How to Increase Traffic to Your Website
Posted 27th June 2009 at 12:38 AM by SallyOConnor
Question: Hi Sally. Thanks so much for allowing people to write in with questions – I have a doozy! Everyone told me that I should have a website because it would bring me more business. Well I now have a website but I don’t seem to be getting any hits and it has not increased my business. Am I doing something wrong?
Answer: Hi back and thanks for writing. I wouldn’t say that you were doing anything wrong, per say. What I would say is that you probably haven’t done enough - yet. If you think about your website, it’s much like a business card or a flyer that is advertising your business. The only difference is that flyers and business cards are on paper whereas a web site is in an electronic format, on the internet. So let’s look at a flyer as an example of an advertising marketing tool.
Flyers are used by many companies to advertise and can bring in new customers. You get them in the mail, you see them posted on shop windows, inserted in newspapers, so you decide to spend the time and money to get some printed for your business. But just having those flyers made and sitting on your dining room table will not bring you more business. You can even hang one on your front door but unless people just happen to walk by or you give them your address, they won’t even know it’s there so chances are, it will not be seen by many and probably won’t bring you any new business. Your next step would be to market those flyers – get them into people’s hands; you could post them on hydro poles, in supermarkets, send them out via mail, and where ever you think prospects might see them. You could also pay one of those services to market them for you, by including your flyer in with all the other flyers they stuff into envelopes and deliver directly to people’s homes. The point is, people won’t come to the flyers – you have to take the flyers to the people. Your website is very much like that. You can build a website and it can be the best website in the world but if people don’t know how or where to find it, then they won’t find you. So your question really becomes, how do people find my website?
As explained in the example above with the flyer, simply building a website is not enough to bring you new business. There are literally millions of websites out there in the world wide web, all competing for the same customers. If you want your website to act like a static business card, then simply build it and tell your friends, family and existing customers the URL (that’s the WWW web address) so they can find it. But if you want your website to actually work FOR you, to draw people to you and bring you new business, then you need to market it. This is what’s commonly known as “Internet Marketing”. Click to read more on my blog.
Answer: Hi back and thanks for writing. I wouldn’t say that you were doing anything wrong, per say. What I would say is that you probably haven’t done enough - yet. If you think about your website, it’s much like a business card or a flyer that is advertising your business. The only difference is that flyers and business cards are on paper whereas a web site is in an electronic format, on the internet. So let’s look at a flyer as an example of an advertising marketing tool.
Flyers are used by many companies to advertise and can bring in new customers. You get them in the mail, you see them posted on shop windows, inserted in newspapers, so you decide to spend the time and money to get some printed for your business. But just having those flyers made and sitting on your dining room table will not bring you more business. You can even hang one on your front door but unless people just happen to walk by or you give them your address, they won’t even know it’s there so chances are, it will not be seen by many and probably won’t bring you any new business. Your next step would be to market those flyers – get them into people’s hands; you could post them on hydro poles, in supermarkets, send them out via mail, and where ever you think prospects might see them. You could also pay one of those services to market them for you, by including your flyer in with all the other flyers they stuff into envelopes and deliver directly to people’s homes. The point is, people won’t come to the flyers – you have to take the flyers to the people. Your website is very much like that. You can build a website and it can be the best website in the world but if people don’t know how or where to find it, then they won’t find you. So your question really becomes, how do people find my website?
As explained in the example above with the flyer, simply building a website is not enough to bring you new business. There are literally millions of websites out there in the world wide web, all competing for the same customers. If you want your website to act like a static business card, then simply build it and tell your friends, family and existing customers the URL (that’s the WWW web address) so they can find it. But if you want your website to actually work FOR you, to draw people to you and bring you new business, then you need to market it. This is what’s commonly known as “Internet Marketing”. Click to read more on my blog.
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