Your Website and Website Traffic is Your Responsibility

No matter who manages your website your website and website traffic is your responsibility.

No matter how much you pay a company, you need to be sure they’re posting online for your business.

Your website needs continuous, quality content, website coding repairs and updates to receive traffic and rank high on search engines.

This activity is also known as search engine optimization (SEO) which drives website traffic. SEO can include website coding, formatting, copy, backlinks, video, social media and online profiles, blog interaction, comments on blogs or media sites, reviews and more. SEO is labor intensive and detail-oriented work.

Anyone who tells you they can provide SEO once and keep you at the top of search engines is pulling a fast one on you. Or they don’t understand SEO. SEO is ongoing, constant and fluid.

Your Website and Website Traffic is Your Responsibility

Tag, you’re it. It’s your website so SEO is your responsibility. Not your webmaster’s responsibility if you’re not paying for SEO. It’s a lot of work.

You don’t get free advertising on TV, radio or in magazines. Why would you get free SEO?

There are millions of websites that you’re competing against for search engine rankings; just like there are competitors in your category online, TV, radio and print.  Your website is your responsibility. Don’t blame your webmaster for a lack of traffic after a website build. If you didn’t pay for SEO you’re not going to get it.

Search Engines Have One Job

Search engines have one job: supply the best search results. Search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing looking for the very best, latest, most current and new content for Googlers, searchers. And only new information presented in the proper form will keep your website at the top of searches.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be done by those who know coding, formatting, backlinks. But some SEO can be done by everyday bloggers who know how to post a social media profile or comment on a blog. Your website can also be self-managed to a point by filling it regularly with quality content, video, photos, blog posts.

You’ll want an expert webmaster to handle recoding, updating, backlinks and repairs on your website or you risk taking it down or messing it up. Even the most carefully written and blogged upon websites need to be updated because technology changes. Finely tuned websites win the race to the top of the search engines.

SEO is like the preparation and fine tuning on a NASCAR engine. Many things play into the performance of the car and it starts with the team. The designer, mechanic, the driver, the pit crew. They have to work together and start at a common point of high quality at every turn to assure that the team can get the car to finish first. They start at the engine build, the parts, what goes into the engine: the grade of fuel and oil, to the tire pressure, the aerodynamic build of and the material of the body, to the computerized steering, grade of fuel and the speed in the race to the skill of the driver. If one or two things is out of place, the race is lost.

SEO is similar, except that there are checks and balances that can offset weak parts. For example, if the website is built in a dated format with old coding the website can be rebuilt and supplied with the quality to get it back in tune with what a search engine needs.

There’s Always Something to Improve a Website

If website copy is dated, new copy can be supplied and the old copy can be completely rewritten. Photos can be coded and replaced. Videos uploaded and added. Social media accounts added. There is always something that can improve a website to get it search-engine ready.

SEO is important because it keeps your website up to date so that it’s search engine-friendly. No one reads dated sports pages, old data, old news. Search engines comb millions of websites for the best. newest, latest information available. Old copy is old. Old video is dated. Old is bad.

Website Relevancy to Search Engines

Your website will come up under relevant searches for the topics that your website covers.

If you sell tires, then make sure your website is updated with quality content all about tires. No matter what you write it has to be authoritative on tires. You can’t tiptoe around tires. You have to go all out on tires. Your website has to be coded and relevant to search engines and offer up some interesting items.

If your  website does turn up in search engine results but its functionality and content sucks and you have nothing interesting, visitors will leave. They’ll go right back to the search engines.

Websites need constant fuel and updating because technology changes daily. Google and other search engines change accordingly to find websites offering best results. Those results change based on algorithms.

In short: There’s no such thing as a build it and leave it website. If you don’t touch your website neither will anyone else. And you have to pay a lot for top placement on search engines with a search engine optimization expert.

Oh, you thought that what you wrote, posted or blogged was so brilliant that people would knock each other over trying to get to your website?

Think again. If it was that easy everyone would be doing it. It’s technical, complicated and it changes daily because search engines need new fuel in every search.

Work On Website Daily to See Results

You’re not going to like hearing this, but website success is similar to working out: you’ll see the results when you put in the work.

Stop whining and complaining and make the time. Updating your own website is free if you can do it yourself. And if you have 15-30 minutes a day, you can do a blog post, record and post a video, change photos, submit an article or blog to a high profile website.

But let it go and your website traffic gets flabby.

Keep Active Online

Unless you have amazing genetics or were a triathlete or marathoner you can’t stop exercising and keep a workout body.

You don’t get something for nothing and while many companies offer to build your site, you need to know what to do to maintain it and keep traffic going.The same is true of websites: No matter how precisely constructed, you still have to make repairs, updates and additions.

And don’t get stuck on what it looks like or copy on this page or that. Change is good. Embrace change and

Websites Must Be Search Engine-Worthy

There’s little understanding by non-webmasters about how a website gets traffic. Websites have to be built properly, have quality content, video, photos, social media and a lot of coding and formatting, SEO and daily additions to keep them interesting and search-engine result worthy.

You may have a website with 300 pages written over the past two years. Doesn’t matter. Search engines are a “what have you done for me lately” tool. Committing time to personally manage it is easy and it’s free.

When The Marketing Square builds websites, clients are taught how to post their own blogs, pictures, video and manage social media. What happens? The committed clients and companies invest the time daily and sell and bring in traffic online.

Some clients hire us to do the work. What happens when a website is launched is up to The Marketing Square. What happens the next several months is up to the owner.

Companies not committed to the work keep selling as if there is no website. The old-fashioned way: In-person, at networking events, cold calling. Meanwhile the website gathers dust. It’s a wasted marketing tool.

We gladly offer to manage sites. We teach and show all clients what to do in training. It absolutely yields revenue and sales.  A minimal investment always provides returns.

Website Maintenance

The Marketing Square will show you how to blog, how to post pictures, how to post video and how to use social media. Or you may hire us to do it for you; but it has to be done.

When you buy a house or a car you get the keys. You maintain the home and the car so that it continues to work. The home is heated and or cooled. The car is fueled with gas. The dealer doesn’t pay for your gas for life. And no homebuilder or realtor will commit to paying your energy bill.

You pay handyman, electrician, plumber or lawn service or you do your own maintenance. You set aside a budget to tackle this or you’ll end up with an emergency maintenance at some point.

Websites are the same. You have to maintain activity and continue to feed it, fill it, fuel it. There is not some magic Internet magnet that pulls your website into it and spits it into search engine results on Google, Yahoo, Bing and all the others.

We didn’t make this up, this is what Google, Bing, Yahoo, Dogpile, Ask and all the others look for: new and constant activity.

Find out what some of our simple techniques are and decide whether you can blog and update or whether you would like The Marketing Square to do it. We’re here to help small businesses in Madison, Wisconsin, Winter Park, Florida and anywhere else. We’ll