Marketing Your Web Site

Posted on August 28, 2007

I’ve had a lot of questions from clients about marketing. Once you have your web site up, you want to bring traffic to your site. That means being found on Google and other search engines. And, more importantly, you want to bring in customers. It’s not really enough that they visit your web site. You want them to buy your product or service. How do we make all that happen?

I have an interest in this topic for 2 reasons. First, I have a service to sell. Second, I really want all my clients to succeed. To that end, I have been researching what it takes to promote your web site.

There is a part of promotion that is the job of the web designer. Once a site is running, there are a number of things that the web site owner can do to make sure their web site gets more traffic. I’ll be addressing many of these things, for both the web designer and web site owner, in this series.

Marketing on the web is different from other marketing formats. I often hear marketers tell web site owners that their home page needs to be flashy, have bright colors, even (shudder) that it should have a splash page. Flashy, colorful, attention-getting printed advertisements or magazine covers may work well. But their purpose is to draw attention to that ad or magazine. That way you’ll look at that ad or magazine. But that analogy doesn’t extend to the web site.

In this series, I’ll be addressing what works and what doesn’t for your home page. I’ll be talking about SEO and Black Hat SEO. I’ll also be presenting some ideas on marketing – both online and offline.

Stay tuned for more on Marketing Your Web Site.