If you build it will people come?

hese days, even though you build it, there is no guarantee that people will find it. You have to be serious about making a success of your website and you may have to invest in more than just it's creation.

 

If you had a store, you would advertise, run promotions, move things around so when customers returned they would see something new. A successful website is not much different except that you need to optimize the search engines to bring traffic through your doors.

If people go online to look for an item you sell, you want to be at the top of the first page and that's where SEO comes in. People pay big bucks for that top spot and the competition is fierce.

Here are some of the things that affect your search engine rankings.

-Links. How many other websites link to yours? If you are interesting, entertaining or educational, you can get a lot of websites linking back to your site. You will notice I have place links to other sites for more information on many of my pages.

-Content. The internet is all about information and the more informative you are... the search engines pay attention to blogs. Blogs have dates and tell the search engines that you are currrent. That's interesting.

-Traffic. How many people visit your site? The search engines keep track and give you a higher ranking.

-Who is talking about you? That's why FaceBook and Twitter are so interesting. You can reach a lot of people really fast and the more interested FaceBook and Twitter people are in your site, the higher you get ranked.

-Focus on a niche market. For example, if the key word in your title was pottery because you made handmade tiles, you would have a hard time getting to the top of the page but if you focused on handmade tiles and if they had pinecones on them, you have just narrowed the playing field. Not many sites focus on handmade pinecone tiles.

Here are some more ways to promote your site.

-Participate on other people's blogs who are interested in the same things as you are.

-Introduce yourself when you find a business or a group that might be interested in what you make or your services. Send a short but sweet email with your website address. All it takes is one click to be considered.

-Collect email addresses. As artists, this has become an invaluable tool. We love Feedburner, it's free and you can see in action on George's site, www. georgemolnar.com. Constant Contact is a paid service but if you already have a huge list, this is the service to use.

-Send out a postcards with your website address. It will bring people to your website to learn more about what you sell or the services you offer. Sometimes people need to know just a little bit more before they pick up the phone or visit your store. A website conveys who you are as well as what you are selling.