This is very understandable and a common concern amongst website owners. So point blank, I will start by saying if you want people to find your website, you need to provide interesting and useful information to people. If you have information that people want to read, then they will eventually make it to your site. Ok, there is slightly more to it than that, but that is the main thing.
You have to understand first off, that the internet is not just a world of marketing. It is highly used like it is but you cannot think of it as a big newspaper. It is different. It is it’s own unique thing in our world. The internet is a place people go to find something. Usually to find information on something or maybe to find a friend or find a conversation on boring evening. My point in this is that you cannot just put up a website with info on your business and say hey everyone, here’s my website. Say you are a plumber an just put up this plumbing website. Unless someone is specifically looking for your plumbing service in your area, then they have zero interest in your site.
So… make your site useful. Make it interesting. Make it informative. So you have your plumbing website right? Your target audience is people who need a plumber right? Well that is true, but lets break that down a little further. Who needs a plumber? Well people with houses will usually need a plumber at some point in their life. When their toilet breaks or the sink breaks. Ok so home owners is a possible target audience. You could break that down further if you want but lets just roll with that right now. You don’t have to give yourself a headache over this and it is not rocket science. It might not be science at all. It is just a change of perspective and then simply realizing that you should benefit our world in some way. If you are going to take up space on the world wide web, make that space useful and informative for our world in some way.
Ok so home owners. One thing you could do is offer information about what you know. Actually write little articles each week on your website about how plumbing works. Provide info on it. Explain what it is all about and how we get water from the city to our drinking glass. Write about why toilets overflow sometimes and how plungers fix that problem. Write about why there is such a price different in toilets and the pros and cons on all of them. Bring up some common problems and explain how to fix them. Maybe give home owners some quick fixes they can try on their own to save money, and explain how you can fix them up more long term when they have more money to spend.
Be useful and helpful. Don’t think of your site as a way to trick people into buying something. Just actually be a good person, and give away knowledge and try to make this world a better place using your knowledge. I believe everyone should try to make the world better as the live here. This doesn’t mean I think everyone needs to be a doctor and save lives or go monitor how many trees are being cut down. Everyone only has so much time so we all do our own job. So while you are doing your job, make sure you are doing it good and make sure you are providing honest and helpful information to your customers. This is making that part of the world better because you are helping.
As far as your website goes, you are now writing these articles every week and your website is becoming more and more of a place that will actually help people. You are not begging for money and you are not trying to make money directly. You do want money and need to make a living and you definitely are not hiding that, but it doesn’t have to be aggressive. Give this info away. So with your site being useful, you can now promote your site a little easier. Instead of going into forums and Facebook and saying hey I offer plumbing services for $50 hour or $40 this week only, you can promote differently. You can go find a Facebook group where home owners discuss problems or DIY fixes or something and see if anyone happens to be asking a question that you have answered in one of your posts. If they have, you answer them briefly and let them know that you have a full article on it and give them the link to that article.
That’s it. Now rinse and repeat. Go to different places around the internet and find people that actually want your information and provide them with answers and links to those answers on your site. This actually gets people to your site who will read and stay on your site. They now like your site. You have now helped them and gained value. To them, you are friend, your are helpful, and they will also see that you are a plumber. The next time they need to hire a plumber, whenever that might be, or the next time they have a friend looking for a plumber, there is a good chance they will give them your information.
At this point you have lots of great information and you have people directly coming to your site and learning about you. Over time what will happen, is this will snow ball. What I mean is that if you keep writing articles and sharing it with new people, your site will just keep growing and growing. People that see your site will also start to share your pages as answers to questions they see on the internet and that is where the snow ball takes affect. Now since your information is actually helpful, people have a reason to share it for you and they feel helpful for sharing. It creates a great cycle and all the while you are building exposure and helping.
Finally, and this could arguably be the most beneficial part. Google searches pages for information based on what people type. So now you have so many pages on your site that when users search for relatable items in Google, you have a lot of lines in the water. There are a lot of chances your pages will come up. Google likes this and they also like seeing your pages being used as answers on other websites as well. When they see your site being talked about on other websites, in positive ways, they take note of that, and will use that to show you higher in the search results. Google actually takes into affect that your pages are useful and that helps you rank.
It is a win for everyone. Now depending on your business and your creativity, there are probably lots of other ways to make your site useful as well. It does not have to be just articles. That is a good one though and a pretty straight forward way to provide helpful information in a way that people are used to and also in a way that Google can pick up on.
So get out there and make your site useful. Help people. Give away information. Let’s not think of every single thing as selling and marketing. When you actually want to help people you will be a better provider as well. Let’s all grow and make the world a better place using what we are good at.