I'll Make a Killing With My Website!

Everyone seems to know someone that is rumored to have made a killing by putting up a website and watching the customers come flooding in without additional effort. While this sounds exciting and may have happened in a few instances, “build it and they will come” does not apply to most websites.

For most website owners, relying on Google, Yahoo, and other search engines to bring an unlimited flood of customers to their site will lead to disappointment. Search engine marketing; the process of placing advertisements on search engines to be displayed when a customer types in a specific search word or phrase, has revolutionized a great deal of the modern business landscape. Business boundaries previously defined by geography are almost non-existent. The need to build a “brick and mortar” store is now an option where it was once a requirement. Marketing campaigns previously completely reliant on printing and mailing are now considered almost obsolete.

All of this points to needing a good plan for your business that does not start or end with the generation of a web presence. A website needs to be part of an overall integrated plan for success which must include marketing, time, and ongoing budget to support the site.  

Marketing: An appropriate marketing campaign needs to be established to promote a new site through email blasts, search engine placement, purchased AdWords, link building, etc. Existing businesses will want to integrate the new web presence into all existing media from business cards to inclusion in existing marketing campaigns.

When considering online advertising, the opportunities are broken into two distinct categories between Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

Search Engine Optimization is based on the content and structure of the website and relies on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and others to actively scan the site and index its contents. Based on these scans, search engines will rank the site against other sites for its value to various words and word combinations. This ranking will determine how high in the results your site appears when a customer uses search engines to find information. Remember, it takes time to get ranked by the search engines and on-going effort to keep a high ranking. There is no direct cost to this type of marketing other than the effort put into your website content.

Search Engine Marketing drives customers to sites based on advisements purchased on a pay per click model (PPC). This means you spend a little bit of money each time a potential customer clicks on your advertisement. This marketing can be used to quickly drive users to the web site but comes with a direct cost based on the search word or string purchased.  

For best results, a combination of both SEO and SEM may be necessary to reach the goals of your website.

Read our Search Engine Placement: SEO & SEM whitepaper to learn more.

Time: Websites need time to be found and added to the various services that constantly crawl the millions of websites on the Internet. In many cases it may take months for a new site to reach its potential in the search engines. This can be an anxious time if the business plan showed a flood of customers starting the day the site is launched.

Additional Budget: To continue to be successful on the Internet, a budget must be in place to keep a website up-to-date. Along with improving search engine rankings, customers will respond better to a site that is growing and evolving to meet their needs.

Building a website is an exciting step to reaching out to a world of new customers on the Internet and effective marketing, appropriate timeline, and additional budget to maintain the site will help you reach the goals you have set for your website. 

For more information on setting website goals, please contact Visionary Services, Inc. VSi specializes in web site development and design with an emphasis on data-driven integrations. Located in Des Moines, Iowa, VSi provides web development, design, and consulting services on both Linux and Microsoft Windows operating systems and a variety of platforms including PHP and Microsoft ASP .Net. Visit www.visionary.com for more details or to contact the Visionary Services Inc team.