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Many people unfamiliar with the internet or with online marketing put a lot of faith in the old adage that “if you build it, they will come.” Unfortunately, this couldn’t be much further from the truth. Building a website and hoping for a solid stream of visitors is akin to opening a new retail store in the middle of the Sahara desert. Quite simply, no-one is going to find it, and you’re certainly not going to make any sales.

Fortunately, there are a number of things you can do to increase your website’s exposure. Not all of these tips will apply to every industry or type of website, but they’re a good outline to get started.

1) Ensure that your website is properly optimized for search engine placement. There are a number of factors that can help make your website more “appealing” to big search engines such as Google. If you want to hit the first page of the search engine rankings for your main keywords, you’ll want your website to be well optimized: page titles, keyword density, internal links, breadcrumb navigation, and a site map are all tools that can be used to help make your website more Google-friendly.

2) Get people to link to your website. There are a number of ways to go about this, but one of the most effective is to send quick personalized emails to webmasters of related websites. Tell them about your new website, why they should visit, and why they should link to your website. It also helps to visit online business directories and request that your website be listed. Quality over quantity is important here, and you only want inbound links from high-quality, related websites. Place special emphasis on gaining links from well-established websites that already rank well in the search engines. Google has been known to punish websites for having too many incoming links from garbage or unrelated websites.

3) Content is King. The more free information you provide to people, the more likely they are to stay on your website and/or return at a later date. Search engines will also like your website much more if you offer visitors good quality information. For example, if you own a small used car dealership, you could offer your visitors some information about what type of cars you sell. You might dedicate a few pages to educating people on how to choose a car or how to determine a car’s gas mileage. Don’t bother plagiarizing information from another site, though, because Google can see right through that and may actually punish you for publishing duplicate content.

4) Pay for advertising on search engines, at least to start. Even if you don’t have a long-term budget for online advertising (often called Pay-Per-Click advertising or “PPC”), it’s a great way to jump-start your online presence. Setting up advertisements on major search engines is relatively simple, but there are a number of nuances and tricks that can make the difference between an advertising campaign’s success and failure.

5) Let people know you have a website. An important marketing aspect for traditional product or service based businesses is word of mouth. Update your business cards, brochures, and marketing materials to include your new website address. Send out an email announcement or press release to your contact list and let everyone know about your new site. Ask friends or industry contacts to send out an announcement to their mailing lists. Service-based or professional companies may wish to take out advertising in industry print publications to announce the launch of your new website.

Again, several of these tactics are targeted specifically to different types of businesses, but for the most part they apply to all new websites. After all, it doesn’t make much sense to build your store in the middle of the Sahara. Build it on Broadway instead…

The term “simple” is not synonymous with “ugly” or “unattractive”. In fact, when it comes to the internet, I would argue that the opposite is true. In the case of business websites, simplicity can be the key to success. As a for-profit business, your website essentially has one goal: to sell your product or service as quickly and efficiently as possible. Any extraneous text, images or animation serve only to distract the customer from focusing on your goods or services.

Sometimes it can be worthwhile to use fancy animations or offer free services for the purposes of brand awareness, customer loyalty, return visitors, etc. However, always remember that the main purpose of your website is to sell your products and services, not to dazzle viewers with unnecessary images, animations, and gadgets. Provide only the content that will benefit your users, and display it in a simple and logical manner.

If you’re trying to generate sales, you don’t want users to be bogged down with slow load times, complicated navigation, frustrating Flash menus, sound effects, and any other gizmos that can detract from the main purpose of the website. If you take a look at some of the largest, best-selling websites on the internet, you won’t see complicated designs with extravagant colour schemes or crazy fonts. You won’t see pages so loaded with images and text that they’re simply overwhelming. Instead, you’ll see classic designs with simple navigation menus and white backgrounds. Most will still be aesthetically pleasing and leave a lasting impression, but none will be so complicated that you are unable to access the information you’re looking for.

In addition to usability, simplicity in web design has other benefits. Potential customers are much more likely to trust a company that has an elegant, professional website. Sales, in turn, will be higher. It can also be significantly more affordable to develop a simple and stylish website. They are cheaper to design, build, redesign, host, update and maintain. Someday you may have too much information and too many pages, and require an upgrade to a dynamic content management system. This is much easier to implement on a simple website than a complicated site full of buttons, banners, and irrelevant images.

Why spend more money to have a website that’s less professional, less usable, and harder to update? Follow the example of the most successful companies on the internet – stay simple.