If you thought creating your website was difficult, you may well believe that this is the next hurdle. For some, it is. If your business is highly competitive (for instance mortgage broking, retail …) you may find climbing the “Google ladder” a bit slow.

If you’ve ever paid for Yellow Pages display advertising you’ll know how frustrating the process is. Your competitors who got there first will be further up the pecking order. If their advertisement is larger than yours – they’ll be closer still to the top of the category. The web is not dissimilar. The trick is – you have to support your website’s existence with a carefully considered marketing campaign. Just because you have a website it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll get rich or popular!

Stuffed animals and dirty flues

Taxidermists and chimney sweeps are not that plentiful and there’s a fair chance that a really grand, well promoted website would draw a reasonable share of the potential audience. Consider first, what your potential audience might be and how you market to them. As a chimney sweep you’d avoid sending flyers to residents in new blocks of units, inner city residential, commercial property almost anywhere in the CBD and almost anywhere in Central Australia. Why? Because your target market isn’t there. The targets for chimney sweeps would be older dwellings (yup, those with chimneys!) on the north shore and eastern suburbs of Sydney and those in heritage areas – inner west, south west. With a website you have to be careful to target your audience because not everyone has a chimney.

Almost everyone else, however, already has a mortgage – or may need to refinance their existing mortgage. They probably also might want to send flowers or a gift, educate their children, sell unwanted school materials, have their house rewired or a toilet unblocked.

Chances are – they’ll turn to the internet to find that information. Have you noticed how many copies of printed directories languish on doorsteps these days?  If you have a website, you’re part of the way there in gaining their business. If you don’t, then you won’t! Equally important is a website presence to establish existence and credibility. Some people – particularly those wanting to engage someone for a large or extended contract will check the web to see if you really exist.

Do it right … from the start

The only way to promote yourself on the web is to pay! Right?  Wrong! One of the keys to climbing the Google ladder (and for this I mean also the Yahoo ladder…) is to have your website developed by the right people; those who know how to develop code which doesn’t attempt to trick, offend or confuse the search engines. We’re only the start to that process, though. Just because we’re good with words (code) it doesn’t end there. Those words have to mean something to people too. That’s where a specialist marketing person or firm will help you – particularly if you are in a highly competitive industry or you’re receiving only a few unique visitors a day on your website.

At The Pagesmith we have links with all kinds of people in business. We also know other web-designers and developers and we attend as many industry-related sessions as possible. We can help your website to reach its potential. We have links with marketing professionals whose specialties include search engine optimisation, video production, etc.

We don’t “mark up” their charges because you deal direct with them, so you’ve saved 15% just by reading this Blog!

Copyright 2009 © David W James