“If you build it, they will come.”

This famous line from Field of Dreams might apply to baseball diamonds, but it doesn’t necessarily translate to websites. At Grey Suit Retail, our online marketing and web development company, we design websites with many built-in features that make it easy for your customers to come and find you when they surf the web, but there are other methods you should also use to increase your internet exposure.

These strategies are called Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and they move your website to the top of the list of search results and attract more people to your site. You can pay for SEO campaigns, just like you pay for advertising campaigns, but this series of articles will show you no-cost and low-cost ways you can maximize your website investment.

Tip # 1: Never Stop Talking

• Never stop talking about your website. Add your website address to EVERYTHING – business cards, store signs, delivery trucks, television ads, radio spots, flyers, direct mail pieces, newspaper advertisements, billboards and anything else you can think of. Need help with offline advertising and traditional media? Contact an Online Specialist, who has solutions for every event, every price point and every medium.
• Use your website domain in all your corporate email addresses to reiterate your website in every communication. Furniturestud@teenybopperemail.com is amateur and unprofessional, but RealPerson@YourWebsiteAddress.com – now, that’s more like it. Branded email addresses are already included with your Grey Suit Retail website. Contact your Online Specialist to request professional email addresses (we’ll even teach you how to use them).
• Tell every in-store customer about your website. Pass out candy or dollar bills as an incentive every time you hear an associate mention your website to a customer.
• Use your website as a selling tool on the sales floor. Put a netbook on the sales floor so your customers can interact with your site as they shop. Show them how to put their favorite catalog item on their Facebook wall, or email a picture to their spouse.
• Make sure your suppliers include a link to your site on their website’s store locater, too.

SEO strategies that increase website visitors are great, but at Grey Suit Retail we never forget that your only goal (both in-store and online) is to sell more stuff. Constant repetition of your website address ensures that your name is ingrained in your customers’  mind when they shop and search from home in their pajamas.