Search engine strategies
So, you wrote your content and developed your website. Now, you can sit back and wait for your clients to come to you, right? You could, but that’s not exactly the way to success.
Yes, you need a website. Yes, the website needs to have an eye-catching design and motivating content that will keep people interested and coming back for more; but first, you need to get people to your site. So, how do you do that? Well, that’s the difference between online marketing and successful online marketing.
Two of the most crucial necessities to drive traffic to your site are relevant keywords and good search engine strategies. Keywords are the words and phrases that your customers type into search engines to find your site. The keywords you use on your site should match the keywords and phrases that you think your prospective customers would use. Of course, you could easily come up with five or ten keywords that are relevant to your site; but what about the people who don’t know quite as much as you do about the topic. What keywords might they search? Take a survey with friends and family and include people not as knowledgeable as you are about the topic (and maybe even some who are more knowledgeable). Keep track of the keywords mentioned the most and include them in the content of your site.
Okay, so now you have relevant keywords. What’s next? You need to get the search engines to list your site. You can submit your site to directories or search engines for free, or you can pay to have your site indexed. Or, you can do all three.
Submitting your site to a search engine for free or submitting to a directory is fairly similar. Basically, the submission process involves completing a form and waiting to see if they approve your site for listing. Whatever you do, make sure they are quality directories and search engines.
You can also pay to index your site, which is known as Pay For Inclusion (PFI) or Pay Per Inclusion (PPI). Why pay when you can do it for free? PFIs (or PPIs) will get your site indexed quicker than submitting for free, and it could give your site a higher ranking (although it isn’t supposed to guarantee this).
So, you can sit back, relax, and hope your site is chosen over the many other sites that used some great marketing strategies. Or, you can join in the success and start brainstorming those keywords and submitting your site to every relevant directory and search engine.