Increasing your site traffic - Build It & They Will Come!Increasing your site traffic is a worthy goal to have. But too many clients I speak to truly believe that if they build it, they will come!
Oh no they won’t, at least not by divine right alone.
It just isn’t going to happen without you acquiring the know-how and skills to get and keep consistent quality traffic.
Maybe I should have used this title: I’ve Built It… But They Will Not Come!
It’s not hard to imagine how disappointed website owners are when they spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a new website (probably complete with flashy animation, cool artwork, tons of photos and a great online store) and yet nobody comes. Increasing your site traffic as this point seems an awful lot harder.
It’s discouraging enough to kill a web marketing campaign dead in its tracks and even start the faint-of-heart believing that Online Marketing just won’t work.
But Online Marketing will work.
However, it’s important to understand that creating a website is just the first part of the jigsaw. To guarantee success you are going to need a persistent campaign of content development, community outreach and link building.
So, if you have created a website (perhaps even slaved over its development for a few years) and things are still not really happening and you are stalled as far as traffic is concerned, it’s time to re-evaluate your strategy.
Understanding the Role of the Website
You need to realize that building a website is not like building a bricks and mortar store. With this come both advantages and disadvantages.
One major advantage is that websites live in the virtual world not the real world and another is that on the web we are all born equal. It is the only place where your local diner has a chance to appear every bit as large and important as the McDonald’s site.
But this has its disadvantages too. In the real world if you build your local diner right in front of a crowded highway, chances are you’re going to get some decent foot traffic, because they all see the development.
However, a website’s development is practically invisible to the masses. Unless of course you happen to buy the ‘JustinBieber.com’ domain! But Domain Names are a separate topic in their own right and we’ll tackle that another time.
Instead, websites have to be ‘discovered’ and how good you are at helping your website be discovered will affect your profitability significantly. Whether by learning the many skills needed yourself or maybe deciding to outsource these tasks to the experts, this is the key area that will determine your online success.
