Marketing your website
When you have a website and nobody knows about it...
You have a website. Now What?
- How will you let people know your site is live?
- How is it going to be found?
- What are your marketing plans?
- What is your marketing budget?
- How are you going to make people stay in your site once they find it?
- How will you keep people coming back to your site?
Bringing traffic to your site
Content is King
- Create high-quality, useful, and easy-to-read content tailored to your audience
- Add FAQs, tutorials, and explainers
- Regularly update your existing content to keep it relevant and current
Optimize for Search (SEO)
- Do keyword research to find what people search for
- Use your keywords naturally in Titles, Headings, URL slugs, Meta Tags
- Always add alt text to images
Optimize for Generative Engines (GEO)
- Structure content for AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, etc. by using clear headings, concise summaries and Q&A sections.
- Make sue you use facts and cite your sources clearly
- Write content that can be quoted or summarized (Definitions, guides, pros and cons etc.)
Make your content Shareable and Visual
- Add Social sharing buttons. How to add sharing buttons on webflow.
- Embed content from other platforms (YouTube, SounCloud, Vimeo, etc)
- Create and post visuals like infographics, reels, carousels, or short TikToks.
- Offer free resources (PDF guides, checklists, printables).
Bringing traffic to your site
Build Relationships & Collaborate
- Guest post on blogs or websites in your niche
- Add FAQs, tutorials, and explainers
- Regularly update your existing content to keep it relevant and current
Optimize for Search (SEO)
- Do keyword research to find what people search for
- Get interviewed or featured on podcasts, newsletters, or Substack
- Feature others in your content and ask them to share
Engage in Communities
- Answer questions on niche forums.
- Comment on relevant posts
- Write content that can be quoted or summarized (Definitions, guides, pros and cons etc.)
Build Strong Backlinks
- Ask collaborators, directories, or past clients to link to you
- Submit your site to relevant online directories or portfolios
Promote Across Channels
- Share your website in Social media channels, email signature, business cards, event banners etc.
Technical Setup & Analytics
- Add Google Analytics and submit a sitemap
- Make sure your site is fast, secure (HTTPS), and mobile-friendly.
What is SEO?
- Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the online visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine's unpaid results.
- The earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users.
- Good HTML matters to search Engines.
- Having good and frequently updated content is very important.
Personal SEO
But, I'm not a business. I just want to create a page for myself!
Define your goals
- Why do you want to be found?
I'm looking for a position as a Social Media Manager on the Food Industry. - What do you want to be known for?
I want to be known for my interest in International and Exotic Food and travel. - Who do you want to find you?
A Food Network or Publishing company that can use my expertise to promote a variety of Food.
- Register your personal domain name. Make sure it's easy to write and remember, and that it sounds good. Unnintentionally Innapropriate Domain names.
- Include the keywords in your website title, description and Network profiles.
- Write an About page, and describe who you are and what you do. Make it interesting but personable.
- Make your site easy to read. Use short sentences and frequent paragraphs breaks.
- Links are important. Include internal links on your content to other pages in your site, and try to get other pages linking to you. Links are a vote of confidence in your website.
- Add descriptive alt text to your images. It's a good opportunity to include relevant keywords if applicable.
What makes a good backlink?
I have Social Media. Why would I need a website?
- You have absolute control about your content.
- Anybody can see your content even if they don't use the platform.
- Platforms can come and go, and your content will dissapear with it.
- You can organize your content however you want.
- Google will show your website content before social media profiles.
Why Good HTML Matters
- Your HTML goes to the browser and search engines.
- A search engine will parse your HTML and know what the content is based on how you write your code.
- Search engines looks at semantics to determine the hierarchy of the information.
- One of the most important elements for SEO is the title tag.
- Correct use of header tags is important.
- The most important keywords should be in the title and article heading.
- On each page of your website, spiders look for title tags, H1 tags, meta descriptions, URLs, internal links and the alt text on your images to help categorize your content.
Why Good Content Matters
- More important than good HTML is having relevant content.
- Nothing beats having good content that's regularly updated.
- Search engines crawl your content to try to better understand it, organize it and prioritize it. These spiders look for signals that your content is high-quality to assign a spot for your content in search rankings.
- Search algorithms favor original content, sites with duplicate content rank lower in search results.
Google Analytics
- Google Analytics is a digital analytics software.
- It analyzes and provides important information about your website's visitors.
- You can create reports about the different metrics it collects on your site.
- It helps you optimize your content based on visits and bounce rates.
- Gives you an idea of where your traffics is coming from
- Demographics of users, age, gender, location
What is Google Analytics?
Setting up Google Analytics
SEO
SEO is the science/art of increasing your website’s visibility in organic search engine results.
Paid Search (Ads)
Organic Search
- Is how you come up in search results without paying.
- Use keywords, words and phrases your consumers would use when looking for your page. You won't be found under dog food if you don't use those words in your content.
- Make a list of the keywords and refer to it when writing your content.
- Always keep in mind that good SEO depends on good code, semantic use, content, page load.
- Tips for Organic SEO
Keywords
A keyword is a word or phrase that people type into Google (or any search engine) when they’re looking for something.
Why are Keywords important?
- When you use the same words that people are searching for on your site, search engines can understand what your page is about.
- When you use the right keywords, you’re not just bringing anyone to your website — you're bringing the people who are already interested in what you offer.
Where do I use keywords?
- Title tag: It is important to include your target keywords in your title tag so that people can find your website when they search for those keywords.
- Meta Description: Include your keywords in your meta description so that people can get a better idea of what your website is about.
- Headings: They are a great way to highlight your target keywords and make your content more scannable.
- Body text: Make sure to include your target keywords throughout your body text in a natural way.
- Alt text: People can find your website when they search for images related to those keywords.
Keywords
- The keywords you choose should be relevant to your content.
- Your keywords should match the language of your target market.
- You have to do some Keyword Research, to come up with the best keywords for your site.
- Think of how you would search for yourself, or for someone like you online.
- There are 2 types of keywords:
- Competitive. (Shoes)
- Long Tail keywords: Less competitive, but more specific (Orthopedic shoes).
Long Tail keywords are a good way to start building a search presence.
- Look for keywords that are popular with users, (Pre-owned vehicles - Used cars, Low airfares - Cheap flights), consider the terminology your customers will be using.
Keyword Research
- There are some tools available to help with your keyword research. A good free tool to use is Google Keyword Planner.
- Use the Keyword Planner to research the competition level for each keyword. Find out the number of websites that are also using the same keywords. the search results.
- Use the Keyword Planner to find long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are more specific and have a lower search volume. However, they are also less competitive, so you are more likely to rank high in the search results for these keywords.
- Ranking high on competitive searches is possible, but it requires more time and effort. This
includes:
- Creating high-quality content
- Building backlinks
- Optimizing your website for those keywords
Elements of Web Marketing:
- Have a Content Strategy. Your content should be:
- Findable: Make sure search engines can find the information (remember semantics?)
- Readable: Make sure your readers can esaily read through your content.
- Understandable: Don't use complex terms word and sentences that are too long.
- Actionable: Make sure there are call to Actions or ways of following up
- Shareable: Provide ways to share your content
- SEO - paid and organic
- Optimize for GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)
- Search Results
- Using Social Media to promote your page
- Collaborating with other websites and have other sites link to your website
- Create a good online reputation
- Email marketing
Findable Content:
- Use h1 for the page title and h2's to establish a hierarchy and organize the content.
- Use good metadata descriptions.
- Include links to the other pages and related content in your site.
- Include the alt tags in your images. That way they will appear on search engines as well. A picture of Sebastian can be used to promote the University by adding: "Sebastian, the University of Miami Mascot, opening the Canes Football season".
- Post your videos in social platforms to increase the views and lead traffic to your site, and include possible keywords in the title.
Readable Content:
- Use the Inverted pyramid style of writing and make sure your keywords are being used in the heading and main paragraph.
- Use chunking to keep paragraphs short.
- Bullets and numbered lists summarize ideas faster.
- Use consistent language in all your pages. If you use a term keep throughout the site. If you use the term "band" to talk about your music group, don't use "group" or "ensemble" in other places.
- Post your videos in social platforms to increase the views and lead traffic to your site, and include possible keywords in the title.
Understandable Content:
- If you have a complex topic, try to use a graphic or a photograph for support.
- Aim for at least an eigth grade level of understanding, unles your content is targeted specifically to a higher level and requires more complexity.
- Always provide context. Don't asume that people will know what you are talking about.
- Try to provide new information to your visitors, or express common ideas in a new way.
Actionable and Shareable Content:
- Include a Call to Action if appropriate.
- Make it easy for people to contact you or comment if not on your page, on social media..
- Can you offer some information on your site that can be useful to people? A tutorial, a document, infographic, recipe, etc. that people might want to keep and share.
- Provide a reason to share your content, or suggest it.
- Make it easy to share your content.
