The Best of Intentions – Will Your Business Succeed Online?

Do You Really Know What it Will Take for Your Website to Be an Online Success?

Today I want to write about the “best of intentions” when it comes to having a website to promote your services or products. Do you have high hopes that once you have a well-designed, pleasing to the eye website, and you’ve placed some decent content on it, that you can kick back and wait for visitors to start flocking to your website’s door?

Probably so. From my professional perspective and experience, I have found this mindset to be more the norm, than the exception.

I hate to say it, but the “build a website and they will come” attitude is quite prevalent. As a matter of fact I have to keep reminding myself that very intelligent business men and women, who can do a great job out in the real world selling their services and products, usually haven’t a clue as to what makes a money-making website tick!

I guess I still kind of take it for granted that since there is so much information on the internet nowadays about how to have a “successful website” … well I figure people just Google and educate themselves on what they need to do to make their websites WORK for them.

This assumption is wrong! And I am not putting down my clients, nor anyone else, in regard to this matter. After all, I haven’t a clue about what it takes to be a successful realtor as example, and I’d have to do a lot of studying to learn all the ins and outs. I just couldn’t jump in head first and announce to the world that after reading a book about selling real estate, now I was knowledgeable on how to really be successful at doing that! Nope … I’d probably be a flop and wonder why I was struggling at getting listings or selling properties.

So, why shouldn’t this scenario hold true for the majority of people who have a website for “making money” purposes? How many people really know what it will take for them to get that site positioned into a lean, mean marketing machine? Very few, unfortunately. But those few are normally the ones who dive in to study and research what they have to do to really have a solid website that works effectively at promoting them AND bringing in revenue. And they are usually the ones who properly implement what they’ve learned and ultimately become successful.

With all due respect I have to say that my clients “best of intentions” attitude really works in my favor. It means that they need my help for more than just SEO attention. They need my online marketing success strategies, too.

For a full listing of all the professional services I offer, please visit my Home page and refer to the side menu.

OK … so What Does it Take to Have a Successful Website?

In my professional capacity, I really and truly try to arm every client with the core internet marketing knowledge they need along with solid basic SEO knowledge. Each client will have a slightly different blend of tactics and techniques that will get them to their end result. But for each website owner, that end result is the same … the need to attract targeted visitors to their site, and to make sales of one sort of another.

To this end, these are the basic concepts I discuss with them:

• That building a website is only one small aspect of a successful web presence.
• That to be successful, they need a website marketing plan.
• That they must be prepared to invest time and/or money in SEO implementation and techniques.
• That the more actively involved they are in the website marketing process, the greater the results they will achieve.
• That they must keep their site up-to-date (i.e. content is added on a regular basis; links are up-to-date, etc.).
• They ought to think about starting a blog (only if they can handle the demands of adding lots of quality content in addition to their website).
• They should participate in forums that are relevant to their niche.
• They need to seek links from suppliers, and other related sites to their niche that will bring value of one sort or another to their visitors.
• They need to always keep an eye on the competition.
• They’ve got to remain flexible and keep adjusting to trends in their industry.
• They should keep an eye open for new marketing angles.
• And the list goes on …

Patience is a Virtue

As my dear Grandma Sadie used to say “Patience is a virtue”. And yes – a successful website normally takes a bit of time to evolve! A swarm of visitor traffic isn’t going to come running through the gates the moment the site is launched. However, a client’s hard work and persistence combined with ethical and expert SEO advice and marketing assistance will usually pay off.

The bottom line is this … if you see yourself as a web owner with the “best of intentions” but with a site that is under-performing, the reason is normally laying right under your nose. Usually that reason is you have no real idea of how to go about online marketing; your site is devoid of properly implemented search engine optimization; your site lacks enough quality content; and most times your site is also suffering from one or more technical issues. All combined, these issues work together to put the kibosh on high rankings, site visitors and sales.

So … if you recognize yourself here, then start putting into practice any or all of the to-dos I mentioned above. You’ve got to start somewhere to make a positive change. And even tackling just one of the ideas above is better than sitting back and doing nothing!