A newly launched website is like a new brick and mortar business that has no signage. The first step after your new website/blog is launched is to promote it so people know it is there. How you go about this will differ somewhat depending on your target audience, but there are a number of tactics you can use to generate traffic to your website. This is called “inbound marketing.”
Inbound marketing can include many different channels, but the most common are:
- Paid Search Marketing (e.g., Google Adwords)
- Social Media Marketing (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, guest blogging)
- Comment Marketing (e.g., niche forums, blogs, and other social media sites)
- Press Releases
- Webinars/Podcasting
- Email Marketing
These tactics all require a focused strategy that:
- Targets your ideal prospects by researching where they congregate online
- Incorporates keyword research and context with where on your website you are sending the traffic
- Produces frequent, unique, and comment-worthy content
- Builds authority and credibility by engaging your audience with helpful information where they gather online
- Measures results via website analytics and refines practices based on key performance metrics
Search engines love dynamic, original and entertaining content. Guess what? So do people. If you want to attract traffic to your website and then convert that traffic into leads, you’ll need to generate content that meets these criteria.
If your website is targeting local traffic, you will also need to make sure it is listed with important local citation/data provider sites, such as:
- Google+ Local
- Bing Local
- Yahoo Local
- Yelp
- Localeze
- Infogroup/ExpressUpdateUSA
- Acxiom
- CitySearch/CityGrid
- Superpages/Supermedia
- YellowPages/YP.com
It is important to note that all local listings will provide the maximum benefit for local visibility in the search engines if there is an exact match in business name, address and phone number across all listings and your website. All business descriptions should also reflect content that is relevant to the web page you’re linking to in these listings.
