Why you need to market your new site
When you commit to building a new website, it’s easy to feel like a million bucks. You’ve finally made a decision, and you can kiss that old site goodbye. Hopefully there will be no more complaining about slow load times, outdated images or clunky navigation. You won’t have to be embarrassed about sending customers to your site, and you can finally feel like you have a competitive edge over other businesses in your industry. Life is good.
While you do make valid points, there is something missing from the equation. No one is going to know that you have a new website unless you tell them so. And the best way to tell a lot of people at once is to market your new site. Unfortunately, many companies forget this small detail and assume that the people will just come.
Why It’s Important to Market Your New Site
Whether you’re in the beginning stages of building a new website, or you’ve already completed this process, it’s important to follow through with the next step of promoting your hard work (or let’s be honest here: investment).
Let’s take a look at why your website needs YOU right now.
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You need to build trust. Most customers won’t buy anything from you unless they trust you. Depending on your product, its cost and its purpose, it can take anywhere from a few days to a few years for a person to build trust. Be patient. Your site should have the appropriate trust signals (i.e., social media buttons, testimonials, reviews), and you should use channels like email marketing and social media to further nurture relationships.
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You need to market to a specific audience. If your website appeals to “everyone” it will appeal to no one. Funny how that works, but nothing is more important than defining your audience. Once your website is built around that particular audience, you can market your new site to them specifically.
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You need to ease into your information. Companies often get carried away with their websites, thinking that they need to include everything under the sun. Refrain from including a lot of unnecessary information and then sending people off to explore it. This can put people at an overload, which means they won’t buy from you at all.
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Success takes time. As great as it feels to have a new website, you’re probably the most excited. Your customers and prospects won’t be excited until they actually have a reason to use your website. Until then, you need to be patient. Success doesn’t come overnight, so continue marketing your site so that when people are ready, they will come and they will have a great experience.
Tips for Promoting Your New Site
Knowing that you have to take some time to market your website once it’s built, what can you do to get started?
There are three main ways to promote your site, and that includes traditional word-of-mouth, being there when people ask about you and advertising your site online.
For the purpose of this article, let’s dig deeper into the ways that you can successfully market your new site online and increase traffic.
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Write New Content. Your content is one of the most important parts of your website. Create new content for your audience to build up a new and improved following. As you establish yourself as a brand expert, traffic will naturally be driven to your website, which finally, will look amazing.
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Rank for Competitive Keywords. Keywords are still important to your online website, but be smart about how you use them. Focus on long-tail keywords rather than short-tail ones. Long-tail keywords are easier to rank for because they’re not as competitive, and you’ll see results sooner.
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Use Quality Images. Part of the reason why your new site design looks good is because of the fresh, updated images. This means that any other images you put out there have to be of the same quality. Most brands use a mix of high quality stock photos and their own brand photography. Plus, you never know when a good image will bring a backlink to your site!
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Build Quality Backlinks. Speaking of backlinks, having a good backlink strategy drives organic traffic to your website and improves SEO. If your site has a lot of authoritative domains, you have a better chance of ranking higher in the SERPs.
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Use Internal Linking. Adding internal links to your content is an effective way to get people to spend a longer time on your site. Aside from this obvious benefit, strong internal linking makes it more likely that your content will be shared and helps your articles get indexed by Google.
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Make Yourself Visible. Take every opportunity to participate and engage with your audience, including Q&A platforms, Facebook groups, Google+ communities, forums and more. The key is to be active and continually put out good information and advice that link back to your website – and your brand overall.
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Run Surveys. Even though your new site is probably looking pretty great right now, there is always room to grow. Gather customer feedback to learn more about what your audience thinks of your site and what areas could use improvement. Pay attention to what people are saying about your website, and find ways to make use of the advice, particularly when you notice repeat feedback.
Conclusion
Building a new website is an excellent way to bring traffic to your website and gain new customers. It’s important to recognize that your site can’t do this on its own, however. You must give your site a giant push so that it gets in front of the right people at the right time. You must also continue to create strong content that brings people back to your site for an additional good time.
