If you build it, will they come?
Open letter to all site visitors:
Remember the movie Field of Dreams? An Iowa corn farmer hears voices commanding him to build a baseball diamond in his fields. Once built, the ghosts of the banned 1919 Chicago White Sox players come to play again. Through this journey, dreams are realized and regrets are overcome. We hear from people every week with dreams of building a web site that will make them a small fortune. Some people think their idea is so good that if they build it, traffic to their site will automatically come. Unfortunately, just putting a great site on the world wide web is not like building a shopping center in a prime location. On the web, all are equal and there is no 'prime location.' You will be one of billions of other web sites. So the question is, how do you tell people about your business?
The answer is web marketing. Most people simply will not look through pages and pages of ranked web sites. You get business by being highly ranked in search engines. Unless your company is a household name, people are not likely to do a search for you by your company name alone. You'll need your site to rank high for phrases people are likely to search for in a quest for your product or service. For example, if you are selling high quality apparel you will want to rank high for phrases like 'custom apparel' or 'quality apparel' rather than your company name.
So how do you know if your web site designer understands how to build a search engine friendly site and understands how to market that site? Ask them! A common response is "sure, we'll be glad to submit your site to all the major search engines and we'll to do that for free." Sounds to good to be true, and it is. For the most part, search engines ignore submissions and instead rely on links from other sites (Reference Google Webmaster Info). So ask for proof! Ask for their own web site's ranking and for examples of some of their clients' rankings.
Our clients choose us to build their sites because they not only want their site to be unique, attractive, and easy to navigate but also want traffic to come to that site. We understand how to build a search engine friendly web site, how to get all your site's pages indexed by search engines, how to get your site to rank high for your key phrases, and how to use a combination of sponsored ads and free rankings to drive traffic to your site. We are experts in web marketing. Come ask us, and we'll show you what we can do for your business.
