The internet is big. In 1995 there was approximately 19 000 websites. In 2004 there was 50 million. In 2008, 4 years later, there are 100 million websites on the internet (Source: NetCraft). If you build your website and set it live, will people just start arriving? You know the answer.

The minimum requirement for a person to visit a website is for that person to know that the website exists. Unless you have a good budget for traditional print marketing with a strong call-to-action to your website, you will need to make your website famous through online methods. Let’s assume your website is designed well with a logical strategy. What would generate quality traffic?

• Submission to search engines

  The minimum requirement for inbound clicks is to add your website to the major search engines. This will at least give you the possibility of being found. Submission is a simple process where most of the search engines will ask for the title, description, keywords and URL (website address) of your website. Initially your site will land at the bottom of the pile. If you have followed basic Search Engine Optimization rules then you should get at least average results. Do not use search engine submission software since it will likely add your website address to directories that have been blacklisted by major search engines, thus severely penalizing your rankings.

• Submit to Web Directories
  Submitting your website to web directories will give your website another point of entry. Try and submit to all the local directories possible. This will hopefully increase your inbound links. These will also count as votes for your website. This will boost your search engine rankings in search engines such as Google since it monitors the amount of websites that link to your website.

• Post messages to related forums and blogs
  Create yourself an account on forums that relate to what your website is about. When you post on the forum or blog you might be asked to supply your website address. If your website address appears in the post then it counts as a vote for your website. Do not do ‘post spamming’ by taking the same general message e.g. “Yes, very interesting” and posting it everywhere. If you build a good relationship with the people on the forum or blog then they will link to you from their websites. Links from websites that relate to what your website is about will be counted as a strong vote, thus improving your organic search engine results.

• Viral Marketing works
  Create a competition on your website with a decent prize. Ask the participant to answer a basic question about one of your products or services. To complete their entry they should then invite 3 friends. These 3 friends will then receive a personalized email from your website saying “John Doe has invited you…”. Seeing the name of their friend will automatically make the email more trustworthy and worth opening. Avoid using spam words such as ‘free’,'discount’,'competition’,'win’ etc. Some corporate email servers have stringent spamming policies and might block any email even slightly representing spam. The email should be short with a strong call to action and a straight link to the competition. You will require a ’seed’ base of email addresses to send the original invite to. DO NOT BUY EMAIL LISTS. Use your own list of client email addresses. If you don’t have a list then you could try just setting it live on the site and use another way to seed the viral competition.

• Online Advertising
  This is the most effective way of getting targeted visitors to your website. Online advertising is cheaper than printed advertising when you consider the targeted nature of online ads and adding the distribution costs of printed advertising material. Printed adverts are generally not targeted and are pushed onto the recipient. There are three main methods for online advertising. You could buy a banner advert that is permanent on a host website, but you don’t know if the people viewing your ad is your target market. Your click-through rate would likely by dismal. You could increase the targeted aspect of your ad by buying keyword banner space that will show your ad when the visitor searches for a specific keyword or browses a specific related page. These would be like Ananzi’s banner ads where you buy keywords that will show your banner. This type of advertising generally require a flat fee per month per keyword and you are not really guaranteed of any results. Lastly, you get Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. This is the most effective way to only pay for results. And the results are double-filtered targeted results. Pay Per Click generally comes in plain text ad formats such as Google’s sponsored result listings. You do not pay for an impression (the availability of the ad for viewing). You only pay if someone actually clicks through and lands on your website, thus ensuring exclusivity for that moment. You also choose when your advert shows by choosing the keywords that relate to that advert. Your ad also states what your service is about. If the visitor clicks on the ad to go to your website then they have been through two filters, thus making sure they are looking for the service that you offer. The average cost of a click is R2.50 in Google and about R1.20 in Search24’s Adengine. Would you pay R2.50 to have a targeted person virtually walking into your store or business to browse what you have to offer?