Why your new website will never be finished

Anticipation, excitement, relief. You've just spent weeks, maybe even months, on the new website. Even if you've outsourced, you've done a significant amount of work on it, and it's launch day. Your business is about to soar to new heights!

Or is it?

Often times a website will launch with the big announcement on social media, get an initial lump of traffic and positive feedback, and then…nothing.

Waiting for bookings or sales to just roll on in is not good for any business owner. And it's not realistic. Although you may have spent a lot of money on your new website, you actually need to do more than create a website. You've got to turn it into a money making machine.

And how do you do that?

A website for your business is one of the best business investments you can ever make, there's no doubt about that. But you need to view it as a work in progress, rather than a static thing that is set in stone. A website should be dynamic, that changes as your business does.

So instead of watching that lack of traffic or sales, here's three things that you should be focusing on instead:

1. Promote, promote, promote

People are so busy with their own lives and businesses that they aren't going to stumble upon your website without a friendly point in the right direction. So get in the habit of telling people to visit your website. Put it on your business cards, make sure it's on all of your social media profiles…get creative on how you can make it a must click without pushing it down their throat.

If you're posting on social media, think how you can then get your followers to your website from within a post. Write content on your website in the form of a blog and share on your social networks. Set up Pinterest to push traffic towards your website.

It's all about promotion, turn into an online networking machine and your traffic numbers will start to rise. Don't promote it, and your brand new website will quickly gather digital dust.

2. Invest in SEO

Imagine consistent traffic to your website, even on those weeks when you forget to post on social media.

That is the power of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). This means that you sit in a good position in Google search for a keyword that people are typing into the search box. And the best thing about SEO is that you can do a lot of the work in one hit and then watch the Google rankings and traffic increase. If you take a week off work, it's not going to matter.

To get started, make sure all of your pages target a different keyword. Then create a title tag and meta description on each page using that unique keyword. Make sure that keyword is also sprinkled throughout the content on the page, too.

If you got this SEO optimisation done during the website build, thumbs up. But it's still not enough. You need to identify what websites are linking to your competitors as a good starting point to start accumulating links pointing in your own direction.

Look at what listings you're on and make sure they're correct and up to date. The best way to do this is google your business name. To give your SEO another boost, consider using Pinterest for SEO and also fill out all of your social media profiles so that they're keyword rich.

3. Get into the habit of creating good content

In order to get visitors to your website, you need to provide a reason for them to come. They are not going to keep coming back for a billboard style website, so make sure your content is going to give them the value they are looking for. You don't need to sell sell sell, work on building trust instead and the sales will naturally follow.

It has to be valuable content to get attention with your target audience so that you start to see the traffic you need. So I recommend mapping out content around what you get asked the most in your working day, and spend more time on quality pieces that have a purpose and endgame in mind to genuinely help them. This is much more effective than churning out article after article of a lower quality.

While writing the content is the start, promoting it is even more important. You should spend 80% of your time promoting, and only 20% of your time creating.

So you've learnt that the three things that will drive website traffic are promotion, SEO and content creation. Nail these three things and you'll see your traffic numbers quickly double or even triple. But above all, practise patience and consistency. Play the long game and your business will be around for years to come.