Remember the movie 'Field of Dreams'? An Iowa corn farmer hears voices commanding him to build a baseball diamond in his fields. Once built, the ghosts of the banned 1919 Chicago White Sox players come to play again. Through this journey dreams are realized and regrets are overcome. We hear from people every week with dreams of building a web site that will make them a small fortune. Some think their idea is so good that if they simply build it, traffic to their site will automatically come. Unfortunately, putting a great site on the world wide web is not like building a nice shopping center in a prime location. On the web, all are equal and there is no prime location. You will be one of billions of other web sites, a diamond in the middle of a corn field. So the question is, if you build it, how DO you bring traffic to it?
The answer is a realistic web marketing strategy. You get traffic by being highly ranked in search engines. You'll need your site to rank high for phrases people are likely to search for in a quest for your unique product or service. For example, if you have a new site selling custom apparel don't expect to rank high for keywords like 'custom apparel', for it takes years to build up to compete with well established sites for common search terms. Instead focus on less common phrases for each page of your site, such as 'eclectic jewelry' or 'quality greek jackets'. Each page of your site should focus on one specific phrase. I liken it to a book store. When you browse through a book store looking for a book on a specific topic your eyes are scanning book titles. That's the same thing search engines are doing when they spider your site. Each page of your web site is a book, and the page's title tag is the book title. You want to make sure each page of your site has a unique short title tag specific to the content on that page.
So how do you know if your web site designer understands how to build a search engine friendly site and understands how to market that site? Ask them! A common response is "sure, we'll be glad to submit your site to all the major search engines and we'll to do that for free." Sounds to good to be true, and it is. For the most part, search engines ignore submissions and instead rely on links from other sites (Reference Google Webmaster Info). So ask for proof! Ask for their own web site's ranking and for examples of some of their clients' rankings.
Our clients choose us to build their sites because they not only want their site to be unique, attractive, and easy to navigate but also want traffic to come to that site. We understand how to build a search engine friendly web site, how to get all your site's pages indexed by search engines, how to get your site to rank high for your key phrases, and how to use Search Engine Marketing techniques to drive traffic to your site. We spider each page of your site with our sitemap generator so we can see it as search engines see it. We are experts in web marketing. Ask us, and we'll help you to realize your dreams and overcome your regrets.
Scott Hendrix,
President, Venue Communications, Inc.