-commerce, your website is often the first contact that potential customers have with it. In effect, promoting your website is the same as promoting your business. Therefore, allocating your time and resources wisely is essential.
Start with Google
"Using the right SEO strategy will help you as you focus on promoting your site. The keywords you select must be added to the title, headings, content, and Meta description. If you add images, remember to include the keyword in the picture title tag and the alt tag. Promoting your website by using traditional SEO is one of the best ways to gain natural traffic and a higher ranking."
Get the most out of Google
Start a blog
Blogging solves the dilemma that most business websites face. Google wants signals that your website is actively adding content, but as Wainwright asks, "How often can you really update your About Us page, you know?" Blog content gets crawled and indexed more quickly than static pages, giving your website - and your business - vital signs of life that will help drive traffic.
Start social media marketing
Now that you have a blog and regularly produce high-quality posts, promote them via your social media platforms. Promoting your blog posts on your Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, etc. accounts will increase awareness of this content, and drive traffic to your website to read your great insights! The best part is that you can cycle through and promote older posts (as long as they remain relevant and accurate), giving them fresh exposure.
In addition, visitors can engage with the blog posts you promote on social media by sharing them on their own social media accounts, thereby further expanding your reach and growing your audience.
Yes, pay for ads - Google AdWords and Facebook Ads can quickly boost your traffic
"Even the most well-optimized web design will take some time to get indexed and start ranking in search engines like Google and Bing. While organic SEO is a long-term, consistent strategy, we always recommend that B2B firms launch their website along with a pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaign. Regardless of whether you have a monthly PPC budget of $500 or $5,000, it's essential to run an AdWords or Bing PPC campaign to drive relevant traffic to your website."
Facebook Ads may also be beneficial to your business. As WordStream explains:
"Although advertising on Facebook can be thought of as similar to AdWords, in that advertisers using both platforms are essentially promoting their business via the Internet, this is where the similarities end. Unlike paid search, which helps businesses find new customers via keywords, paid social helps users find businesses based on the things they're interested in and the ways in which they behave online.
"When it comes to the primary difference between Google AdWords and Facebook Ads, you can think of it this way: AdWords helps you find new customers, while Facebook helps new customers find you."
Start retargeting ads
identifies retargeting ads as a great way to keep getting a good ROI on online ads while staying top-of-mind with potential customers. That's right - those ads that have a seemingly uncanny ability to follow you around everywhere you go after you visit the company's website.
"One of the greatest frustrations for small online businesses is seeing the majority of their traffic leave without making a purchase. Retargeting advertising uses cookies to create ads on other sites that will lure your website visitor back to your website. After you've put so much into getting people to your business website, it might be worth the extra buck to get them back."
Start tapping into the power of email
The take-home message and our blatant self-promotion
While using email to promote your website (and business) can result in a good ROI, it's demanding and time consuming to do well - and legally. The same can be said for all of the methods we've just covered. If your business has a dedicated marketing department or staff members with the expertise and company time to devote to the effort, take our recommendations and run with them!
