How do you market a web site? Four ways to help you get into the right mindset.

Here at Dream Row, we fully embrace the term Plug Yourself, from concept to completion. That means we’re about more than simply building web sites for our clients. We realize that establishing a presence online is only the start. A successful web presence needs to be maintained to really work for its owner. There’s no way around it; it is absolutely necessary. Before any web site owner can successfully handle SEO (search engine optimization) or SEM (search engine marketing), he/she has to be in the right mindset. Here are a few tips.

#1: Be ready to establish a schedule for web site maintenance.

It might be something as simple as “spend 30 minutes each month looking through the web site for ways we can improve it.” Ideally you’ll be able to carve out more time than that—no matter how you cut it, the more energy you can devote to the task, the better. More and more people are online every day. If your industry is remotely competitive, chances are one of your competitors is working to establish themselves as the top web presence in your field. Don’t get left behind simply because you thought your web site was a “set it and forget it” kind of operation!

#2: Be ready for the amount of work it takes to run a successful maintenance program (it’s more than most people realize).

Ongoing maintenance is a lot more work than the initial build phase, but fortunately for our clients, that doesn’t scare us one bit. Call us crazy, but we really enjoy this work. We really dig the satisfaction of a job well done, an older system made more efficient by moving it out to the web, or just the look on a client’s face when they see everything come together. Our favorite projects are the most challenging ones, because the more obstacles we have to overcome, the more we learn, and the better equipped we’ll be down the road. It’s a continuing process of self-improvement, and our clients have remarked about the vibe of openness and integrity they feel from us in person (if you haven’t met with us, give us a call; we’d love to chat).

#3: Be ready to continually work to increase the value of your web presence.

Sometimes the people we talk to already have a web presence. Sometimes they don’t. One question we get asked quite frequently from both camps is, “once I have a web site out there, how do I market it?” That’s a really good question, because in general, the vast majority of ongoing site maintenance directly relates to the site’s marketing strategy—the goal is either to:

Make the site more valuable to its users by adding useful content and/or features
Optimize the site for search engines, ad campaigns, and other online marketing

The key is to make sure that everything that happens to a site happens for one of those two reasons. Unfortunately, even a great site’s value will dwindle over time if it doesn’t get this kind of attention; it’s just human nature for your web site’s users to get bored and move on unless you’re providing what they really want—value.

#4: Be ready to give something back.

With those two points in mind, we try to help our clients understand a very important idea: it is absolutely imperative that you resist the temptation to turn that first point into a constant stream of ideas to make money off of people. Be prepared to give a little. It might seem like charity, but that’s just part of Internet culture. Chances are, if you’re not willing to do a little giving, your potential customers will find somebody who will. By all means, don’t de-value your work and give away the farm; just keep in mind that the more you’re able to contribute to the community at large, the more people will look up to you as an authority and, well heck, just Good People.

We’ve had so many people come to us with ideas that they thought would turn them into the next Amazon.com, but when it came time to develop their “hook”—the initial free/cheap introduction to their service, they said “forget it” and were unwilling to budge. Without fail, their ventures just stagnated. With no way to lure people in, their sites became digital ghost towns. Don’t let it happen to you!

SEO & SEM

Once you’re comfortable with these rules, you’ll be ready to get started with the technical part of the process—the SEO or SEM (again, search engine optimization or marketing) phase. We’ll describe that next time.

Agree? Disagree? Whatever the case, the Head Geek loves a discussion. Let us all know what you think!