It is a common belief that once you post a good website to the internet you will have no trouble drawing customers. Many of the scammy MLM programs rely on people believing this – for a couple of grand you get their “professionally designed” website that is certain to sell itself. In fact, like any other marketing effort, you must put in the time and energy to get the word out, no matter what business you are in. With so much noise on the world wide web, it takes more perseverance than ever to do it right. Posting a website without marketing is like writing ad copy on a restaurant napkin and using it for a meal of BBQ ribs– if nobody sees it, it might as well not exist.

Every modern business should have a website, and every business owner should include the appropriate search engine optimization methods to be sure potential customers can find you. Even if you run a local storefront or service, the bulk of consumers now expect to be able to take a look at your business from the comfort of their sofas. If you are running a web-based only business, prepare for a lengthy delay between launching your website and garnering consistently high traffic numbers. SEO (search engine optimization) are the things you can do to help your website be found and ranked by the major search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.). That is, when potential customers type in the key words that should lead them to your website, you want to work to get your website as close to the top of the results list as possible. The exact formulas the search engine companies use to rank sites are very secretive and, according to most experts, change relatively frequently.

There are some factors that are assumed to be critical for SEO, such as using your company’s key words relatively frequently within your website, having multiple pages within the site, and having links back to your site on other websites. However, the search engines include tools to keep cheaters from exploiting the rules, so be careful about using ideas that are designed to “fool” the search engines into thinking you have more pages or links than you actually do. Instead, add relevant free content to your site – the more value to your target market the better – and trade links with your suppliers and complementary businesses. If you write well, consider adding a blog and writing content articles to post on both your website and article database sites. On your site, the articles will count as separate pages (blogs, too) and posting your articles elsewhere, with a link to your business site in your byline will increase your links back.

There are other, more detailed SEO methods as well, which will be discussed in later postings. For now, get your website launched as soon as possible, even if you have a “Coming Soon” page for now, and begin developing ideas for getting your site ranked on the search engines as quickly as possible. Even if you do everything right, expect it to take some time to show up on the search engines. For key words with a lot of competition, like “startup” or “cars”, it can take at least a couple of months to be ranked high enough in the search engines to matter, and a year or more to get and stay in the top 5. Be patient, plan ahead, and keep plugging away a few hours per week on SEO methods…your business will get there and all of your hard work will pay off.

Start here. Go far. LaunchX.com