Bits'n'Bytes

As heard on CJCD

Episode 51

Fairly often, I get asked for tips on building and maintaining web sites. What should go into a web site, what shouldn't. How do I get people to come to my site? How can I get them to call me, if they do?

The one thing I find people don't realize about web sites, is that they're merely an extension of your advertising. Just because you build a web site doesn't mean that everyone and their dog will beat down your cyber-door to see what you've posted. You have to let people know your site exists first. Now, considering there's an estimated 110 million websites, with over 4 billion pages to choose from, getting people there might not be that easy.

Lots of web site builders assume that if they post their site on a search engine, they'll get lots of hits. Not necessarily true. Again, there's that problem of 4 billion pages. It can take months for the search engine to check out your site and post it in its index. If you've got really good meta tags - those are key words that people might use to search for your site - you might end up on page 152 of a search. Once you get more hits, you move up the list. But to get the hits, you have to be further up the list. Kinda catch-22, isn't it?

Most small business sites are for a specific region. You don't really need the entire planet to know your site is there. You only need your area to know. Local people are the ones who are going to use your service the most. Now remember how I said a web site is an extension of your advertising? So, when you advertise locally include your web site address. You can post a ton of information online - way more than you can fit in a 30 second spot on the radio or a paragraph in the paper. But use those media to get the local people to your site. Now your hit count goes up and you move further up the search engine so the rest of the world can find you, if that's what you want.

Stay tuned next week when I talk about loving to hate computers.

I’m Computer Dave, thanks for your time.