You Built Your Website – Now What?

The vast majority of small businesses understand the importance of having a web presence. A recent study from the NSBA found that 96% of small businesses have a website. However, many businesses don’t use their website to its full potential. You will need to actively market your site and make sure it drives you business.

Here are some things every small business owner needs to do after building their site.

Make Sure Your Message is Clear

You have hired a beautifully laid out website. Your first instinct is probably to start showing it off to your current and future customers. Unfortunately, an awesome website isn’t enough to drive sales.

You will need to make sure that your site conveys your message first. This means that you will need to write some webpage copy (or hire a company that offers these services). Here are some pages that you will probably need for your site:

• A page to tell visitors what your company is about.
• A page about yourself and key employees.
• Pages for the different services you provide.
• Pages for testimonials about your products.
• A page to share contact information.

You will want to make sure that every page is well-written and clearly communicates your company’s vision. A consist vision and clear message will encourage more customers to reach out.

Start Driving Traffic

By this point, you should have a great looking website that will convert visitors into paying customers. However, you won’t get any customers from your website if they never see it!

It is time to start promoting your site. Here are some ways that you can drive traffic and hopefully receive future customers.

Organic Search Traffic

Search engines are probably the best sources of traffic. According to a study from Formstack, search engines account for about 80% of all website traffic. The traffic volume they provide isn’t the only benefit. If you choose your keywords carefully, then you will drive highly targeted leads. SEO leads also have a 15% conversion rate.

You will want to identify keywords that prospective customers are searching for and rank for them in Google. Here are some things that you will want to do:

• Identify keywords. You will want to rank for keywords that drive targeted leads to your website. The best way is to use the Google Keyword Planner Tool to find key phrases that relate to your industry and the products you sell. Local businesses will want to look for keywords that are specific to the region they operate in.
• Optimize your site. You will need to make sure that your site is well optimized to draw customers to it. You will need to make sure that your content is well written and relevant to the keywords that you are optimizing for. You will also need to build backlinks from authoritative websites that are relevant to your niche.

Google is the best source of search traffic. Approximately 70% of all searches are conducted on Google, so make sure that your website is well optimized for it.

PPC Campaigns

Search engines are the best source of leads, but unfortunately there is no guarantee that you will generate traffic from them. It can take months to optimize your site for Google and other leading search engines. Fortunately, you can still get traffic from them. You may want to consider using a PPC provider such as Google Adwords. You can pay for traffic from targeted keywords.

PPC campaigns are a good way to get traffic while waiting for your site to rank in organic search. They also have high conversion rates. One study found that PPC traffic was about 50% more likely to convert than organic search traffic.

Content Marketing 

You can also use content to promote your website. Here are some ways that you can use content to drive traffic to your site:

• Write guest posts on other websites in your niche
• Submit press releases about new developments in your business
• Syndicate content on Tumblr, Blogger and other platforms
• Share your own posts on social news and bookmarking sites such as Reddit and Inbound.org

There are many ways to use content to drive traffic to your site. Make sure that it is well-written and relevant to your target audience.

Plug Yourself on Other Sites

You will also want to reach out to other website owners that are relevant to your company. Visitors on those websites may click links to you to learn more about your business.

There are a lot of local business directories that you can list your company on. You may also want to talk to local bloggers and noncompeting businesses that will be willing to help promote your company. Of course, you will need to be willing to help them out as well, so make sure that you have a blog or other part of your site that you can promote them on as well.

Follow Up With Leads

You should start receiving visitors to your website in the near future. You may need to take to nurture these leads to encourage your visitors to purchase your goods and services.

Make sure that you followup with your customers in a timely and professional way. You will need to be persistent without being too pushy. Keep in mind that some of your visitors are probably reaching out to other professionals as well. You have a small window of opportunity to convince them to buy your products.