How to get traffic and generate new leads with your website?
I have been doing quite a lot of browsing lately and I am absolutely amazed at how many websites there are in Singapore that are very search engine unfriendly. Basically these websites will not be found by customers, unless they advertise the site through offline media or online ads. Many businesses will pay top dollars for ads, yet do not have a website that can generate any kind of traffic by itself.
Why do you have a website?
Most businesses will have a website to promote their business online. For many business owners the aim is to provide new leads and generaly generate more business.
So they have a website designer come in and describe to them what they want this site to look like. The designer creates a beautiful image, you like it and it gets turned into a website. The site looks great.
Except… hardly anybody visits it. Sure, you will have the people that go to the site directly because they got your business card or saw your offline advertisement in a magazine somewhere.. But the site cannot be found by anybody else and you are getting very few new leads from your own website. You may buy advertising in directories or traditional media, as you will feel that the internet does not work in providing leads. Perhaps you will turn to Google adwords and spend lots of money in getting leads but even that (in the wrong heads) gives you a low return on investment.
It’s not the Internet though that does not work it’s the way your website was created
However, a lot of the time many businesses do not realise that the reason their website presence is not working for them is because they had a poorly created website. Sure, it may look great, but search engines don’t like your site at all. What causes that?
- Your site is created in such a way that search engines like Google cannot ‘read’ it. For example the text is not really text but is created as an image or a flash movie.
- The search engines cannot follow any of the links on your site because they were poorly coded. If the search engines cannot even find your pages, how are they supposed to index and rank them?
- Google can read your site and sees all your pages but they have been so poorly labeled that none of these pages gets even a top 50 ranking in their index. Basically, if your site is not on the top page for your keyword phrase you will get very few traffic.
- Google can read your site, see the pages, and has ranked some of your pages but you are not getting top listings because Google considers your site to be of low authority. No-one links to your site and therefore your page has no pagerank.
- Your site does get a few top rankings for a few keyword phrases but since no-one actually searches for that keyword phrase your site still does not get any traffic.
- Your business does not engage with any of the social media on the internet and does not create any online connections or get any linkjuice.
A search engine optimised website and a web strategy can make all the difference!
The Internet can be enormously powerful in providing you with new business and new leads if you use it and interact with it to your advantage. So here is what you can do.
- Learn SEO or search engine optimisation and understand how Google and other search engines rank websites.
- Know what your target customers are looking for. What keywords would they type in the search engines to find you? Make sure you do some thorough keyword research and find those phrases that get some good traffic but are still not that competitive so you can achieve a top ranking.
- Make sure that you make your website search engine friendly.
- If you can’t or don’t want to make changes to your website then start building links or create an alternative (free) search engine friendly website at one of the blogging or networking sites. You can then use that website to drive traffic to your beautiful looking but SEO unfriendly website.
- Create a video or write an article and submit to directories and You Tube. Videos can get a top 10 ranking pretty quickly for your keywords on Google and you can use them as little ads for your business to drive traffic and new customers to your website.
- If you really don’t want to get too much involved with all of this hire an SEO or web strategy consultant and let them take care of it.
When used correctly the Internet can be a very powerful tool to get high quality qualified leads to your business. As the internet becomes more important every day (have you seen the new Apple IPad making it even easier to browse the Internet at any time!) you cannot afford to ignore it.
