You’re the proud owner of a gorgeous new web site that you worked really hard creating. Now you get to sit back and watch the customers come flooding to your site, eager to spend their money, right? Sorry.

Now you need to market your site. You may be harbouring the idea that now that you have a site, Google will magically make it appear at the top of all the search pages that would allow people to find your site. Sorry again.

I am full of bad news today, but getting your site found needs to be an important component of your web strategy (and budget).

This brings me to an important note; if the marketing of your site is not specifically included in the contract or proposal provided by your website designer, it is not included. You have hired the designer to create the site, not to market it. It is not the designer’s responsibility to make sure that your site gets found. A good designer will make sure to include all the components that will enable your site to be easily indexed, but the promotion of your site is another thing entirely. Some design firms also have marketing specialists and lots of designers have some great ideas that can assist you in your quest to have a high ranking site, but you need to pay them more for this service.

Web marketing is not as immediately gratifying as the actual creation of your site. When you are building a site you can easily see the progress being made. It’s harder to see instant results with search engine optimization. (Check out my Top 10 SEO Tips for a few easy to implement ideas on getting your site to rank higher.)

To effectively market your site, you need to talk to your customers, your friends, your family, strangers on the street and find out what words they would use to find your business on the Internet.  Make sure you have these keywords in your title and within the paragraphs of text on your site. Just remember what you write needs to make sense.

Consider Pay per Click advertising. I will deal with this in more detail in another blog, but in the meantime, do a little research yourself.

Look into various organizations and associations you can join that will list your web address on their site. You want as many incoming relevant links as you can possibly get. And all the better if the link can include any of your keywords, i.e. visit Mary’s Photography Studio for photos of your wedding, baby or family portraits.

If you aren’t part of the social networking craze, it is time you starting wasting hours of your time searching for old classmates and checking out everyone’s photos like the rest of us. Seriously, you do need to join FaceBook, or MySpace, or Twitter, or for the best results, register with all of them and make sure you include a link to your site in your profile.

Consider adding a blog or some type of free information to your site. People use the Internet for information. Search engines like blogs and people like free stuff.

Write an e-newsletter that will provide interesting information to your current customers. Letting existing customers know about upcoming promotions or sharing tips is a great way to promote brand loyalty and get them to your website on a regular basis.

Marketing your site is an ongoing, never ending process. Even when you are number 1 on Google you need to work to keep it there. Most of all, this means keeping your customers in mind. Make it easy for them to find you, provide what they are looking for, and make their lives as easy as possible. No matter what, people want to feel they are getting something of value. Provide that service.

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