Super Ginormous

04.17.2009

Get found.

In the movie “Field of Dreams,” Kevin Costner’s char­ac­ter heard whis­pers of “Build it and they will come.” So, he con­structed a base­ball field in the mid­dle of nowhere, and remark­ably the unex­pected hap­pened: Peo­ple came. With web­sites, get­ting peo­ple to show up to your ball­park requires a bit more effort.

There is often an expec­ta­tion that if you have a web­site, peo­ple will find you, you’ll have more busi­ness, etc. Traf­fic (and addi­tional busi­ness) may come even­tu­ally, but it will not hap­pen overnight. In order for your web­site to get found, peo­ple need to know about it. Some of the ways you can make that hap­pen include search engine sub­mis­sions, social net­work­ing, and pay-per-click advertising.

So, you have a web­site? Great! Now what? Traf­fic won’t mag­i­cally come to you. Search engines might even­tu­ally crawl your site if oth­ers link to it. Here are a few things you can do to make sure your site is found:

Sub­mit your site to the major search engines:

• Add your URL to Google
• Yahoo! Site Explorer
• Microsoft Live Search URL Submission

While this is cer­tainly not an exhaus­tive list, Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft Live Search rep­re­sent the “Big Three” search engines. Get­ting listed on these engines is your first, and arguably best, oppor­tu­nity for search engine-based refer­ral traffic.

Pro­mote your site on social net­works. If you use social net­works such as Face­book, Twit­ter, or LinkedIn, make sure your friends know about your site (Don’t spam them, though!). Go to where your cus­tomers are. Engage them. Encour­age them to visit your site; to use your services.

Google AdWords: Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Adver­tis­ing. Spend money on tar­geted, keyword-based adver­tis­ing when you’re first start­ing out. It could be a while before your site ranks highly in search engine results. PPC ads guar­an­tee a higher-profile place­ment on search engine results pages (SERPs).

Let’s say you have an auto­mo­tive repair busi­ness and you’re hop­ing to gen­er­ate more traf­fic to your web­site. You’d like to buy some ads on Google Adwords to be dis­played on SERPs. While get­ting things set up, you select some key­words that you think peo­ple might use to find your busi­ness. Generic key­words have greater com­pe­ti­tion; this is why you want to try and be as spe­cific as you can with your key­words. Some­one look­ing for “Auto­mo­tive Repair Augusta GA” is more likely to be look­ing for your ser­vices ver­sus some­one who might be search­ing for “Auto­mo­tive Repair.”

Some other things to con­sider with PPC:

• You’re only charged if some­one actu­ally clicks on your ad.
• You can set a max­i­mum daily bud­get on Google AdWords. Once you’ve spent your bud­get for the day, your ad will no longer appear in SERPs. (This helps you bud­get for PPC more efficiently.)
• The more spe­cific your key­word phrase, the less you’ll pay per click (usually).
• The more spe­cific your key­word phrase, the more likely peo­ple see­ing your ad might be inter­ested in your services.

Tra­di­tional Adver­tis­ing. Make sure your web­site address is included in all adver­tis­ing, such as radio, TV com­mer­cials, bill­boards, busi­ness cards, news­pa­per and mag­a­zine ads, and even email sig­na­tures. Any­time you have the oppor­tu­nity to tell some­one about your site, do it.

Orig­i­nally posted on PowerUp!, the Pow­erServe team blog.

This item was posted by Chris Harrison.

Categories:

• Web Development

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