You have a website, but no website traffic. Perhaps you’ve invested in the design and creation of this website. Now, it sits there…. gloriously inactive. You don’t have new clients. You can’t believe you spent the money on this stupid thing, and you just don’t have the time to deal with this social media stuff.

What do you do?

1. Make Your Website SEO Friendly.

Make sure your developer installed all of the proper SEO tools. Greta Rose highly recommends Yoast’s SEO plugin, and your website designer should have ensured your website has all the correct header meta tags. The important items here are the meta description and title. Keywords are great, too, but not necessary if you use the plugin correctly.

2. Write a blog post at least twice a month.

Make sure to follow our suggestions for blog writing, including using your key words in the title and throughout the content of your post and tagging it properly.

3. Get friends to click your links.

Share your newly written post on your Facebook fan page, directly to the walls of your friends, and ask your closer friends to share it to their friends. Ask them specifically to click on the link to view the page. If they are good friends, ask them to comment as well.

Google establishes your website’s value by the number of page views and links. Your links are only as valuable as the number of clicks they receive.

4. Send out a monthly e-newsletter.

We recommend Mailchimp, but key is to make it visually appealing with images and/or video, with the link to your blog post, asking readers to click on the link to read more. Goal: get as many clicks as possible. We suggest 3 short blurbs, each with its own link to “read more”.

5. Make Google Your Friend.

You’ll want to get used to doing the following each month, at least once:

• A) Look at your Google Analytics, which your developer should have installed for you, especially the week after your e-newsletter. Understand how to read this invaluable information, and observe what worked about your sharing strategy and what didn’t. Don’t deny the truth in front of your face.
• B) Google search your business often, using all the key words you have installed on your website. Click on your Google business listing. Ask all of your friends to do the same.
• C) Create a Google Webmaster Tools account, and regularly ask Google to crawl or fetch for you.
• D) Submit your business to Google Places and follow the instructions to get your business found on Google.

We haven’t even gotten into Facebook and how to do targeted advertising, but this is a great place to start. If you follow these simple steps, and dedicate some time and attention to the basics of sharing and inspiring people to INTERACT, EXCHANGE and CLICK on your website, you will see an increase in traffic, in Google search rating, and ultimately in sales (which is the point, after all).

Moral of the story: Your website is a tool to be used, not for you to just stare at.

Unless you are paying someone to do ongoing SEO practices for you, the responsibility for your Google ranking and general website traffic lies in your own hands. May the force be with you.

Have questions? Want to know more? Don’t hesitate to contact Greta Rose directly here.