Pouring hours of blood, sweat and tears into building a magnificent site is only half the battle in my experience working within the web 2.0 realm. Contrary to this fact, there are still web experts out there who claim that simply having a standalone great site is enough and that it will promote drive itself to the top. In my opinion, this is only a half-truth based on this simple notion of common sense:
How can people know about how great your website is, if they can’t find it?
A text book example of this commonality is rife amongst websites. The aesthetics looks visually stunning, the content and levels of interactivity are astounding yet such websites are phantom-like when it comes to being seen for theme-defining search terms. There are many great sites out there still ranking poorly for targeted keyword themes, why? There is nothing to entice traffic towards their web page.
It’s sort of like pushing a heavy boulder off a cliff, the expressions may seem a little bit exaggerated yes, but think about it. The weight of the work is heavy, and getting your website over the edge will require every ounce of strength. However once you get things rolling by leveraging your website’s online visibility yourself, online activity will perpetuate and the promotion of your website will subsequently become autonomous… Like a snowball rolling down a hill!
Enter Social Media Optimisation. What is normally considered to be a grey area actually constitutes an integral part of the website’s launch process. Yes, you may already have amazing content on your website – this is the social media element. But what you’re actually missing here is how the content can be optimised to expose the website as the whole, and create synonymy of your brand name with the quality content that you have produced. So what is the return on this investment? Word-of-mouth: An intangible facet of any business that has the potential to exponentially increase exposure.
Social Media Optimisation is a different outlook on SEO. You may not be seeing the direct results via search engine referrals, but what about unique visitor traffic through referring websites? A little lateral thinking goes a long way here. SEO carries the following objectives: boost search engine rank, increase the quality of traffic and increase conversions. Where does quality traffic come from? High-authority sites with a lot of user-activity around the related content… Unfortunately, this content doesn’t just magically appear on its own. There’s no wizard to do the work for you.
The initial growth of your own website has to be seeded by you, the business owner, and those closest to you who can spread the word online about your brand name. The second element of growth comes from external websites – those that boast SEO advantages, as well as those that don’t. The key to nailing the second phase is relevancy… If your amazing website is selling tea, you’re hardly going to get any hits by promoting it to coffee drinkers, are you? Let alone not promoting it in the first place.
To the skeptics who don’t believe in the promotion of great websites, I implore them to take the challenge and see the results first hand. A poor-link profile for a new website is inevitable. It’s entirely up to you to get the ball rolling, and by seeding your online presence with content of value within an active online demographic, you will be rewarded with customers or clients who will be devout in making the quality of your service known.
