Believing if you build it they will come is not enough. The internet is a highly competitive place and especially so if you are in a competitive market as well. Admittedly getting to No 1 on Google is probably beyond the reach of most small businesses but there will be competitors who are taking your share of leads and they can be within reach. Target these, find out what it is they are doing that works and conduct thorough keyword research to understand what search terms potential customers are using. There are a number of things you should be doing as a minimum.
- Submit your newly built site to the search engines. Nowadays that is Google, Bing and Yahoo although as Microsoft own Yahoo now it’s questionable how much value this last one brings)
- If your business is location based (i.e. you are offering a product or service to a target area) then you should register on Google Places. You will need to use a Google account for this so if you haven’t got one it’s free and easy to create.
- Carry out keyword research to identify what your potential customers are using to find you and use this information to fine tune a set of keyword phrases you can use to optimise your site. (This is another whole topic on it’s own but don’t panic because there are loads of useful sites out there). You can also check out the competition and see what keywords they are using too.
- Sign up to Google analytics and Google webmaster tools so you can see how people are finding and interacting with your site
- Keep your site up to date and regularly publish new content