Building a new website can be a lengthy task. From scratch to the clients specification and then implement additional features and/or changes the client usually has. Sometimes far too much attention is put to the development of building the website and then on launch day expect the massess of visitors to flood in. This simply is not the case, unless you have traffic from another of your sites streaming over to the new one.
Time and again i see decent looking websites with no traffic. Even when the designer offers to promote the website, the client most likely refuses on the grounds of cost. In my opinion for a website to succeed in bringing in the masses, a effective promotion and search engine optimisation has to be in force. This costs money, but if you dont get the visitors, you dont get the sales. Making the site pointless and something for the client to look at now and again and admire how nice it looks.
Search engine optimisation, although vital, is only one step to the road to success. Once the website is complete, the site promotion should begin. Infact this stage should be considered while the designer is building the site. Creating the site with search engine optimisation in mind.
Far too many times does a designer create a site, only for the client to go elsewhere for the site promotion. Falling into the trap of paying someone who claims to submit their site to a ridiculous high number of directories and search engines, for instance eight hundred thousand. Fact is, there isnt that many decent search engines and directories. In my opinion only google, yahoo and msn are the only good search engines to get any traffic from.
For a site promotion to work, a plan is required to maximise the best places to get traffic. This would not only involve submitting manually to the top search engines but also advertising in the best and most appropriate places. Also gaining links to your site from popular sites is important. This all takes time and money.
