If you build it, they won’t come! đ Here’s why… You need to proactively promote yourself and your website. There’s a common misbelief that the act of launching a website will cause a rush of new sales to fly in. That’s not true! If you stop advertising, your website traffic will dry up!
Listen on: Apple Podcasts.
Transcript:
So you’ve made a website or somebody’s made one for you. You’ve given it a name and a space to exist online. It’s published, it’s ready to go but no one’s coming to it.
What’s going on there?
Itâs not your fault if your website is not getting visitors
Well first of all if nobody’s coming to your website and you don’t know why it’s not your fault. Thing that you have to know about having a website is that the act of simply putting it online isn’t going to bring a whole rush of people to your digital front door.
It may have worked that way in the early days of the commercial web in the 1990s. It would be really simple. You’d tell your friends and family about your website and then suddenly it was out there. And people were finding it.
But the internet has changed a lot.
Why Google prefers ad-riddled websites
At the time that I’m recording this it’s 2025. And there are a lot of websites out there. New ones are being added every day. Granted there are quite a lot of um shall we say spammy websites; blog websites that are generated for the purpose of uh holding ads so that the owner can get ad revenue. These spammy websites are usually full of junk content cheaply written or perhaps AI generated.
A lot of these junk websites have been engineered, coded, and crafted in such a way that Google will preference them in search engine results. It’s not about whether this content is interesting or helpfulâbecause if you’ve experienced this kind of recipe website before where it’s just pages of text and when you just want the ingredients. Well there’s tons of ads. Those ads are there because Google actually is the operator of those ads. So there’s you know tons of businesses out there and people using ads but Google is the one getting revenue from those ads. And so it’s in Google’s interest to put those websites in search results so that Google can get more ad money.
So is it still possible to get in search results?
Yeah it used to be that what you’d find in Google search results was actually very good. It’s still possible to get up there in results but you have to know exactly what you’re doing. And if you’ve never had a website before⌠If you’re new to running a business online and maybe you don’t actually use the internet all that much yourself⌠Either way it’s not a simple thing to get online. There are simple things that you can do. Pieces that you can put together that add up to make you more visible online.
But it’s not going to happen just because you’ve published a website.
Why itâs not [necessarily] your web designerâs fault your website isnât getting visitors
If you’ve gotten a web developer or a web designer to build your website itâs not on them. Itâs not on them if you didn’t have some kind of marketing contract with them that involved ongoing work to get you visible. If that wasn’t in the agreement and it’s not their job. It’s going to be your job.
That being the case you don’t actually have to do it all yourself. It is perfectly valid to reach out to a digital marketing specialist like myself to help you with that kind of thing.
So you gotta do this SEO thing yourself? In this AI hellscape!?
In a nutshell, SEO means working on your website to make it appear in Google search results.
Sounds simple.
It’s not exactly that simple though in practice. The results that you get in Google search change all the time.
In recent times you’d get those recipe blogs which are just full of ads. And now you’re getting those AI overviews um instead of actual website links.
So there’s more noise to contend with in search results.
Should you bother with ads to get more website visitors?
A question that I see asked a lot is: âShould I use social media?â Or, âShould I use Facebook ads or Google Ads?â Or âBetween Google Ads and Facebook ads, which one is better?â
The thing about that is between Facebook ads and Google ads there isn’t one that’s universally better overall than the other.
The one that is better is the one that is better for you and your business.
Just because somebody you know had great success with Google Ads it doesn’t mean it’s going to work for you. Yes, even if your business is in the same category.
Your winning strategy might be this: It might be you have a different approach to how you engage with your audience. And your audience may resonate with a different message to someone else’s audience.
When is Google Ads a good idea?
Generally speaking, if you are in a business where you provide services to other businesses, Google Ads is a great place to be.
If your service is high ticket, like you’re doing like multi thousand dollar quote type things, then Google Ads could work.
If your business is more of a commodity like pet food or clothing, and if it’s very specialised then social media may be the place to go.
But if you’re selling goods that are not niched like big bulk bags of bird seed that are the same everywhere else and you’re just offering the cheaper price⌠Google Ads might be the place for you.
There there’s so many different nuances.
So is Google Ads the best? Or Facebook ads?
There isnât a clear cut answer as to whether one digital marketing platform is universally better than the others.
Most business types can do pretty okay with social media and Facebook.
But again, just because it works for most people doesn’t mean it’s going to work for you.
Unfortunately I can’t really say, like after listening to this podcast, like I can’t say definitively that SEO is better than Google Ads. Or SEO is better than Facebook, or Facebook is better than email marketing.
Because you could use a combination of those things or one of them or none at all.
It really depends on what works best for your business.
When to get help with getting website visitors
Oftentimes that may mean engaging with a specialist to help.
You find out usually figuring this stuff out also involves doing some research and looking at some data and talking to your customers.
There’s a reason why often places will have a, âWhere did you hear about us?â in their intake form. That information helps them decide where to invest their time and/or money in advertising and/or online marketing.
Things your âweb expertâ might miss
There are some things also that amateur web developers may not tell you that you need to do. [Please donât assume that just because they know one aspect of owning a website they know everything. They donât.]
One very common thing that comes upâespecially if somebody is just focusing on the look and the design of their website. So they just want something that looks good in their portfolio. And that’s kind of their priority. How can I say this? If you’re a web designer and you’re interested in building a web design portfolio, it may be your priority to just create some good-looking websites. So it may not occur to the web designer or the person who’s commissioning that web designer to get that website out there.
The thing that goes missing is alerting search engines.
Usually that’s Google, and often I’ll include Bing as well. You have to do this yourself if your web designer hasnât done it for you. You have to send a request to Google that says âHey this is my website address and this is either a new website.â Or âI have updated it and I want you Google to go and check it out and then update your index your database and then use the new updated content on my website to update your search engine results accordingly.â
If you or your web designer haven’t done that then it’s really going to hold you back in terms of when and where you appear in Google search results. And you might not even appear at all. If somebody goes and types in your name or the name of your business, you might not even come up. If that step hasn’t been done, that’s SEO 101 ignored.
[Not informing search engines] is just one tiny component in the tapestry of SEO that fits within the tapestry of advertising and marketing yourself and this tapestry is unique to you.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, if you build it they’re not going to come.
If you make your website and publish it you’re going to have to do things to bring people to it.
So that could be posting on social media. That could be a blog, a podcast, going out and talking to people⌠But it has to be an ongoing effort!
Whether or not you choose to do a blog or do Facebook ads⌠Again, it’s not about whether one is universally better than the other because that’s not how it works. How it works is that you have to find the one that connects to your audience and that if you’re doing it yourself you have to enjoy doing it as well.
If somebody tells you âOh man you know podcasts are the best way to reach people,â but you don’t enjoy doing that it’s going to feel uncomfortable and people are going to see that. Just like if you know Tik Tok 30-second Tik Tok dances are the thing to do and you don’t feel comfortable doing that it’s going to show through. Even though a bunch of people will see you, they’re going to see that you’re not comfortable with that.
Certainly if you’ve got a zone of genius that you love talking about but maybe you don’t like sort of being present on camera like what I’m doing here, then start a blog! Or if you don’t mind talking to people but it’s a bit uncomfortable being in front of a cameraâŚ
If you don’t mind talking to people but do not like this mass audience thing of being in a social media video or a podcast then go network. Start an email newsletter. Do text posts on social media.
The thing is like I said before⌠It’s not about which platform is the best. It is about how clearly you can articulate what your audience member will get
If you make them say âShut up and take my money,â then it really doesn’t matter which platform you go on. You just have to have that resonance with your person and hey I’m going to say enjoy what you’re doing too.
Closing remarks
I hope you found this helpful! If you’ve got any questions about choosing your platform or doing some ongoing work in SEO or email marketing digital ads or something like that⌠If you’re not quite sure if what you’re doing is the best for you then let’s have a chat! I’d love to hear from you! My name is Lou, I am a digital business consultant and I am so pleased that you’ve listened to this whole thing and I can’t wait to see you grow and shine online.
Would you like me to call you? Leave your details and I’ll get back to you when I can.