Is your website dead? By that, I mean, are you getting no leads and/or sales from your website? Is there no or very few people coming to your website? Do you not know how many people are coming to your website weekly or monthly?

If these things are true for you and your website, then you will tend to get this idea that your website is just a cost of doing business, but it doesn’t really contribute to your business production. And if you have that idea, you won’t want to do anything or spend any money to enhance the website or make it productive.

Just as an example, over the past few years I have seen business owners that I know ignore the fact that their website or websites are not mobile friendly. Despite the fact that this means over half the people coming to the site can’t use it because the text is too tiny to be read.

So since I am obviously not in agreement with the idea that a website is just a cost and a waste of time, what should be done with a website?

First Objective: Traffic

The first thing to know is that today, there are so many websites on the Internet that if you put up a nice website, but do nothing to drive traffic to the site, nothing will happen. You may get a smattering of visitors, but not enough to drive any leads that will make a difference to your business.

So before you start driving traffic and bring your site back from the dead, I would definitely fix three things about your site if you haven’t already: 1) Make the site mobile friendly so it displays well on a mobile phone and the text can be read easily. 2) Put an SSL certificate on the site so the web address starts with https rather than http. 3) Put Google Analytics on your site so you can see how many people are coming to the site weekly or monthly.

Once you do that, you can start driving traffic to the site. Here is a quick summary of what’s available to do that:

1. Pay Per Click Advertising – This is where you pay for ads on Google or Facebook. But in general this is usually for businesses with high ticket products or services.
2. Search Engine Optimization and Link Building – This is building up your organic traffic, and is a longer lasting investment.
3. Google My Business – If your business is local, you should definitely create a GMB listing. These are the listings that show up on Google in conjunction with a map.
4. Yelp – If your business is local, you definitely need a Yelp listing. Yelp gets 36 million visitors per month. I have put several clients on Yelp paid advertising and most have done very well with it. You do have to deal with reviews, getting really happy customers to write reviews, and responding to negative ones. The best strategy is to get lots of positive reviews.
5. Email – The best thing to do with email is to compile an email list of customers and prospects that contact you; an in-house list. Then email to them regularly. It’s best to use one of the online email services like Aweber.
6. Business Directories – There are a lot of business directories where you can put up a listing for your business. Here is a list of the biggest ones with traffic figures. https://www.vendasta.com/blog/top-100-online-business-directories Concentrate on the ones that get the most traffic.
7. Social Media – You put up a presence on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, get lots of fans/followers/connections, then post regular things about your business.
8. Offline Promo – Don’t ignore the use of offline promo such as business cards, brochures, and direct mail. Make sure your website address is put on everything.

Two things to bear in mind: 1) Don’t just pick one of the above. Use multiple media. 2) Whatever you do to promote your website, do it consistently and regularly. Not just a one shot deal.