Build and they will come???

Frequently after publishing a website, I'm asked the question "When will I be top on Google?". Not only is this difficult to acheive, it also usually implies that no other type of marketing is planned for the site.

It can, and does, happen. I've had happy customers come back a few months later asking why they have just dropped from top positions to 7th or 8th and usually we can quickly recover them. But it's not always the case. There are probably tens of similar sites being published each month, if not each day, all competing for that top spot.

And even getting top spot doesn't guarantee lots of traffic. I've just had an anonymous phone caller asking if I could create a site like Ebay for £50 and go live next week. He was, I think, serious. Many people like him talk to me about wanting a site. When I ask how they intend to market it they say a few words about various magazine adds etc. But then when it's live they want to know where the traffic is.

I'm afraid that's not the way it works. Yes, it's possible to build a site and for that site to have lots of people finding it. But that takes time and effort, and quite often customers expect that the site that went live last week should be fully up to speed this week.

It's best to have a good strong marketing plan BEFORE your site goes live. Have a realistic budget to spend and don't put all your eggs in one basket. Don't just say '£1 per day on adwords', as the cost per click might be more than your daily budget. Have a look around and try other marketing schemes to TRIAL.

We're currently testing Contextual Popunders as new contextual scheme and if it's successful, I'll post details here in September. Magazine adverts, flyers, link exchanges and many more off line advertising methods can really help to support your site.

What's successful for one site might not work for yours, but if you look at what a similar site is doing, then probably similar ways of marketing the site will work for you.

August Roundup

August is a bit of a quiet month as far as publishing new sites is concerned. Only 1 site this month, granted that was around 825 pages! But what can I expect when I'm on holiday the first 2 weeks of the month and for the last week of the month and sales is also on holiday!

July was a fantastic month though (a record). 11 new sites published: from simple 1 pagers to quite complex database driven sites with user areas. Favourite of the month goes to Baby Shoes, which replaced the customer's site he'd had designed by someone else. On the day it was published one of his customers saw it and became one of our customers almost instantly. Her site is almost finished and will be published next month and it's going to look great!

Plenty of good looking sites in the pipeline, a lot of which are almost ready to publish. So September should be very busy.