Let’s face it…. Long gone are the days when you could launch a website, do some 
occasional blogging or random marketing and expect to see a decent amount of traffic from your inconsistent efforts. It worked in the early days however now when it comes to the Internet and getting your web presence to effectively bring in clients and customers, you need to have a strategy in place that will allow your efforts to continually build upon each other to create an effective marketing tool for your business.
So what is Internet road kill? For the most part, it’s a revenue generating website doesn’t fulfill it’s intended purpose. If you have a website intending to create more business and it isn’t doing so, then it’s Internet road kill. Your website traipsed upon the information superhighway and got run over by the machinations of the Internet. The good news is that unlike real road kill, you can bring your website back from the dead.
So what are some of the things you can do to resurrect your website to something more than a post-apocalyptic reanimated mindless flesh-eating zombie drone? (How marginally clever! I put website and zombie in the same sentence without it referring to a website about zombies). Implementing the following 3 tips will put you on the right track and can raise your website up from the remnants of a 7 day old squashed animal carcass baking on the asphalt of a hot summer day.
1) Strengthen your website’s connection to your target market
Are you still connecting strongly to your target market? As your business grows and changes/expands/contracts, your target market can change as well. What imagery are you using on your website? Are you using the words, phrases and images that really relate on an emotional level to your target market? If your market has expanded, how can you segment your site so that you can address each market segment more personally? When it comes to success in converting your visitors to sales, less is more. The smaller you can segment your target markets, the more you will be able to convert them.
2) Make sure your website’s content is high quality and provides value to your visitors
Beyond being just a sales site, there is value in being an authority site in our industry. Others will more likely link to your website without you asking because it is a good resource. It is easier to increase your traffic and convert your visitors into customers when you are seen as the place that has all the answers. You become an authority site by regularly posting quality content that provides value to your customers. Content can be video, audio, PDFs a free email course, or text. Think outside the box and research what format is most supportive to your target market.
3) Create an overall strategic online marketing plan and follow it religiously
Bottom line is that your website should be where your target market hangs out. Find out where they are online and create a strong presence there. You should have strong SEO, Blogging, Social Media and Email Marketing in place as part of your online strategy and use symbiotically to create a strong brand and online presence for your business. The bonus result is that when these methods are used consistently, they all create more traffic and better SEO results, which leads to more authority, which leads to more links, and then the cycle begins to feed itself. The hardest part is consistently following the strategy long enough the efforts to begin run on autopilot. Most people give up the activity before it has a chance to work.
So you have a choice. Be Internet road kill or be the one who runs over the road kill if it’s in the way… not that it would be your intention to do that; it is just what happens when you are implementing your online strategy consistently and your competition isn’t. Beginning your focus on these 3 points will take you a long ways towards creating a successful web presence.
