You’ve spent a lot of time building your website and making sure it is optimized for your visitors.  Now that it’s ready to go, how do you get your website discovered by new clients and customers.

Getting your site discovered can be one of the hardest parts of having a website. There’s a lot of competition in the internet world that can distract from your site.

Tips to Get Your Website Discovered

These are some of my best tips to get your website discovered and drive traffic to it:

Optimize Your Pages for Visitors

If you have been following along, you should have already completed this part.  Remember, you want your pages to be user-friendly and meet the needs of your visitors.

Put yourself in their shoes, what would they be looking for?  Is it easy to find?  Does it meet their needs?

More detailed information about this can be found at Optimizing The 4 Most Important Pages on Your Website.  We have happy visitors, but we also need to make sure we are making the search engines happy.

Do Your Keyword Homework

Most websites get their traffic through SEO so it’s important to understand how it works. Keywords are a main factor in SEO. They are, essentially, words or phrases that your potential visitors are searching for. Knowing what people will most likely type into Google can help you figure out what words and phrases to use on your site to rank higher in the search results.

Use sites like Wordtracker or Google Adwords Keyword Tool to help with your research. Simply type in a word or phrase that people might use to find your site to see how many other sites are using those keywords and get some other suggestions that might serve you better.

Use Your Keywords Everywhere

Now that you know the best keywords for your site, use them everywhere and frequently.

Use them in:

• • the opening paragraphs of your website’s homepage
  • on all content pages
  • blog posts
    • Use once for every 150 words in your post.
  • tags for your photos

The more you use them, the higher you’ll rank for them.

Start a Blog

Regardless of what kind of website you have, a blog can help drive more traffic. Especially when you’re using those keywords in your posts. Post often about your products or services and things that will interest anyone who has an interest in what you offer. Not only will you build traffic by sharing your blog posts on social media, but the more you post, the more Google will like you. Why? Because fresh content tells Google that someone is maintaining the site and it hasn’t gone dormant. Posting just once a week will tell Google that you’re actively maintaining your site so it will rank you higher in their searches.

Share, Share, Share

Use your site’s URL everywhere that you can. Include it in your email signature and in your social media profiles. Yes, you should have social media accounts for sharing your blog content and driving traffic to your site. Add your URL to your business cards, letterhead, invoices, thank you notes, and anywhere else you can think of.

Use Hashtags

Hashtags, especially on Instagram and Twitter, can bring in new website traffic from people who’ve never heard of you. Most people follow hashtags that they like so they see posts with that tag even if they don’t follow the account. Using popular hashtags for your industry will help to build your social media following and increase traffic to your website.

These are some easy ways to get your website discovered and drive more traffic, but I’m sure you can think of others. Sharing your website as often as possible in as many forms as possible and focusing on your keywords will help improve your site’s visibility and eventually your sales.