How to Create Impact Online

The three key factors that go into making your online presence impact your audience.

#1 Traffic

If you don’t have any audience, there is no way that you will ever impact anyone. This means that you have to put some concerted effort into not only obtaining, but also maintaining traffic. It doesn’t matter whether you are building a website, placing classified ads, writing articles, or sending advertisements out to an email list, the most professionally written material will do you no good without readers.

Although it is no longer the only way to get traffic, achieving very high rankings organically on the most used search engines is still one of the best ways to secure a high visitor count for websites. In general, the more places your link shows up, the higher your search engine ranking will be. This means that the more articles that link to your site, the more classifieds that link to your site, and the more sites that you get to link to your site, the higher your search engine ranking will be. Although increasing links to your site will help your search engine rankings, search engines are now implementing techniques to ensure that keywords and relevant content are also taken into consideration.

#2 Headlines

Once you are able to drive traffic to your site, now you must wow the audience into camping there long enough to take the next step toward purchase. Depending upon what your company is selling, purchase could be anything from signing up for your mailing list to actually buying something there and then. Your headline, or title, can make or break your advertisement.

Your headline has to:
* Grab the reader’s attention.
* Create a “Wow!” factor.
* Cause the audience to strongly desire to read on.
* Pose a question to which the reader MUST have the answer.
* Make a lasting impression on the reader.

If the reader doesn’t make it past the headline, you have lost a potential customer. When you write your headline, ask yourself if you would stop without hesitation at this title while scanning through a handful of other headlines. If you would, you have a winning headline.

# 3 Content Value

Getting traffic to your site and grabbing their attention with an intriguing headline alone does not win the battle. Now you have to actually provide value in the content of your site. The reader must find something worth their time in order to cause them to hang out with you long enough to accomplish your goal.

Web surfers are information junkies and spend their time quickly filtering through the buffet of knowledge, searching for the one nugget of information that whets their appetite and alerts them that they have found a meal of intelligence. When a website presents the audience with the facts, entertainment, or instructions that they have been seeking, that website has won a loyal reader and very likely a customer.

Because it is so important to a business’s survival to make an impact online, take it seriously. If you have the necessary skills and know-how to build your business online, do it!  If you lack the expertise, the success of your business is worth the investment in a company that knows how to make an impact online for your business.