If you build it will they come?

I have a website - why isn’t anyone visiting?


Most of my clients believe that if you build a website then people will naturally visit and then buy stuff or call or come into their store. The fact is there are over 17 million websites on the internet and the number grows each day. Only the serious Internet companies will rise to the top of the search results. Unlike having people just stop by your brick and mortar store, consumers on the internet have to know that you exist, they must like you and they must trust you in order to take any action.

How does a website get found by potential customers?

 First of all you should have a marketing plan (and budget) that outlines how you will communicate with your customers and what that message will be. Only when that process is complete should you design your site.

Traditional marketing for your product or service consists of print, tv and radio. You would create an advertising campaign to extol the benefits of your product or service. Those that did not have a budget for advertising would count on word of mouth to get the message out or, if they were in a high traffic area, they would rely on a large sign to draw in customers.

Internet marketing is like that process in many ways. You can have an advertising campaign, count on word of mouth, or put out a big sign on the internet, or a combination of all three. The difference is that there is only one medium, the Internet which has many subparts.

Unlike print, tv and radio marketing, which are served up to the consumer without their request, Internet marketing relies on the consumer to take some action to find you. This is done through search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

How does a consumer find a product or service in a search engine? They enter words or phrases into the search box and press the search button. Searching the Internet is free to the searcher and they can search for as many words and phrases that they want to until they find what they are looking for. The results are displayed in a list format with the top result being the one that most matched the search request. Note, there are other results on the page as well, these are called sponsored or placed ads (remember the ad campaign).

Search engines make their money from paid advertising and other services that they provide. They want the searchers to find what they are looking for the first time around without a lot of hassle, in fact if you have used Google lately then you have noticed that they even try to guess what you are looking for so you don’t have to work hard at all.

So, the relationship between the consumer and your website are those words or phrases that they type into the search box.
You need to know which words and phrases (keywords) that the consumer is using to find a particular product or service so that you can make your website show up on the top of the list, or at least on the first page of results.

Organic search results

Step one is to do a keyword research for your product or service to determine which words and phrases consumers are using to find your type of product or service.

Step two is to incorporate those keywords into your website content and the coding (meta tags) of your website. (see our article on how to make your content work for you)

This will get you recognized by the search engines, but not even close to the first page. The search engines want to know that you are real (not a spam website) and they want to know that you are recognized by other internet sites as reputable and that you can be trusted.

Step three is getting links from other reputable websites to your website with those keywords in the link text. This is known as link building.

Organic search engine optimization is also known as SEO. It is equivalent to being on a busy street and putting out a big sign for passer bys to see and check you out. It requires some funding but not as much as an advertising campaign. The drawback is that it takes a fair amount of time to get to page one and once you are there you must fend off the other sites that are trying to make page one and even the ones that you bumped off.

Paid search results

Step one is to do a keyword research for your product or service to determine which words and phrases consumers are using to find your type of product or service.

Step two is to create a short and concise advertisement and bid against your competitors for those keywords that you obtained from your keyword research. The highest bid gets to highest spot in the search results. When a customer clicks on your ad you pay the search engine the amount that you bid on for those keywords. This is called PayPerClick aka PPC. This is referred to as search engine marketing aka SEM. The advantage is that you get immediate results and don’t have to wait for your site to reach the first page for organic search results. The drawback is that it can be expensive and may not yield the high results that you may expect.

Website Traffic Resources

Other things that you can do to increase traffic to your website are: have a blog, create a video, submit articles, create an Internet press release, and have banner ads and pop under ads on other websites.



Take your website to the next level – call Sierra Pacific Marketing for a free website analysis. 559-298-1101