Owning a Website Is More than Just Having It Built

Many small business owners think they can buy a website, pay someone to build it, then sit back and wait for the customers to roll in. Unfortunately, that’s not the way it works. You can’t expect to build a website, and compete against thousands, if not millions, of other websites without some effort.  If you are looking to make online sales or provide information to your customers, you need to understand the way it works. If you understand how customers find you online, you can quickly draw them to your site.

When online searchers type a keyword into the search bar, the search engine will display the most relevant sites for that term. For example if you sell shoes, someone will type in shoes and the search engine will display your site in the search results. The problem is that most terms have thousands of sites that use those keywords. Just like when you search for shoes with Google, you get 307,000,000 different sites. The search engines only show ten results per page, so if you are at the end, you are likely to never be seen. As a matter of fact, recent studies show that over 60% of searchers never go past the first two result pages.

In order to get your site up in the search results, you have to maintain an ongoing search engine optimization campaign. Search engine optimization is the process of making your website get noticed by the search engines. This includes using keywords throughout your site, as well as building links to and from your pages to other pages on the intent. This is an ongoing process that requires a lot of time and effort. You can manage the process yourself or pay a professional SEO company to handle the process for you. It can cost quite a bit to hire a company, but if you do not have hours to spend each week working on your own site it may be much simpler.

Most people choose to hire a company to perform part of the process and then, when the website is ranking higher in the search results, they take over the campaign themselves.  You might be able to find a company that will build your site and optimize it at the same time. This is often the best way to go, since you won’t have to pay for changes later. When you are considering a company, you should ask to see their portfolio and ask for proven results. Not every company can provide the results they claim.

Another option to bring visitors to your site is starting a pay per click campaign. You can use paid ads on Google or Yahoo to get your name on the front page. These ads cost you a certain amount for every time someone clicks on them. The more popular your keyword is, the more you will pay to place your ads. However, on the up side, you could see a quick increase in the traffic to your website. Whichever way you choose to attract visitors, you have to be prepared to stay with it for the long run.