Part 4 – A Brief Guide to Making a Successful Website

This is part four of a brief and practical guide to what you need to know to create a successful website. This guide is not aimed at fellow web professionals, but at the entrepreneur. As such, I am not going to get into technical details, but will give pointed advice that will allow your next web project become a success.

Part four covers marketing basics.

IF YOU MAKE IT, MAKE SURE THEY COME

Building a great website is only half the battle. The other half is getting visitors to come (and return) to the website. To make sure there is enough traffic to meet your objectives and goals, the website needs to be marketed.

There are two ways to market a website. The first way is to pay for advertising and search engine optimization (SEO) to get people to come to a website. The second way is to build a loyal following of visitors who will give you their attention for free.

Use a combination of advertising, SEO and word of mouth to jumpstart your following.

JUMPSTART
After the site has launched, tell everyone you know about it. Let your family, friends, business partners and clients know about your amazing website. They will pass news of the site on to people they know and so on. Take the time to individually email or talk to each person. Do not spam people.

Advertise in your niche. You get better bang for your buck advertising in a trade journal or website directly related to your niche than you would in a more generalized publication.

Search engine optimization makes it easier for people to find your website on search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo!. Optimize your website for specific keywords related to your niche and build links to rank higher search engine results.

The jumpstart will provide you with initial traffic to start building a following.

BUILDING A FOLLOWING
Share what you know. To build a following, share valuable information that will educate your customers. By educating, you form a closer bond than you could from advertising.

How you share that information is up to you. It could be on twitter, a blog, through facebook, videos or any combination of ways. Just make sure that you stick with it or you won’t build anything.

You don’t need to be appealing to everyone. If you are passionate about what you do, you should have strong opinions. Strong opinions are interesting, so voice them. Some people will disagree with you and some people will love what you have to say.

The people who love what you have to say will tell others about you and will eventually become your best clients.

THANKS FOR READING
Thank you for reading Part 4 of A Brief Guide to Making a Successful Website. I hope you found it helpful and informative. You can follow me on twitter.com/richardbeu.