“If you build it, he will come” is a famous line from the 1989 movie “Field of Dreams.” Will the same hold true for your website? In the movie, a whispy whispering voice whispered in Kevin Costner’s ear convincing him to spend a great deal of money, time, and sanity in creating a baseball field in a field of corn. This was in hopes that some expired baseball players will show up and play a game or two.

Good news for Kevin. The baseball players showed up.

Then, James Earl Jones convinces Kevin that people will show up to watch the baseball players.

Great news for Kevin. The fans showed up, too.

Traffic doesn’t just “show up” at your website.

Alas, in the business of websites and online marketing, traffic does not just simply “show up” at your website.

Dreams and Hope do not drive traffic. The digital landscape is littered with hundreds of thousands (millions, really) of well-intentioned websites that are ghost-towns. No one goes to them. At all. Sad.

Sadder still is the business who has gone through an amazing website rebuild, only to discover that after the excitement of day 1 of the website launch, there isn’t really any more traffic coming to their website than there was last week.

If you build your website right, some of them *may* come.

Using the power of organic search and inbound marketing, you *can* actually make some traffic come to your website by building it. Properly, that is.

When built properly, a website becomes known as a “thought leader” and search engines will display your URL when someone searches for keywords that are related to products/services you offer. Organic search a.k.a. “SEO” Search Engine Optimization.

To be successful in SEO, your website must have 2 things:

1.    Ongoing content your customers love

2.    Technical efficiency so that the rest of the internet (e.g. search engines) can understand what it is you do.

SEO that drives organic search traffic is just 1 of 7 ways people can come to your website. To really drive exponential traffic, you’ll need to consider the other 6 during ongoing digital marketing management after you launch your site.

So, you’ll need to think about those as you build your website. A new website is a powerful marketing tool when done properly.

Life After Launch.

3 Things You Need To Realize About Online Marketing For Your Business

1.    You’ll never finish building your website. A website is not a project. A website is not a brochure. A website is the digital front-office of your business; one that is constantly evolving, one that is constantly interesting and engaging. The internet changes rapidly. People’s buying behavior changes. Google/Bing search engine rules change. New hacks arise daily. New technologies and platform changes occur frequently. Website development never ends.

2.    People can come to your website in 7 ways. There are only 7 ways for people to get to your website. Here’s the “7 Sacred Channels of Great Google Traffic” and what Google thinks about them:

1.    Direct traffic: Sessions in which the user typed the name of your website URL into the browser or came to your site via a bookmark (i.e., source=” (direct)” and medium=” (not set)” or “(none)”).

2.    Search: Traffic from unpaid search on any search engine (i.e., medium=” organic”).

3.    Paid Ads: Traffic from the AdWords Search Network or other search engines, with a medium of “cpc”

or “ppc”.

4.    Display Ads: Interactions with a medium of “display” or “cpm”. Also includes AdWords interactions with ad distribution network set to “content”

5.    Social: Traffic from any of approximately 400 social networks (that are not tagged as ads).

6.    Email: Sessions that are tagged with a medium of “email”.

7.    Referral Links: Traffic from websites that are not social networks.

8.    Other: Sessions that are tagged with a medium of “cpc”, “ppc”, “cpm”, “cpv”, “cpa”, “cpp”, “affiliate” (excluding Paid Search).

3.    Online marketing isn’t just about a single campaign or two. It’s about maximizing those 7 channels of traffic 24/7/365 using sustained digital marketing tactics. It’s about weekly agile marketing scrums that help you improve using data. Think of it as a marathon, with pacing ’cause you’re in it for the long run, not a frantic hamster in a cage.

In virtually every single industry today, there is intense online competition to get the attention of a buying public.

To consistently beat your competition … to build an online marketing engine that delivers leads frequently … you need a comprehensive ongoing strategy of agile marketing to master all 7 ways people come to your website.