Web site Promotion | Website Development

Website Marketing Plans: Do You Need One?

Many webmasters put a lot of time and effort into creating their website. Then, once their site is live and some time has passed they start to wonder why no one is visiting their site. If you asked them what their website marketing plan is though, you'd be greeted by a blank stare. For some reason, it never crossed their mind that they'd have to put at least as much effort into marketing their site as they did building it. In fact, there are only a few instances when you don't need website marketing plans - here are three of them. Be sure to pardon the sarcasm ahead of time...

You Don't Need Website Marketing Plans If...

1. You Already Have Top Search Engine Rankings

If your site is already completely optimized for highly searched keywords related to your website's topic and is ranking high in the search engine for these terms, maybe you don't need a website marketing plan. Chances are though, if you haven't performed onsite and offsite optimization, including article marketing, relevant incoming link building and keyword optimization on your pages, there's still a lot you can do to improve your natural search engine rankings and free traffic.

Natural search engine optimization should be a major part of any website marketing plan. Although the results take longer to notice, the free targeted traffic that can result is often more than worth the wait.

2. Your Website Is Already Converting A High Percentage Of Customers Into Buyers

For those who are marketing a product or service with their site, after traffic, conversion rate is the most important factor. If you are already converting 100% of your visitors into customers or clients, then you may not need to have a website marketing plan.

If you are like most webmasters though, once you have traffic coming, you can always work on testing and improving your copy to improve your conversion rate. Testing and tracking to increase the percentage of visitors that take action should be an important part of your plan.

3. Your Website Continues To Grow In Popularity Day By Day

If people are coming across your website and then telling others about it and your website's popularity is growing virally and exponentially day by day, you might need a larger server instead of a website marketing plan. If you are like most webmasters though, you still have not implemented systems that will encourage visitors to spread the word about your site.

Viral marketing systems such as social bookmarking campaigns, contests, press releases and other "buzz" techniques need to be included in any marketing plan if you want your site to increase in traffic and popularity on its own - even after you've stopped actively promoting it yourself.

As you can see, website marketing plans are important for almost any webmaster. Without a plan for bringing a continual and growing stream of targeted visitors to your website, you are driving without a map. Once you've put the effort into building your site, you should put the same energy into marketing it so that it receives the traffic it needs to get the results you are after.