Establishing a Web Presence
by Michael Kinzie
There is a substantial difference between building a website and establishing a web presence. Building a quality SEO friendly website is only one of the many steps in establishing a web presence. Other key elements of establishing a web presence include social marketing, video marketing, link building, and writing quality articles just to name a few. Building your brand or establishing a web presence is a multifaceted endeavor with occasional boring tasks, but is essential to generate the increase in traffic and sales necessary to grow your business in this troubled economy. There are countless ways to promote your site on the internet, but for the sake of time, we’ll touch on only a few.
Google and Yahoo! (now using Bing results) will get you the lion’s share of organic internet search engine traffic, and Google and Bing love inbound links to your site. Therefore, I would strongly urge you to exchange links with sites that are closely related to yours, but are not one of your competitors. There are also thousands of search engine friendly directories on the internet and I would suggest listing your site on at least 250 of them in your link building campaign. Link building is a long and arduous task, but is necessary to increase your Google PageRank thus boosting your organic search engine listings and increasing your traffic.
Submitting articles is another good way to increase traffic to your site. Good QUALITY articles will help you in many ways. One, a good quality article will help show your customers and the world that you are knowledgeable or perhaps an expert in your field. Two, your articles should include a “call to action” inviting potential customers to visit your site to find further information about your company and your products. Three, most sites where you would submit an article have an “about the author” box in which you may include a link or two to your site which provides potential customers with a direct path to your site and also helps in your link building campaign. A word of caution – do not submit articles to just any article directory on the internet; reputable directories are the key.
Another great way to expose your company to the world is FaceBook. FaceBook now has as much or more monthly traffic than Google, so any company wanting to make a splash on the internet must have a FaceBook page. FaceBook is a great place to introduce everything new about your company and your products. As you announce a new product or service, add it to your FaceBook page with a corresponding link to your website detailing the product or service. FaceBook now offers ad space which you may or may not want to take advantage of depending on your budget.
Another huge potential customer source is YouTube. YouTube now gets over one million hits a day and that is a lot of potential customers. Start a YouTube channel for your business. Add videos about your products or services and include links to your website in the video descriptions. Another good technique is to overlay your company’s web address directly over the video at the top or bottom of the clip. Here you can highlight your products and service, show your “how to” videos, tell about the special features that make your products superior to the competition’s, and just about anything else. Your imagination is your only limitation.
These are just a few of the elements in establishing a web presence and they should all be interwoven together. Add icons on your website inviting customers to visit your social pages and vice versa. Send out press releases about news in your industry, company news, product releases, and other things that will draw attention to your company’s name. Think outside of the box and come up with new ways to expose your company to the world – do the things that will put you out in front of your competitors. In today’s economy, you cannot afford to sit back and wait for customers; you have to go out and entice them to come to you. Your success depends on how hard you are willing to work for it.
About the Author
Michael Kinzie has been the Senior SEO Consultant for AMF Enterprises, Ltd. since 1999. He travels to companies across the US training employees in the art of SEO and web development. Michael may be contacted through AMF Enterprises, Ltd.