I have seen it over and over throughout the years. You and your partners sit and strategically put together a plan on how to increase revenue for their company, Your competitor has a website that is not only bringing in sales but also increasing their customer base. Finally, you decide to get your feet wet and build a website.

So you built the site and now they will come right? WRONG….This, my friends, is the biggest mistake that 75% of the website out there make. There are so many websites on the internet that have done ZERO  marketing on their website. It really is funny, People just do not want to spend the money on marketing and feel it is not necessary to do so. This is a huge misconception and a costly mistake that many make. Do not feel too bad, even the most seasoned successful professional makes this error. Please pay attention to what I am about to tell you…

“If you do not include in your budget money for SEO and Social Media Marketing, they will not come”.

The only people that will come to your website, are the clients you already have and maybe some of their friends. I know you are saying; “Yes but I am now on the internet and there are millions of users and surely I am on Google!” Your thinking with all that stacked in your favor, people will find you.

No, No, No is the answer to all of this. Let us take it from the beginning.  Here is what should have happened:

• Figure out your budget: Mistake number one is not adding the cost of   marketing to your budget. You see when you decide to have a website for your company or services, it is important that you budget for both design and marketing. Without marketing, your site will just sit there in cyberspace and not receive much traffic. Costly…It can be…Do it right and you can save thousands of dollars on marketing. How do I save thousands on marketing? I will get into that in a bit.

• Find a great designer: Not only must you find a great designer, you must make sure that the designer creates a website that is search engine friendly.  Also make sure that the designer or the design company, has some knowledge of SEO (search engine optimization). will dive into it on my next blog post. Just know that without that…Google will not find you and neither will the masses.

• Deliver the content: Your designer or web design company should tell you that before you give them all the written content, you should make a list of keywords that you believe people will use to find you. A good web design company will work with you and advise you as to what type of keywords to use throughout your website. This is another topic that I will cover in my next blog post.

• Create the website: Notice I did not say design the website. Personally, I feel that if you are using the services of a web design company, then they should create not just a design, but a website that is search engine friendly. Yes sometimes, depending on who you hire, it is not the designers responsibility to optimize your website. however, it is their responsibility to create a website that can be optimized by a search engine professional. For example: ABC web design builds you a beautiful website done all in flash that is totally out of this world….Here we have a problem. If the entire website is created in flash, well then it is pretty tough to make it a true search engine friendly website. Yes it can be made search engine friendly but you will pay a lot more to do it.

This is where I give you a great tip on saving thousands of dollars. People if you tell your web designer that you want a website built on WordPress, not only will you save a bundle on search engine optimization but you do not have to pay anyone to make changes to your website. that’s right…with WordPress you can make all the changes yourself. Why if you read my next blog about SEO, you may evem be able to do that yourself and save thousands more.