Marketing Your Web Site -
If you build it, will they come?

There are many ways of spreading the word and driving traffic to your site.  Web Strategies can help you with some; others you can do on your own.

First, spread the word on your own.  Most importantly, steps should be taken to market the site along with your business.  Make sure use your URL in all your marketing, correspondence, publications and brochures - even on your invoices, letterhead and as a signature file in your email..  Print it on your product, if that is possible, and use it in all your advertising (print and other media).  Spread the word to your friends, colleagues, vendors and customers.  Even run contests and giveaways to draw visitors!

Make your site "sticky" by offering content and services that draw and keep visitors.  "Sticky" means a site where visitors want to stay and return to often.  Update regularly to keep the content fresh. People want to see something new when they return to your site.   Offer people the opportunity to sign up for email newsletter, which also drive visitors to your site.  Contact Web Strategies for help in adding these services and features.  Think about what information, content, services and products your customers want, and make them available on your site.

Many people find the sites they visit through search engines.  Web Strategies registers all its sites with  the largest search engines. Driving traffic to the site is an important and complicated task, as is the task of enhancing site listings with the search engines.

Each search engine has their own secret formula for how they rank sites, and these change all the time. The best one can do is follow basic rules for optimization. Meta tags should be included on each page, and these should list the terms you hope be used to find you in the search engines. These words must be relevant to your site - engines will trash a site if it throws in words like sex or celebrity names to draw hits. The page title and description should also be relevant, and page content should include many of the same words used in the meta tags. Relevance and consistency help the engine rankings.

A popular site often gets higher rankings, and some engines give preference to sites that have other sites linking to it. See if your trade association or other organizations offer opportunities to link. Web Strategies includes links to all our hosted sites on each site, usually on a page seen only by the "spiders" that come from the search engines to gather information. 

Get the word out any ways you can. Advertising is an option, and options exist at various price levels.   Search engine advertising, such as Google's AdWords program, has become an extremely popular and effective option.  Users purchase "keywords", and when a visitor searches using that keyword, their sponsored listing are displayed. payment is often based on "clicks" - a small fee charged when a visitor clicks on the link.  If you are interested in pursuing this, or other advertising techniques, contact Web Strategies for help!

Google has begun a special version of the AdWords program geared for not-for-profit organizations (limited to those that are not religious or political in nature).  Google Grants allows selected non-profits to have related keywords generate their links and drive traffic to their organization's website.  Find out mor by visiting the Google Grants website.

This information is just one more service that Web Strategies offers to help our customers tap the power of the Internet!