Many businesses are now heading online and rightly so. The internet has become the defacto in marketing any business due to its global reach and speed of content distribution.

Businesses have many ways to promote their businesses online including Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media Marketing and Pay Per Click advertising, but many forget that to be the most effective and get the best return on investment, you need to take an holistic approach to your online marketing.

It’s not just about driving traffic to a website although many owners think this is all they need to do in order make a killing. This is not the case.

There is so much competition on the web in almost all industries. What makes your site so different? What do you offer, that nobody else does? What is your UVP? (Unique Value Proposition)

So, lets take a look at the core ingredients to giving your website every opportunity on the web.

Is There A Market For Your Product/Service
This may seem obvious to most, but not all. You would be surprised just how many businesses start-up both online and offline without doing any real research only to find that they go bust after a few months.

Although it is possible to push a product or service with very little search demand by tapping into existing niches, it is difficult and may take some time to get noticed. So before you employ the services of a website design company, you need to make sure that there is a need for your services and that you have a strategy in place to make it happen.

Competitor Research
So you have established that there is a market and demand for your product or service. The next thing you really need to do is find out what your competitors are doing to get the rankings, traffic and the exposure they are currently getting.

What keywords are they targeting? What do they offer that you don’t? What strategies are they using for their link building? How strong are the competitors? Can you compete with them with the budget and time that you have available?

All these questions and more are what you should be asking yourself.

Keyword Opportunities
You now need to do lots of keyword research and establish the kind of keywords you will be targeting. No point in targeting “cheap cars” if the cars you are selling are expensive.

The keywords that you target need to be relevant. There also needs to be a good mix of long tail and broad keywords. Long tails are easier to target and convert better although the search numbers are lower than broad keywords. Broad keywords can be tough to crack and may take you a long time to be able to compete for the traffic.

A good rule of thumb with keywords is to start small with highly focused long tail keywords. As the site becomes more powerful with more page rank, trust and authority, you can then start to target the broad keywords.

Attracting Traffic From Multiple Sources
Another thing to remember is that there is more than one way to skin a cat. Traffic can come from multiple sources including organic search engine traffic, pay per click, direct traffic, social media, blogs, forums and referral traffic.

Depending on your business, you may want to use all of these or just a few. You need to experiment and find out which ones give you the best return on your investment of time and money.

Usability Testing And Conversion Optimisation
This is one of the final stages and if anything, is THE most important. By doing regular usability testing and conversion optimisation you start to convert more of your visitors into paying customers. Using tools like Google Website Optimizer and third party usability testing sites, you will start to learn more about what it is your visitors really want, and ultimate learn more about what it is that makes them take action.

If you do not do usability testing and conversion optimisation, your website will be like a bucket with a hole in it.