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Ready to Make Your Website Work Harder?
9 Tips to Making Your Website All You Want…and Then Some!
by Nancy J. Wagner

Have you been thinking about redesigning your website? Building a new website? How about just making the one you've got work harder to build your business?

I watched Field of Dreams the other night, and I had to grin when the line "build it and they will come" was said. That is SO not true when it comes to websites. Based on my experience over the past 10 years of designing and marketing websites, you need to CONSTANTLY think of ways to bring visitors to your website whether you're building a new one or trying to improve the one you already have.

To get you thinking, here's my list of nine "must do's" to get visitors to your website. While there's plenty more you can do to market your site, this is the short list:

1. Make sure your site does what you WANT your site to do. Want people to call or email you for info, to set up an appointment, or to arrange for your services? Make sure the flow of the site, the copy, and the images help a person do just that. Do you want people to buy online? Make it easy with a shopping cart and all the statements and guarantees that convince people to complete the process.

2. Use important search terms in your meta tags, headlines and copy. The search engines rely on YOU to tell them what keywords and phrases are important to your business. That means, figure out what keywords and phrases people will use to search for a website like your own. Then, use those words in three places: your hidden meta description and title (this goes into your html code), the headlines on your website pages, and the first paragraph or two following those headlines.

3. Submit your new website to the search engines. Don't wait for the search engines to find your new site as you could be waiting for a year or more. Instead, once your website is ready (make sure you've done #1 above before you submit your site), submit your site to the top search engines, especially Yahoo and Google.

4. Find a way to collect visitors' email addresses so you can keep marketing to them. Let's say 15 prospects visit your site; if you're lucky, 1 or 2 of them MIGHT buy, call or email you. That means 13 people leave your site and may never return. That's why it's critical to market to them with an occasional email so you convince them to return to your site-and buy. So, collect their email address and get ready to entice them back to your site.

5. Use traditional offline marketing to promote your website. Besides putting your website address on everything you hand out to a prospect or customer, use ads, press releases (online and offline), postcards, flyers, and other promotional tools to compel people to visit your website. Make it worth your visitor's time to visit your site, and while they're there, encourage them to send you their email address so you can continue to market to them long after they've left your website (see #4 above).

6. Consider pay-per-click campaigns, especially if you're selling products on a new website. Pay-per-click campaigns with Google and Yahoo are the fastest way possible to help people find your products, especially if your website is brand new and you don't have much ranking yet with the search engines.

7. Write articles and press releases and submit them online. Send articles to ezine article directories so your articles get picked up by publications needing content. Make sure you include your byline at the end so you can push people to your website. As for online press releases, find a good angle about what you offer, write up a short press release, then send it to places like www.prweb.com as well as the major search engines. This is a good way to improve your ranking in search engine results.

8. Submit your product or service news/press releases to the blogs. Blogs can be instrumental in pushing your products and services, so make sure you send your press releases directly to pertinent blogs. A blog's positive review or write-up of your product or service acts as an endorsement, and a link back to your site could bring the kind of website traffic you've been dreaming of.

9. Look for ways to build community. Building community means encouraging visitors to return to your site again and again because you’re providing something they can interact with. For instance, if your product or service calls for it, create a forum and/or a blog. Also consider offering a webinar where you give a live presentation over the Internet about a topic related to what you’re selling. You might also consider setting up a text chat for live Q & A sessions. An online poll might also be a way to encourage visitors to interact and return to your website.

Before you jump into all of these activities, ask yourself the same question I always ask my clients: what do you want your website to achieve? Once you’ve identified your goal, put the above tactics to work, and watch your website finally start to give you the results you really want.

Nancy J. Wagner of Cut to the Chase Marketing is a speaker, writer, and marketing strategist who helps small businesses increase their by designing effective websites and marketing materials. Download her free 9-step marketing plan at http://www.CutToTheChaseMarketing.com.