So you’ve got yourself a shiny new website. Now the hard work really begins. It’s time to go out and get this website of yours seen and heard about.

Here’s a list of the tasks:

Great words: It’s one thing having a good-looking, all-flashing, all-dancing website but it’s also vital that you have good copy. Essentially the words are what will interest the majority of people so make sure these are well-written or professionally written (hire a copywriter if in doubt).

Marketing:

• Get into networking on-line and face-to-face. Tell people about your site and hand out business cards, leaflets, t-shirts… whatever will help people to remember your website address and what your business is all about.

• Newsletters are also a great way of keeping in regular touch with a range of potential customers (again, you might want to hire a pro to write good newsletters).

• Press releases: Find a freelance PR or journalist and ask them to help you with a few basic press releases.

• Forums: join forums and web groups connected to your own business and participate by sharing your knowledge.

Blog it: Search engine spiders love regularly updated copy and keyword-rich copy and one of the best tools for this is to write blogs linked to your website. Make it easy for your readers to keep tabs on your new blogs by offering an RSS Feed. And let them comment on your posts – they’ll want to see what you have to say about their comments, too.

Check out the competition: See what rival websites are up to, what they are offering, what their content is like, etc.

Finally, don’t be afraid to make changes: You might have a shiny, new website but if some areas are not working as you felt they should then make some changes. Ask your designer to make some adjustments or speak to a copywriter about sprucing up the content.

Google rankings can be hard to come by, but with some creative thinking – and writing – businesses can effectively boost the traffic to their websites. One way to do this is to include more detail on products and services pages. But don’t imagine for a second that you can do this yourself. Your best plan is to author and expert or an experienced content writer to put together some relevant copy.

More products/services copy

Don’t assume that web visitors know and fully understand your products or services. Not many people are experts, so the best plan is to offer a visitor clear and detailed information about what exactly it is that you do.

Tip 1: Create a new page for each service that your offer. Go into some detail, although it won’t help if you bamboozle visitors with info. Basically you need to outline a serve and tell visitors why s is special.

Tip 2: Also, most people will jump to a service that most interests then so ensure that your service pages can each act as a stand-alone description.

Tip 3: You can add testimonials or case studies for added value and content.

Tip 4: Each page will be more Google-friendly than a catch-all page that mentions a whole host of services in passing.

Expert articles

You could launch an articles section on your website offering clients advice or information that they might usually expect to pay for. For example, if you have a soft-furnishing business why not add articles about how to create a particular room look or the latest trends in fabrics?

It’s possible to publish such articles on your site in several different ways, for example, as a newsletter, a blog or video links.

Think human and think software. These days, more than ever, to hit the dizzy heights of search engine rankings you need to write good copy for both the reader and the search engine spiders.

In the first place, the content of your website must read well for the user. It must be interesting, authoritative, entertaining and creative to gain maximum conversions. But a clever writer will also pay a lot of attention to getting the copy right in titles, headings, tags, intra-site links and external links.

Titles
These are very important and usually the first thing read by both real and virtual visitors. A title must contain keyword targets at the individual word level while attracting interest in potential readers as a whole phrase too. Never, ever leave your page “untitled”. And never, ever waste valuable space by making your company name the title of every page.

Keywords that are relevant to the page should be part of every page’s title:

Heading tags
These define the headings and subheadings of your article to both readers and search engine spiders. By default they appear larger than normal text and are bolded. While they are not a magic ranking bullet, they are looked at with more importance than average text and are an opportunity to show spiders the themes of your content and what keywords you wish to rank for.

The H1 tag
This is the main heading of your article and is the most important, rather like a headline in a newspaper. It should state clearly what the article is about and include the main for SEO.

H2 tags
An H2 tag defines subtopics. Again make it descriptive and useful with keywords included.

H3 tags
These act as sub-sub headings where necessary.

One topic per page
Keep content simple by sticking to one topic per page where possible. This doesn’t only make sense for ease of reading but also works best for search engine “crawlers”  that have algorithms that tend to work best on one concept at a time. Also, limiting the writing to one topic at a time helps with the task of placing keywords in 
the meta descriptions, page title, body copy, tags and links.

Write, write, write
Search engines and people love new information so consistently update your website with fresh content and they will visit more often.

It’s widely regarded that the first text in most website pages should be a summary of one or two sentences telling the viewer exactly what is the function of the page.

This starter-summary has several important functions.

• It is a quick way to tell the reader what your page is about.
• It helps you, the writer to sum up what your page is all about.
• It can double as the text seen in search engine results (after the page title)

How to write a summary:

* Get to the point quickly. Don’t waste time giving background info, this is the place for direct, specific information about your page, not the whole site.

* Write the summary so it makes sense when read as a stand-alone item.

* It must be useful in search results

* It should be not more than three sentences.

Here are two simple page summary examples:

1) Use this page to find out more about the coaching and training sessions at Glasgow Triathlon Club. There is also a link to the useful club forum.

2) If you’re looking for hill walking routes in the Aviemore area then this is the page for you. There is a range of graded routes from easy/beginner to expert/experienced.

Many studies of how users read text on the internet has revealed that they do not actually read. Instead many people scan the text – and especially when they are looking for business or company information.

A study of five different writing styles found that a website scored 58% higher in measured usability when it was written concisely, 47% higher when the text was scannable and 27% higher when it was written in an objective style instead of a promotional style.

Combining these three changes into a website that was concise, scannable and objective resulted in 124% higher measured usability.

So think about all of this when you’re writing your next piece of content for your website.

Tips for web writing: Ensure that you write in a simple, clear and straightforward manner. Include lots of sub-heads and straight-talking headlines. Bold up words if they are important. Don’t over-write but don’t under-write either. Research has shown that about 250 words is the optimum per page.

The bottom line is that it is better to employ someone else to write your copy if you are not experienced, as it will pay dividends in the long-term.

A successful website needs good, quality content. If you don’t already know this, then now is the time to get clued up.

While you’ll need to get people to come to your website in the first place (so you’ll have to invest in some promotion and marketing), once they find your website they will only stick with you if they like what they read. Poor content equals a quick exit, rather like when you read the first page of a new novel. But if visitors are instantly attracted to good content then they are likely to spread the word. In the internet world, word is spread via “links”.

And it doesn’t stop here. Make sure that your website also has RSS feeds so visitors can easily share the word. This makes it simpler for people who like the content on your website to spread the word to others via Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Digg etc. The more people who share your website around the more links you’ll get and the more your website will be read. It goes on and on.

But don’t let people bad mouth you. If your content stinks, or is inaccurate in any way, then visitors might well spread the word on your poor website. No website owner or on-line business wants a bad reputation. Remember it’s just as easy for visitors to spread a “bad’ word, as it is a “good” word. Creating good content gives you credibility.

So now you’re in the position to gain advertisers. Advertisers and sponsors like to know that websites have a good reputation and lots of visitors so once you’ve set up your good quality, reputable website there is more chance of making some money form advertising. It makes sense, doesn’t it?

That’s why content is king! Because it can pave the way to untold riches.