Just Because You Build It, It Doesn't Mean They'll Come...

Contrary to popular opinion, just because you build a website—no matter how spectacular it is—people won't start flocking there in droves. I can't believe the number of people who come to me and tell me their site is informative and colorful and yet they garner no traffic. A large number of them have even paid a website designer to create them a "masterpiece" so-to-speak, but they just aren't able to drive traffic to their site and they most certainly don't rank impressively in the search engines. I know that when I first started our business, I had no idea you could coax a search engine—or bribe one! But you can and it doesn't mean paying one of those companies that promise to get you to the top of Google. That may work for a short term (in rare cases when it is a legitimate company), but it won't serve you long term and help continue your successful presence on that enormous world wide web.

A friend of mine has taught me a great deal about what will and will not secure rankings for a site. In those lessons, I realized that most people just don't get it. And that is a tough thing to find out the hard way and may just determine whether a business makes it or not. This friend of mine has been in the business for years and is what you would call an SEO Guru. She makes a great living by actually "teaching" people how to get where they want to be and stay there. She taught me, "Getting to the top of Google is one thing, staying there is another. Your position is affected by AUTHORITATIVE, VALID, RELEVANT, and CURRENT content. If a company promises to get you to the top of Google, but you don't contribute regularly to your site and social-media presence in a manner to sustain it, you will go to the bottom of the search-results list —and I do mean bottom. Then you pay them again. It's a vicious cycle. There is no reason to pay someone. Simply follow sensible rules and you will maintain and improve your positioning."

First and foremost, blog sites rank higher in search engines. It is a known fact. And most people don't realize that they are hurting themselves from the get-go by not having a blog site. They also misunderstand that a blog site doesn't just have to be a blog. It can contain and all content you wish to put on it—multi-media, text, images, contact forms, etc. But there should be a link that features blog postings as well and that content should be updated regularly. There is a great article as to why blog sites rank higher here:

http://www.xraymag.com/articles/xray_blogs_are_better_01.html 

In setting up your site, it is definitely important to express yourself and your company through it's design. But no matter how much you pay a designer, just having a great looking site isn't going to tell people that the site is out there and it most certainly isn't going to provide them a road map to find that spectacular site. 

We had this friend of ours assist us in our websites. We maintain one that is just a blog site and that we only post blogs too but no marketing. This is important to me as I want a source for others to have insightful information just to assist them in their small or home based business. However, we have 2 other sites which represent our business opportunity, and we diligently follow what we have learned from this guru to ensure that we are where we want to be in the search engine rankings.
We have now asked that guru to provide a way for others to understand and be able to increase their standings in the rankings. She has agreed to put together a package that will provide:

• Complete construction of a new site using blog technology or reconstruction of an existing site
• Posting of the first five stories
• Standard domain name of your choosing
• Your choice of WordPress template (from TemplateMonster.com, non-exclusive only)
• Customization of banner graphic
• Customization of color scheme
• Implementation of site directory
• Implementation of contact form
• Up to two hours of phone training to ensure that you are well equipped to maintain your site
• Hosting of your site for one year, with up to 10GB storage space
• Up to five email addresses with 25MB attachment-size limit
• Creation of site map and notification to search engines
• Technical support for issues not related to operator error

The package offer can be found at this link:

http://www.spidertrainers.com/facebook-wealthywayoflife/

We don't benefit from this package, but did want to offer people the opportunity to really learn how to help themselves. I know the training we received has proved invaluable to our success. So before you fall for the "when I build it, they will come" theory, make sure you clearly understand what it takes to actually direct those people and they will come.