For those of you who aren't internet geeks, first, let's cover some basic terminology you should be aware of when talking about your business website. (geeks, feel free to skip over the next part, or better still, let me know if I missed any important terms.)

Traffic: This refers to the number of times people visit your website. It's a very general term.
Unique Visitors: This refers to the number of actual people who visit your website. The two are not necessarily the same. For instance if  you and your friend both visit your new website ten times each, then your Traffic is 20 visits, but your Unique Visitors is only 2 people.
Leads: This is the number of people who visit your site and make contact with you through it. They may sign up for your newsletter, they may answer a questionaire or state their opinion on your "contact us" page. They may send you an email or phone call. They might even visit your store in person.
Sales: This is the number of leads who actually purchases one of your products or services.
Customers: These are the people who bought from you. Ideally, each customer will provide multiple sales for you over time.

So - the first goal for your website is to GENERATE TRAFFIC, or bring new people to your website.  This raises a couple of questions:
    1) Where are these new people going to find your website
    2) Why are they going to want to visit it?

                                            Where are new people going to find out about your website?

You need to find some way(s) to introduce yourself to prospective clients and tell them about this great new website that you own. Of course you tell your friends and family and they tell their friends. But that will only get you so far (and do you really want your main customer to be your mom anyway?)   So, let's look at some of the standard ways of promoting your website online. Note that this is only scratching the proverbial surface. Any promotional venture will require research and consideration, both yours and your web person, if you have one.  But this is a quick over view of some options.

1. Search Engines
   1. Millions of searches are done everyday on hundreds of search engines. Some of those searches are people looking for what you have to sell. A good way to figure out what phrases might work is to do some searches and see what comes up.  For instance, I Googled 'cat collars' and Google says there are over 1 million search results, so I know cat collars is being used by other websites. But over 1 million search results is a bit scary, so let's narrow it down.  I did another search for 'leather cat collars' and there were a mere 335,000 results (still a big number, but you get the idea, the more descriptive the phrase / the fewer competitors you'll find
   2. Several key word tools are available to do keyword research for your website. Some of them require that you open an account, some are free.  Word Tracker has a free tool that gives you an idea of how many people have searched on a keyword in the past day. I typed in 'leather cat collar' and it told me that 30 people have searched on 'leather cat collars' (notice that collars is plural), and furthermore 4 people have searched on 'round leather cat collars' in the past day. so there are 2 possible key words for my leather cat collar website.
   3. Complete Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is such a large topic that I cannot possibly do it justice in a single blog entry. So There are people who make their living doing nothing else but helping people optimize their web sites for search engines.  I will talk more about SEO in future blog posts.
2. Social Media
   1. Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, YouTube (and about a zillion other similar sites) are a good way of connecting with people. If you have an account with any of these, do a search on them for your keywords and see what other people are doing.  The general rule to follow with any social networking is to establish yourself as an expert in your field. Offer tips, advice and opinions about your subject, so that the people you connect with begin to see you as a source of information and expertise. Then when you do announce your 'special fall sale on round leather cat collars', they will be more inclined to take notice because they have come to know you as a cat collar expert.
   2. YouTube is a great way to introduce your new products or services to complete strangers. Everybody likes videos and a video can come up in a Search engine result just as easily as a web page. Imagine doing a search on 'leather cat collars' and one of the results that comes up is a video of cats wearing this year's new line of leather cat collars. Would you rather go read a web page, or watch a video? 
3. Paid Marketing
   1. Quickest results - most expensive:  While Sponsored Links (or Pay-Per-Click) directly costs money to use, it does provide a way to get a link to the top of the search engine quickly and with little effort. The down side - if your web page doesn't do a good job of selling your product/service, then you may be paying for  people to come to your website and then losing them when they see it. A good way to make sure you aren't throwing away your money with sponsored ads is to monitor the sponsored ads of your competitors. See what their ads look like. See what their web pages look like and, without stealing directly from anybody, follow their examples. If it works for them, it should work for you.

 Next time we'll take a look at generating leads (people who express some interest in your site/product/service) These are the people you are going to try to sell to.