The Internet is becoming more and more saturated with great websites every day. You can’t just create a website about your specialty and expect it to receive a large volume of search engine traffic unless you advertise or publicize it somehow. The quality of search results is also improving. The results on the second page are usually just as good as the results on the first page.
We are also not just competing against our Hawaii Island neighbors. We are more often competing against mainland webmasters who also see an opportunity to profit from being in our space.
The search engines like Google, Yahoo! & NSN are adding more personalization features to their services that users must log into to receive. This allows them to gather actual user data from web surfing history and bookmarks. They also factor in the age of website and the age of the links pointing to them.
It’s already very unlikely that a new website will show up anywhere on the radar especially in Google because there is no historical user data to support it.
The first step is always to create a great website worthy of occupying the number one spot. You must identify the problem your visitor is coming to your website to solve and then solve it quickly. If the visitor doesn’t find what they are looking for in a few seconds they will hit the Back Button and your advertising dollar will be wasted. Online advertising and publicity can drive traffic to your website but you must be prepared to retain that visitor’s interest and convert them to a paying customer.
Over time, quality graphic design, content, search engine friendly site structure and user-friendly navigation will create a solid foundation to build your online marketing efforts upon. Search engine advertising and publicity can help create and raise awareness that your website exists. Over time, this will help create a snowball effect where people will naturally begin to link to your website and the search engines will have the historical data needed to properly evaluate your new website.