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Upon creating a new website it is not uncommon to concentrate your efforts on development and postpone website marketing until after the site is live. If you see value in traffic from Google, Yahoo or any other search engine, you should consider thinking about Internet marketing before development ever takes place.
Too many companies have payed handsomely to have a website built only to wonder why it isn’t doing them any good. In many cases, the best thing you can do is scrap your old website, consider your marketing objectives and rebuild. It’s a painful lesson for most. Many things that are favorable to search engines should naturally be handled by your web developer. This includes but are not limited to:
- the use of style sheets to separate content from style
- the use of code that complies with a set of standards
- clean/minimal code
- code that degrades gracefully
These points should not be afterthoughts. They are basic building blocks that need to be applied from the beginning and throughout the development process. Google provides a laundry list of things you, or your web developer, can do to make your site appealing to the search engine and the people that use it.
One guideline that jumps out at me is “Create a useful, information-rich site.” This is an area where you, the client, can really contribute to the success of your website. An “information-rich site” might include:
- how-to videos
- podcasts
- articles relevant to the website’s subject
- a blog
- help forums
As an added bonus, quality content is more likely to receive relevant backlinks from trusted sources. Google in particular looks favorably on websites that have this type of backlinking.
Additionally things such as blogs or forums often contain “natural language” that people are more likely to use in a search engine. Therefore increasing the potential for your site to be found by people not using the more formal terminology found in your polished website copy. This is not to make your polished content sound useless. Word selection and word weight is actually an art within itself and can be a real asset to your websites visibility when applied appropriately.
In conclusion successful Internet marketing involves an integrative approach from the day you start planning your website. This article merely skims a few of the things you can do improve your Internet visibility and should not be considered a comprehensive approach to marketing your website on the Internet. Take the time to consider your Internet marketing objectives before going to production.