What good is a website without visitors?

During the past week, the truth has been brought home to me afresh that the best-looking website in the world, with the most persuasive sales copy, is no use unless people actually see it and read it.

I've had three people approach me in the last few days, desperate for help to get more traffic to their websites. These are all well designed sites, and the content is clearly written. The problem is, hardly anyone is visiting them.

One of these website owners has already spent a large amount of money on a Google Adwords campaign. But the cost of advertising was higher than the profits that resulted. So obviously, such advertising was not sustainable.

There's a perception among many small business owners (actually, among MOST small business owners, if my experience is anything to go by) that all they need to do is put up a website and sit back and wait for the visitors to come. The truth is far different.

Occasionaly, someone will strike it lucky. For example, a couple of years ago I built a website for a client selling kitset homes. At that time, there was a big demand for kitset homes in New Zealand and very few people selling them. Thus, my client's site got to the first page of Google within a few weeks. He was impressed by my 'marketing skills' and I was happy to take the credit. But subsequently, it hasn't always been so easy.

There are some basic principles of search engine optimisation that can help bring in free traffic from Google and other search engines. These are important. But in most cases, a website owner also needs to spend some time or money marketing their site, to see traffic and sales. This is what website owners need to understand.

There's a temptation when looking to have a website built, to go for the cheapest web designer. This is all very well. The end result may be okay in terms of design (if you're lucky). But the likelhood is, as many businesses have discovered, they will end up with a website sitting in cyberspace getting no traffic.

I don't have all the answers to this dilemma. But I've decided 2008 is going to be a year where I focus on helping website owners to get more traffic. This may come from paid advertising, such as Google Adwords, or search engine optimisation. Either way, it is going to cost the website owner something in terms of time and/or money. That's the reality. I can't mislead people by saying I can build them a website that will automatically start bringing in inquiries and sales and traffic, without some effort going into marketing the site once it's built.

So, in 2008 I will spend much less time building websites (I can outsource that to others who are just as good, if not better than I am) and more time on becoming an expert at Internet marketing. Because that's where the real need is right now.