This week, a friend of a friend contacted me. She wants to sell a product she developed online and commissioned a company to build her web site and shopping cart. She’s happy with the way the site looks.

But she’s not happy that she hasn’t gotten one visitor yet.

She’s searched for her site using Google and after getting to page 115 without seeing it, gave up.

What does she want from me? She wants me to tell her what she needs to do to get her site seen and at the top of the search engine rankings.

So far, “Lisa,” (that’s what I’ll call her to protect the innocent), has spent $1000+. While her site has been indexed, it has no other incoming links at all. And I don’t think any in-depth keyword research was done, since her meta tags show very general search terms. Her site content is definitely not search engine optimized, either. Basically, she has a fancy, online business card.

Lisa’s touched base with the company that built her site, confused as to why she’s not seeing the results she expected. Well, in fairness, the company didn’t PROMISE her any results. They promised her a five page website. And that’s what they’ve given her.

They do offer web marketing packages. In an email I saw from the company to Lisa regarding marketing plans, they recommended:

• Google analytics to assess the demographics of the visitors she’s receiving (which would be wonderful if she was actually receiving any visitors
• Email campaign (again, great idea; but how can she build a list if she doesn’t have any traffic?)
• Web promotion (this was my favorite suggestion. “Marketing and web promotion” is $150 for a 30 minute phone consultation and 1 hour of marketing. However, there’s no indication of what kind of marketing. And if Lisa wanted a report of what had been done, that was an additional $25.)

Oy.

If Lisa had touched base with me before she signed her checkbook away to these people, I could have recommended several options to her that would have cost her far less and delivered many more results. Site Build It would definitely be at the top of my recommendation list.

Why? Because for one price, it includes most of the capabilities Lisa needs to get her web site seen.

• Site template? Check.
• Ability to build more than five pages without additional cost? Check.
• Keyword research? Check.
• Page optimization? Check.
• Email marketing? Check.
• Marketing and web promotion? Half-check. While SBI won’t do the work for you, it does provide a huge amount of resources detailing exactly what you need to do. Plus a super active forum community that stays one step ahead and continually provides new and exciting ideas.

Site Build It is a DIY web site builder. But, if like Lisa, you’d rather have someone else do the work for you, there are many SBI owners that provide that service. Sure, the cost is additional, but you’ll get the results you want.

In the meantime, I have a long email ready to send to Lisa, giving her suggestions on how to market a web site. Will keep you updated on what happens next.

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