When your website doesn’t seem to be getting you the return on your investment that you had hoped, it is possible that your expectations were a little amiss. It is often said that a website is not a like the baseball diamond in Field of Dreams – you cannot simply ‘build it and they will come’.
Think of your website as a purebred racehorse.
You are the Owner.
You’ve invested in the horse, but there it sits (or stands) in the stables, looking beautiful and full of potential. It’s fit, well fed and ready to go. But you aren’t making money. It’s a fantastic horse, and all your friends tell you so, but it’s not doing its job.
Your site needs to show up in search engines using the keywords that you or your designer have chosen and your site has been built around. One of the most important and effective ways to get your site noticed is with backlinks, or links on other sites pointing to your site. Social media is one way to do this – Twitter links are indexed by Google and count as links to your site.
The Trainer.
Owners who aren’t going to train their own horse hire a trainer. In the case of the website, this could be the web designer or developer. They know your site already, and probably have a good grasp on marketing your site, using search engines and choosing keywords. If your website guru doesn’t do these things, find one that does. At the very least, you should have a list of keywords that you or someone else can use to promote your site.
The Jockey.
The jockey is the one who does the work! Promoting your site is not the job of a web expert or a marketing specialist, in the same way that you wouldn’t hire a lawyer to collect your dry cleaning. A virtual (or real) assistant can help create inbound links by posting on other sites, take care of your Twitter account, update Facebook and write new blog posts for you, leaving you free to do what you do best: running your business. With a modicum of supervision (it is recommended that Tweets and posts be approved before posting) an assistant can, for a moderate outlay, promote your site, gain inbound links and get you the publicity you need online.
Where is your horse? Still in the stables, or helping your business win the online race?