Build a website and rack in the leads?
Wishful thinking. Any wise online marketing professional or SEO expert will tell you the exact opposite. One might think that if all time and monetary resources are into building a website that they would essentially be bringing in all sorts of leads once the launch is complete. That is completely false. There is much that goes into lead generation that has nothing to do with throwing up a website. Let me tell you, launching a new website may be appealing in the beginning, but it will slowly lose it’s value if time and energy isn’t put into keeping it fresh.
Once the website is launched, what’s next? How will people begin to find your website, pure magic? By now, if you do not know the answer to this, you desperately need the help of someone with this knowledge. There are multiple search engines out there, namely Google, that help people like you and I find relevant websites. It works from a process called search engine optimization, which is dealing with on-page marketing tactics around keywords, inner-linking strategies, content, and the list goes on.
Another method that plays a major part in organic rankings, maybe even the biggest, is search engine marketing, or SEM. This is everything dealing with off-page marketing practices, such as link-building, contact and directory listing, social media, etc. These are both critical in terms of being found in the search engines.
So as you can see, you cannot rely strictly on putting up a website in this day and age. If that is your strategy then you are banking on a few things:
- That people will find your content relevant and link to your website from outside sources
- That your SEO practices were good enough at the launch and will hold up for months and years to come
I’m going to flat out tell you that these are both very bad strategies. An effective website will create new content that web-surfers value and that search engines will deem relevant for specific keywords. It’s a time consuming process, but the reality is that most of this stuff is free, it just takes A TON of time to do and is more effective that throwing up a website and redeveloping it after every five years to refresh it.