A Plan for Increasing Your Web Presence: The First 3 Months – Become the Best Hunting Business in your County, State, or even in the Nation

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A Plan for Increasing Your Web Presence: The First 3 Months – Become the Best Hunting Business in your County, State, or even in the Nation

4 February 2009 49 views No Comment

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This post is an extension of my previous post “The First 4 Days of Your New Hunting Blog“. This process is a look from a higher level for an extended period.

Are you the top hunting outfitter in your county, state, or one of the best in the nation?

image credit: katmere

Do you have a strong Web presence so Web users and potential customers can find your outfitter service easily and research your company?

The Web is the single most important medium of exchange in our time.

If you are looking to start or expand your hunting business’s Web presence, here is a…

3 Month Web Plan

Month #1

The first month of your online activity is the most critical. You’ll likely have some positive days and some days when you get frustrated with your progress. Unfortunately, this is a cycle you’ll deal with constantly with your online effort.

The people who understand this cycle and learn to deal with it are the ones who succeed and make it past the first month.

For example, two weeks into this blog I had a high profile blogger comment on a post. As a result, I received a large amount of traffic for a few days.

However, after the rush was over, things went back to normal. It was difficult to come down from that high.

But after this stage it was time to refocus on normal growth.

Your Web presence will take a significant amount of time and commitment to build.

Have a vision for your blog and focus on beating short-term goals that get you closer to your vision.

For example, try to beat last week’s site measures. Try to get more traffic today than you did on the same day last week.

Small, but measured progress is key.

Also important in the first month of your Web presence is building your personal brand on numerous social media sites.

Visit hunting blogs, forums and other sites such as Twitter.

Get acquainted with other hunters using hunting social networking sites (there are tons now focused on hunting).

Build up your reputation as a hunter and an expert.

This respect will prove invaluable as users start to explore your presence on the Web.

Month #2

It’s assumed that over the first month you’ll be creating quality content for your own blog. I’m a big fan of starting a blog to go along with your hunting business.

But a blog is just one part of your online presence.

I recommend trying to post 4 to 5 articles per week for your blog. It’s kind of a personal preference, but it seems to be a common number for popular blogs.

The first few months are about building up your archives and when you reach a certain point you’ll want to start linking back to previous posts. This will increase your page views as readers start to look back on your content.

Month #2 is also a good time to start thinking about guest posting on other blogs.

Before I even get into the benefits of guest posting as they relate to you and your business, I want to stress firmly that you should always have the readers of the sites you guest post on as your number one focus.

You are trying to help the audience of the site you’re guest posting on. Think of others before you think of yourself…in this situation.

Answer questions that your fellow Web users have that you can answer. Think about your particular knowledge and use it to help others.

If you’re seen as respected and knowledgeable, more people will gravitate towards your site.

This means your online presence is growing stronger.

Also by Month #2 (and probably in Month #1) you’ll start to see some incoming search engine traffic and referral traffic.

Focus on the keywords driving traffic to your site.

Are there any patterns?

Should you be focusing on different keywords?

Do the search engine terms really fit the focus of your site?

Also look at the sites that are linking to your blog (hopefully there are some).

Think about why they are linking to you and what you can do to attract more links?

Beyond paid traffic, natural traffic is the way to grow your site exponentially.

Month #3

By the third month of your online presence you should start to begin having more good days than down days (as I spoke to earlier).

By Month #3, you should begin to see your quality content continually attracting strong natural traffic.

If not, you might need to rethink the content you’re creating.

Is the content focused?

Is the content focused on the right keyword phrases?

Month #3 is a good reality check for everybody on the Web.

There is always time to check what is working and what isn’t working.

Take some time to do a self evaluation in this month. You should have enough history to determine what is going to work and what you should forget about.

Determine what social media are working for you.

What forums, blogs, and other social networking sites are successful at building connections for you?

Maybe Twitter isn’t working for you. Maybe you don’t have enough time to sufficiently utilize Facebook.

Maybe you have discovered a niche forum that drives a lot of traffic to your hunting business blog.

Reallocate your resources to what is working, but remain open (always) to new opportunities.

Don’t be afraid to fail.

Try new things, but don’t try things that fail for too long.

If something is not working to improve your Web presence then move on.

Conclusion

The first three months of your online presence will go by quickly.

There is so much to learn (forever and always) on the Web that it almost seems impossible to catch up.

The most important lesson to try new things, research what others have had success (and failure) with and learn is to take a step back once and awhile and focus on what is successful for your individual circumstance.