Website Visibility – A Foundational Principle Of Web Marketing
Posted Under: Internet Marketing Information
Website visibility is one of the timeless foundational principals of web marketing that is the backbone of all successful present day web marketers.
There are several foundational principles of web marketing that everyone associated with the business should be acutely aware of however, without website visibility, the other principles become unnecessary.
Setting up a website is like building a new storefront business at the end of a dark alleyway. You may have the greatest product in the universe but if you want any shoppers, you need to give them a reason to come visit your store.
A wonderful product that is being sold in a beautiful storefront at the end of a dark alleyway, will produce virtually nothing in sales. You must give shoppers a reason to come visit. You need to become visible.
Before you ever build a website, you need to first set up a marketing plan to achieve website visibility and think about how you will get people to visit your store.
The reason why some of the greatest artisans in the world do not become millionaires, is because even though they are able to produce a great work of art; they don’t have a clue about how to go about marketing their work.
A basic marketing plan that resembles the following, can get your website visibility out of the back alley and into the limelight.
- Your website content is important. Instead of just giving information about your business, your product or service; you need to provide compelling content that will make your visitors want to bookmark and return to your site.
- To boost your name recognition and get shed some additional light on your business, try using banner advertisements for a couple of months or more.
- Aim for first page search engine positioning on Google, Excite and HotBot in the first to second quarters and later include Lycos, AltaVista, and Infoseek in your campaign.
- Reciprocal links with organizations in your industry and paid listings in their directories will also improve your website visibility. With excellent web content you won’t have to plead for a reciprocal link, sites in your industry will contact you to place a link on their site.
- Initiate a newsworthy contest in the second or third business quarter that will grab the attention of the media with well written press releases and calls from your PR agency. If you offer a public service, you can almost immediately become newsworthy. The trade magazines and journals will begin to mention your business and the web traffic will follow.
- Set up a newsletter from your company that provides legitimate industry news to your customers. This can be done by collecting email addresses from your customers in house, as well as through squeeze pages on your website.
- Decide which of these activities can be carried out in house, and which should be outsourced. Then attach a dollar value to each activity so you can provide for them in your company’s monthly marketing budget.
Although your marketing plan will look quite a bit different than this example; the idea is to take your website visibility from the back alley and move it to main street. And the only way you can do this effectively is through thoughtful planning, before you build your website.
Because it is the central foundational principal of web marketing; without website visibility, everything else becomes moot.