Let's face it. Even if you have built the most amazing website, you cannot expect to get substantial web traffic overnight. It simply does not work that way.

So, what should you do? Well, you need to devise a strategy that will help you bring visitors to your website. While there are a lot of ways by which you can accomplish this goal (content marketing, paid advertising, etc.), you need to keep one thing in mind. You need to connect with visitors who are most likely to become paying customers.

You need to identify who you are trying to reach and find where they are hanging out online. You also need to know the best way to reach them, bring them back to your website and keep them coming back for more.

Optimizing Your Website

So, how should you go about it? Well, you need to start by building a keyword strategy. You need to identify the keywords that are relevant to your business and optimize your website around them to make sure your customers find you online. If you are not aware of it, keywords serve as the foundation of any successful online marketing strategy. That's how powerful keywords are!

So, are you ready to create a keyword strategy? If so, here's how you should go about it.

Create a list of keywords relevant to your business. Put yourself in your ideal customer's shoes. What are the keywords that you will most probably use when searching for your product online? Think of words or phrases that best describe what your products and services is all about.

Choose keywords based on difficulty and relevance. For best results, choose keyword phrases or long tail keywords since they can help you rank well in the search engines. Don't choose general keywords that have high volume of searches since they are more competitive. You can use free tools such as the Google Keyword Tool to help you brainstorm new keyword ideas and determine their competitiveness.

Use keywords to optimize your website. After finding your keywords, you need to incorporate them in key areas within your website. I will discuss more about this in detail later in subsequent articles.

Let's get one thing straight. You cannot expect your customers to find you if you don't take the time to optimize your website. Believe me, there is really no other way around it.

Author's Bio: 

B. Mechelle Mauldin offers small business online marketing services, search engine optimization and social media marketing for small to mid-sized companies, professional service providers and non-profit organizations. She is the author of Online Marketing 101 and teaches online marketing training classes for business leaders nationwide. Be sure to follow us on Twitter @MauldinGroup and sign up for a FREE SEO Assessment & Online Marketing Plan of Action at www.TheMauldinGroup.com