The 1989 movie Field of Dreams was a fantasy that used the phrase “If you build it, he will come!” which is sometimes misquoted as “If you build it, they will come.” In the movie, Kevin Costner built a baseball field because he thought that “Shoeless” Joe Jackson would return and once again play baseball in the field.

 If you build a website will visitors come to your site? If you believe they will just because you have a website, then you, like the movie, are living a fantasy.

 Today it takes more than just having a website to get visitors (potential customers) to come to your site.

 You wouldn’t design a brochure or catalog and not mail it out to potential customers would you? No, of course not! Unfortunately, most website owners are doing just that with their site. They are not taking the proper steps to promote (market) their website and therefore are not getting the traffic they should.

 Today, the Internet (specifically search engines) is the number one source that individuals use to look for products and services, even for local sources. Without properly promoting your website, you will be sitting in the stands waiting for the game to start.

 So, what do you do? The following list gives some of the best proven ways to get significant, quality traffic to your website of potential customers looking for your products or services.

Search Engine Optimization

Writing Blog Articles

Submitting Articles to Article Websites

Using Social Media

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

 The primary goal of a well established plan to promote (market) your website is to get your website listed high in the search engine results. Not just for the name of your company, but for keyword/phrases that potential customers would search on when looking for your products or services.

 This goal holds true whether you sell nationally or locally. With the search engines being the number one place individuals go to search for products or services; don’t you want your website to show up high in the search engines or do you want a “Website of Dreams?.”

 Where do you start to promote your website? Most website owners lack the knowledge of how to properly promote their site, so the best staring point is to find an Internet Marketing company that has the experience to guide you.

If you are interested in learning more about the best ways to promote your website and generate traffic, please contact us today at USA Marketing Associates. 508-223-3653 or jconant@usamarketingassociates.com

 Before getting into this, let me start by saying, that for most business owners with a website, their first question should not be PPC or SEO, but what do they want to happen when someone visits their website. Does the website owner sell products? If so, are they simple products that can be purchased online with a credit card, with minimal product information, and just the need to answer basic questions using a FAQ page? Or are the products more expensive and complicated, potentially requiring a phone call or possibly a visit from a sales person? The same types of questions need to be answered for service businesses as well.

 For low cost products that are very competitive, meaning there are lots of websites that sell similar products, PPC may be too expensive on a per click basis. As an example, the keyword/phrase “replacement ink cartridges” has lots of bid competition on Google (over 100 PPC advertisers). One click on a popular PPC keyword/phrase like “replacement ink cartridges” on Google will cost the PPC advertiser $3-$5 or more.

If you are selling a $15 ink cartridge your cost of sale would range from 20-30% if you are paying $3-$5 per click. (That is if 100% of everyone that clicked, purchased.)  If 5 visitors land on your site from PPCs and only one purchased (a conversion rate of 1:5) you will lose money by spending $15 to $25 for that traffic. That is not to say that repeat orders and multiple cartridge purchases wouldn’t help, but it might take you months to find out that PPC won’t give you the sales you want at a reasonable cost of sale.

 Don’t give up on PPC just yet. I suggest that if you can purchase PPC traffic from Google and other engines, for less popular (less expensive) keyword/phrases related to your products, you should do so. Then test to see if your conversion rate per sale is acceptable. If it takes 8 clicks at $0.25 per click or $2.00 total to obtain a purchase of one ink cartridge at $15, (a conversion rate of 1:8), your cost of sale would be just 13.3%. That’s far better than losing money with more expensive clicks.  If your PPC bids are lower, you will most likely get fewer clicks, but with your conversion rate staying the same, you will lower your cost of sale.

 I’m not anti-PPC; they do have a place in almost anyone’s marketing mix to maximize market reach while holding down cost. The key to PPC is to test, test, and test!

 However, most users of search engines know that when they see the words “Sponsored Links” or “Sponsored Results” they are looking at a list of paid advertisements and not real search results. Most searchers click on the real search results, the “Organic Search” results, instead of the PPC “Sponsored Links” or “Sponsored Results” listings.

 On the other hand, one professionally written and crafted, optimized SEO web page on your site that gets listed high in the search results on Google and other major search engines, can generate 100’s to 1000’s of visitors to your website. That result would have cost $300 to $5,000 if you went with PPC. If you have deep pockets like large companies then go ahead and spend your money on PPC.

 If you have a professionally written SEO page created for you, it will appear high in the search results on all major search engines not just Google, but MSN, Yahoo, AOL, Netscape, ASK and others. When utilizing SEO pages it doesn’t matter if someone clicks on the search engine link for a page 100 times or 10,000 times, you get all of the traffic without paying anything to the search engines.

 What is the answer to the question of which is better, PPC or SEO?  The answer is; there is no best one. My recommendation for all clients is that they need to use a mix of PPC and SEO. Use PPC for the low cost keyword/phrases and SEO when the cost for PPC is greater than $0.50 per click. If a keyword/phrase is likely to get 100 or more clicks per month at $0.50 per click, your monthly cost will be $50 per month. Multiply that times 10 keyword/phrases and you will be paying Google or other PPC engines $500 per month or $6,000 per year. Ouch!  

©2009 USA Marketing Associates, Inc.