Even though your website may be visually appealing and contains key information your customers are looking for, you need to take steps to promote and market your website online. Online marketing can be tricky if you’ve never done it own your own before. Many businesses hire an online marketing company to provide some basics services and ensure that the website gets indexed by the major search engines.
If you are responsible for promoting your website online, keep the following best practices in mind:
Ensure the Web Designer Uses Search-Engine Friendly Design Practices
When you’re having your website designed by a professional, make sure the designer can confirm that they use search engine optimization (SEO) techniques when creating the layout. Your website can be designed in a certain way so that it is crawled and indexed by the major search engines fairly quickly. Several design elements must be placed in a certain area of your site to increase SEO. Find out if your designer uses SEO-friendly design practices when creating your custom website.
Post Custom Content
Custom content that contains several instances of keywords and key phrases that your target market uses on a regular basis will help to generate more traffic and get you indexed higher on the major search engines. If your website only contains generic content, or content that has been copied and pasted from another website, you may be excluded from the major search directories altogether. A website that contains an “articles” section or even a blog that gets updated regularly can be a powerful part of your online marketing strategy.
Jump Into Social Media Marketing
Set up a Twitter and Facebook account if you know many of your existing customers are already on there and interacting with other businesses. Promoting your business on social networks like Twitter and Facebook can help to boost your brand and engage more of your customers in a new way. Customers who feel comfortable with your company and enjoy what you share may be more likely to do business with you in the future – or even refer you to someone else.
Promote Your Website with Banner Ads
Banner advertising can help you attract more traffic and generate business, but you need to make sure your ads are posted on the right websites. Banner ads can be tracked for clicks, so do take advantage of any reports that are available to make sure your advertising campaign is working.
Promote Your Company With Pay-Per-Click Ads
Pay-per-click (PPC) ads can be targeted to a specific audience and even by location. If you’ve done some basic demographic research about your target market and know which keywords people are using to find sites like yours, set up a PPC ad campaign to start attracting more high-quality traffic. PPC ad campaigns are relatively easy to set up and maintain, but you can also hire a specialist to manage this type of advertising campaign for you.
From posting custom content to using social media marketing tools like Twitter, there are several effective ways to promote your website online. Use the tips above to make sure you are getting indexed on the major search engines and attracting high quality traffic month after month.