Build it and they will come - how to promote your site online
Mentioning no names, but I have had a couple of clients on recent projects contact me a week or so after the launch of their new website; the conversation usually goes something like this:
Me: Hello, Mr Satisfied Client, what can I do for you?
Client: Well, we were just looking at the lovely stats program that you installed for us free-of-charge, and we noticed that there have been several thousand “hits” to our site, but we haven’t had any sales yet.
Me: Well… that’s because we only launched the site last week – those hits are mostly search engines spidering the site. To be honest, you’re lucky to get spidered so quickly; it’s only because I did a load more unpaid work for you submitting the site to search engines, because I knew you wouldn’t have any idea how to do it…
Client: Um, okay – so when do you think we might start selling stuff, then?
Me: Well, look – you’re already getting search traffic for pretty popular terms, it’s only a matter of time. Aren’t you glad you went with a designer who builds lovely, compliant web-standards sites?
Client: Uh, yeah, web-standards, right. Listen, we think it would help our sales if we could be the number one search on Google for “ball”. You can do that, right?
Me: < smacks head on table > That’s a pretty competitive search term – have you considered paid search like I mentioned a hundred fucking times..?
Client: But you told us that your way of doing things would mean we’d get better search placings?
Me: It has – you weren’t in there at all before! – but I can’t compete with international corporations with marketing budgets in the millions…
Client: < wanders off muttering about their nephew and FrontPage >
Why is it that clients – particularly SMEs – seem to think that just by having a website, the world and his dog will be beating a path to their cyber-door? They’re all perfectly happy to spend the time and money promoting their business in meatspace, but ask them to think about some link-exchanges or online promotional activity and they just make vague noises and go back to planning their next poorly-designed pamphlet campaign.
Online promotion
Running a website is just like owning a specialist shop outside of the city centre – occasionally people will wander in when they’re passing, but usually your customers have to know where you are before they’ll come to visit. And, like a specialist shop, you have to undertake a certain amount of promotion to drum up business. I thought I’d explore some of the possibilities for doing so online.
The first thing our hypothetical shop-owner might do is get himself listed in the Yellow Pages; for the web, the equivalent is the directories – Yahoo, Google and the “open directory project” DMOZ. As well as delivering traffic, getting listed in directories will also aid your search performance.
Next, our shopkeep might take out adverts in either local or trade publications, although this is usually quite an expensive step; online advertising is no different, and the best sites to advertise on will be either those with a connection to the subject and, if relevant, the location of the business. Local and enthusiast forums are the ideal place to target with online ads.
A cheaper option for our shop-owner might be to hang around the places where his ‘target audience’ can be found, handing out flyers and casually mentioning his great shop. Guess what? You can do this online too – just join a few relevant forums, stick your URL in your signature and get stuck in! Of course it is important not to spam your chosen forum; don’t just pop-up with one post advertising your site and then leave, but get involved and earn the trust of the other forum members, who are then more likely to take your advice about where to buy their widgets.
The magic of the internet
Imagine if our shop-owner could be sure that anywhere anyone was talking about the type of products he sold, his shop would be mentioned and one of his flyers would magically appear. Well, through the power of the web, this is an easy and relatively cheap thing to accomplish.
Google Adwords is easy to set-up, pretty cheap as long as you’re not targetting big ticket search phrases like “mortgage” or “ipod”, and a sure-fire way of delivering targeted site traffic. Any site carrying Adwords that talks about the terms you specify will – if you have bid a high enough amount – also display a mini-advert and link to your site. Your ad will also appear on normal Google search results as well.
I operate an Adwords campaign for a smallish client selling very specific services; Adwords syndication is the single biggest referrer to the site, outstripping the search engines by 50%. Obviously if you do happen to sell iPods or mortgages you’d better have a decent marketing budget, but for small, specialist companies, I don’t think you can do much better than Adwords.
I haven’t mentioned general SEO, as that is a dark science all of its own. Suffice to say that the best search optimization is to be damn good at what you do; providing great content, whether it be products or copy, is the way to get other people to link to you, and backlinks are the single best way to come out tops in search.
So what else can I do?
Don’t ask me! I’m nothing like a marketing or SEO expert, I’m just expounding a little on what I’ve learned over the last few years; there are thousands of others with better ways of doing things – in fact most of the people reading this are probably better at it than me, so feel free to share your own hints and tips for online promotion.
I promise I won’t steal all of them…
Filed under: Business.
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Comments
- fridgemagnet
- 1664 days ago
- The best SEO, period, is compliance and content. I’ve been trying to tell my flatmate this. No, there is no magic trick. People try them but any effects only last for a few days before Google rejects them. Google aren’t stupid. But if you make sure Google’s bots can parse everything you publish, and you’ve got something that’s actually worth reading, and you’ve not stuffed your site full of obscure links and frames and content in images and PDFs, you’ve got a head start.
Stupid flash games help with the backlinking, but they take time and effort. - #2
- Ferret
- 1503 days ago
- Lots and lots of useful text and really well thought out content, combined with plenty of links to other sites (who of course link back to you). Good use of keywords in the meta tags, free advice and editorials about how to make the most of your “widget” and plaster these on any blog or site willing to take them as fre content. Of course, there is another url linking back to your site.
- #3
Another area that has done well for some of our clients is froogle.