Build a Business Not Just A Pretty Website

Many business owners are told to build a pretty website to market their business so they pay 1000s of dollars to a website designer then wait for the business to pour in. After several weeks or months of receiving no new leads from their website they conclude it was a waste of time and money.

Where did they go wrong?

They built a website not a business. For a site to be profitable it needs to be functional. A great design doesn’t mean you’ll attract visitors. For example, you’ve probably seen flash websites displaying a dramatic flash presentation before you enter the site. They usually give you the option of skipping the introduction by including a link that says “skip introduction.” The problem with this type of site is that the search engines don’t spider flash content. They only spider text. This means your site won’t attain high rankings resulting in little traffic and leads.

Build a business not just a pretty website

A great web design is not the most significant factor for building a profitable business online. You can’t rely on “if you build it they will come” philosophy. You need to drive traffic to your site then convert visitors into buyers.

How to attract website traffic

There are 100s of ways to attract visitors however I’ll provide the 4 major methods I use that have proven to be very effective:

1. Search engine optimization

On page factors
This refers to designing your site correctly so it will attract the search engine spiders.

1. Keywords
   Make sure you include your main keywords in the title and description meta tags. The title meta tag is what search engines read first and the description meta tag is what people will see displayed in the search engine results pages. Include your keywords in the header (h1, h2, h3) tags, file names, navigation links and image descriptions (alt tags).
2. Navigation menu
   Don’t use images or javascript for your navigation menu because search engines can’t read them. Instead use text and style it using cascading style sheets (CSS).
3. Site Map
   Create a web page containing links to all pages on your site (like a table of contents). When search engines visit this page they will quickly and easily index all your pages by following the links.
4. Off page factors
   This refers to getting links from other sites (backlinks) to point to your own site. The number and quality of links will determine your search engine rankings. After your site is online start a link building campaign. This can be achieved with article marketing, video marketing and social networking.

2. Article marketing

Write 400-600 word articles related to your niche then submit them to the top article directories and ezine publishers. Create a resource box at the end of your article that includes a links back to your website. Website owners and ezine publishers are always looking for high quality content to place on their site or in their newsletter. Getting a link from a top article directory to point to your own site will immediately boost your rankings.

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3. Video marketing

Convert your articles to videos and submit them to video sharing sites. Video listings often appear ahead of other search engine results. Make sure you create a good title and description for each video and include the URL of your website in the meta tags as well as in the video. This will build backlinks to your site.

4. Social marketing

Make it easy to share your content by including social media links on your website such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter. Whenever you publish new content notify your Facebook friends and Twitter followers. Your goal should be to build a community around your niche so people will naturally pass your content on to others.

A pretty website is only the beginning of building a profitable online business. Generating traffic and converting visitors into buyers is the lifeblood of a successful website.

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