I Have a Great Site, But the Phone isn't Ringing!

By: James R. Dragoo, Jr.
September, 2006

Having a finished web site is just the beginning of online marketing. Launching a new web site is very similar to opening a new physical store front. Just as you would advertise the grand opening of your physical store, you should advertise the launching of your new web site.

  1. Complete Branding
The goal here is complete branding. Everything that leaves your office should convey the message of your company, especially your web site. Whether your company has been established for years or is just getting started, having consistent branding across all aspects of your business is very important. If you have a certain logo, color scheme, mascot, or font that appears on all of your printed materials, it should be the same for your web site. This allows people to easily and quickly recognize things that belong to your company.
  1. Content rich web pages
If your site contains only graphics then there is not much for the search engines to index. Search engines do not pick up on images when searching through your site. If the search engines can not index your site when people type in relevant search terms your site will not come up, resulting in less traffic. A web site can not accomplish its true purpose if it has very low traffic. Text content will lead visitors to your site but the last thing that most visitors want to see is a page that looks like a plain word document. Graphics are important but are not the only element of a good site.
  1. Targeted Cost per Click (CPC)
Utilizing a cost-per-click advertising campaign allows you to completely track your spending. Unlike many other forms of advertising, CPC advertising allows you to track exactly how much it costs (to the penny) for customers to reach a specified goal such as filling out a contact form or purchasing a product. Using our CPC management service makes the process even easier. Let us handle all of the work and provide monthly reporting as well as ongoing optimization to maximize your return.
  1. Organic link building
The single most effective way of building traffic to your site over the long term is by having other sites link to your own site. Search engines such as Google give your site more creditability as the number (quality over quantity) of incoming links increase. You need to think about who should link to your web site, and why they would do that. Obviously you do not want a link to a competitor on your site. Think of it in the same terms as building partner relationships. Have links to businesses that compliment your own. You send business to them and they send business to you in return.
  1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
You need to make sure that your site has taken into consideration various SEO techniques. The main SEO technique is known as validation. This is the process of making sure that the coding of your site is valid, clean html code as decided by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Having a valid site ensures that it will display correctly without errors across several common web browsers. Your site may display perfectly in Microsoft Internet Explorer but will it display correctly in Mozilla Firefox?
  1. Press Release

Issue a press release announcing the launch of your site. If it works well and looks nice, a newspaper may run it. If not, at least someone at the paper will see your idea, and ideas can spread even by just word of mouth.

If a newspaper decides not to run your press release in the printed paper they may still choose to run it as an article on their web site. This can actually be better in many ways. Someone can type some keywords into a search engine that match up with your press release and pull it up in their web browser. Someone who does this is already online and is only a click away from visiting your site. If they are impressed or otherwise interested in your web site, they are very likely to tell others about it.

We provide complete solutions and can help you through all of these issues. Even if you currently have an existing site we can take a look at it and make it better. Call us today to schedule a free consultation. We will personally meet with you to discuss how your web site can drive bottom line results for your company.