Doing Nothing
You’ve built your website, and — It. Is. Awesome.
It’s what everyone told you to do. You knew you needed a website. Now, you sit there in your office, clicking refresh on the analytics page, watching for a change. The hours pass by and the number of visits to your site barely moves.
You wonder what you have done wrong.
The answer is nothing.
Not, “you are doing nothing wrong”, but you are literally doing NOTHING.
It’s time to do something.
Online Marketing
But, where do you begin? Figuring out where to start when marketing your website is one of the biggest hurdles website owners have to deal with. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be that difficult. Read on, and I will give you four things you can do today to improve your online marketing.
- Figure out what your competitors are doing. Unless you have designed and manufactured a product that has never been seen before (you haven’t), chances are you have competitors. And if you have competitors, chances are they are already online and doing some type of marketing. Take the time to figure out what they are doing and how they are interacting with their customers.
- – Do a google search for keywords related to your product or service and find out who is coming up in the search results. Even if you don’t think they are, this is your competition. Look through their websites, see what keywords they are trying to get traffic for, what they are talking about and where they are in social media. Once you have figured this out, figure out how to do it better.
- Create unique, customer-focused meta tags on every page. Whenever I do a website audit, one of the things I almost always find is the exact same meta title and description on every single page of the website. Take the time to write Title and Description tags for your website that are unique to what the page is about, include keywords that you are trying to target, and are written to entice the person searching to click. Make sure to include WHY clicking your link will be the right move.
- Invest in a little paid search. No matter what you do, building organic traffic is going to take a little bit of time. Depending on your niche, this could be a few weeks, or even a few months if it is highly competitive. Paid search (e.g. Google AdWords & Bing Ads) is a great way to get some initial, quality traffic to your website. You can choose the exact keywords that will send you traffic, write ad text that is compelling, and send it to the exact landing page you want. Does it cost money? Yes. Can you get great returns? Absolutely.
- Measure your results. One of the least understood aspects of marketing is performance. If you are not properly tracking your visitors from entrance to conversion, then you will never understand (or be satisfied) with your marketing campaigns. Figure out what the action is you want your visitors to take, whether it is a purchase or a download, etc, and set a goal in analytics around that action. This will help you understand how your visitors are interacting with your website and whether your marketing is doing its job.
Of course, nothing is completely black and white, and every website is different, so the results you get will vary, but taking these four actions will make a big impact on your marketing. If you would like to learn more about getting started with online marketing, check out “The Ultimate How-To Marketing Guide.