By RK Fischer & Associates

03/20/2011 This is a subject that is near and dear to my heart lately as I re-launched my website and my blog and have spent many a late night and weekend analyzing keywords, writing articles, and creating links, but there are still many things that can be done to build and grow traffic. This is extremely important when it comes to small business. Unless you just want your current customers to read your web content, your prospects will never find you if you just launch a website with a URL and think that is enough.

There are many small companies out selling themselves as web developers. Many can write HTML code and are great with graphic design, but that truly will not buy you much in the long haul. You truly need to find someone that can work with you on your overall web and social media strategy that works with web designers who are quite different than a graphic designer or web developer. First and foremost is content. What do you want your visitors to know about you as a company? What keywords truly describe your business and how will someone find you on the web? Once you have the content, then a web designer can develop your look and feel along with overall design so that your website has a better chance of being found on the most popular search engines.

If you are asking yourself - how do I know how many visitors are coming to my website - the answer is Google Analytics. Though it is important that you make sure you submit your URL to Bing and Yahoo, you need to make sure you have submitted to Google, because most people if they want anything - they Google it. Once you have submitted your URL to Google, you can sign up for Google Analytics. You will have to include some code in your website for tracking, but anyone with web experience can help you do this. Then you can log on and watch. It has become a daily ritual for me. It is better than "CSI Miami".

There are many business owners who are 45 and over who will say that they have no need for Social Media; as their product does not lend itself to people who use Twitter or Facebook. The truth of the matter, that is a false assumption and they are losing out on a part of their market. I know as I was one of them. Anyone 35 years and younger is most likely using Social Media and is how many of them choose to find information. Social Media if nothing else drives traffic to your website. Each time you have an article, case study, white paper, blog article, or promotion and you use Social Media to draw attention to it - you will see a sudden spike in visitors to your website. Now that a visitor has found content of interest on your website, they may bookmark your site for future visits. Social Media is free. Why would you not use products such as Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Facebook to draw traffic to your website?

Have you just put up a website with your company, product, and contact information and wonder why you are not hearing from anyone? The question to ask yourself is what information did the content on your website provide the reader - was it a bit self- serving and did not really provide any real value to the reader? The saying "you have to give in order to get "has real meaning when it comes to websites. There may be many companies providing the same products as yourselves, but what those searching websites are looking for is for not only the product but for also some value from the company. If you have information on your site about your industry or have articles, white papers, case studies and even free resources and tools depending on your business - this shows the visitor that this company provides value to their customers. This in turn drives traffic to your website and gets your name known. The fact is that people learn about products by searching the web. Why not influence the research people do?

Now is the question about links? Do you have partners or customers that provide links to your website and do you have links on your website that provides more content for your visitor? Both of these can aid in driving traffic. Here are two examples of how this could work for you. You have written an article on a subject that is related to a partnering company. Why would your partner spend the time to write a similar article? Instead they might want to link to the article on your site and now their visitors potentially become your visitors. Another good example could be having a case story about one of your customers on your website. This case study is of benefit to your customer and now the customer asks if they might link to the case study on your site, which now provides you additional traffic.

These are just a few things that you can do to increase traffic and visibility on your website. There are Search Engine Optimization (SEO) professionals that can come in and help you increase your traffic on your website by looking at all aspects that drive additional traffic, but the issue is that optimization is ongoing and needs to be done on a regular basis and an SEO professional ongoing can be expensive for a small business. For smaller businesses there are tools that can be utilized that will provide you the ongoing help you need. One such tool that provides a free version which will get you part of the way is Web CEO. This is a worthy tool, but you do really need to understand SEO to really use it properly. Another tool that is offered in a Software as a Service model (SaaS) is a product by a company named gShiftLabs in Barrie, Ontario. Since this is a SaaS product, it is sold on a subscription basis which can be very cost effective for small businesses. The product will not only analyze your keywords, but as well it will look at your competition, and your use of social media. It will make recommendations for optimization which will increase your rankings on search engines in a way that makes it easy for anyone to understand.

I know this can be a bit confusing and quite daunting, but it does not have to be. You just need to make sure that you have the right people and the right tools helping you in creating the highest level of success with your website.
For more information, contact us at http://www.rkfischer.com/contact_us.html.

RK Fischer & Associates

RK Fischer & Associates is a business consulting and coaching firm that helps business owners increase value in their business by improving their operational and bottom line financial performance which enables them to achieve profitable growth. All of the services we provide are focused on meeti…

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