So you have a shiny new website all prepped and ready for business. Now what?

When a website is delivered the work does not end. You simply move into phase 2 "Marketing strategy".
Marketing strategy will mean different things to different people depending on their goals and objectives.

For John Smith and his personal web blog there really isn't a need to market himself, however for Dave Anderson
with his company "ABC Concrete", Dave would like to get business from his investment into an online presence.

What is Dave to do?

First, as with any business you need to plan your plan and set your strategy. You need to have goals and objectives for
what you want to achieve. This will keep you focused and define the path you are to follow, as well as enabling you to measure
your success and yes failure in order to refine your strategy.

No plan is perfect and they all take time to perfect, but they need to start somewhere.
You can not just try new things until something works, this strategy works in some cases but in a competitive
market you need a clear path to follow.

Once you have goals, say in Dave's case
"To be the number one concrete company locally, with a growing presence across state lines as well as the internet" what are
your objectives to achieve that goal.

You know your website can help but your not sure what to do with it.

To produce results with anything online you need to add a SEO strategy into your marketing plan. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.
I'm sure by now you are aware search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN are the best way to find what your looking for on the internet,
these companies scour the internet indexing websites and pages so that when, Mary Higgins needs a new sidewalk all she has
to do is go to Google.com, type in "Portland Oregon Concrete Company" to be presented with a list of local concrete companies. 

So how does Dave and his concrete company ensure that Mary finds him?

That is where your strategy comes into play. Due to SEO competition this is always a work in progress,
there are no tricks or secrets just good hard work involved. I believe you'll find that this is often the case in most profitable scenarios.

     Be warned, if anyone ever comes to you selling you a bill of goods with lines such as "We have secrets and tricks that no one else knows about" or
    "We can guarantee you a #1 placement in the search engines" RUN the other way!!

The nature of business is competition, just like the competition of an athlete there is work involved to be the best.

Work is a verb which connotes action, action connotes effort, there is no real set it and forget it in business.

Our recommendation is to add resources to your website, that other businesses and websites find valuable enough to link to,
as well as resources that build trust in your company. Someone who knows what they are talking about and proves it will win the business
over a competitor that just says I'll give you a good price.

Free resources don't always mean loss of profit or time as we all know equals profit. So it will benefit you to take time to give stuff away.
Search engines treat links like a vote in your favor, the more votes you have the more important the search engines will think you are.
Not just any link though, in today's SEO market the quality of links are taken into account.

It used to be that "he who had the most links wins"

This system did not work well and led to all of those link farms and massive directory submitters that we often see that attempt to cheat the system.

Search engines have realized that this results in cheating trickery and have added policies and procedures to prevent that sort of behavior.
Please do not use anything like that as it can and will most likely get you banned from the search engines,
once banned you have an up hill battle on your hands to repair the damage.

Follow this simple rule and you'll be fine,

"if it smells like a scam, feels like a scam and looks like a quicker way to an end that usual". It most likely is!

Dave simply has to realize that he either needs to learn how to make his website important to people,
or hire someone to do it for him in order to get more votes.

Now I can't imagine that Dave is the only concrete company looking for new business.  How does he out compete his competitors?

As with any marketing plan the goal is to tell people. What that entails will vary from one business to another but here are a few suggestions for Dave.

1st get listed in the online yellow pages, this gives people and search engines a location as well as contact information to associate with Dave's company,
Now do that for every reputable directory you can find, post ads on craigslist, write about your business and advertise with other related websites where
someone may be interested in concrete work, for example a machinery supply company, a rental company, blogs about concrete or contractors,
angieslist.com anything that relates to and leads to concrete or contractors.

10 links from related websites carry more value, quality and weight than 100 links from completely un-related websites.
Both potential customers as well as search engine's recognize this.

Imagine if Mary Higgins is on her old gals knitting website and sees and ad from Dave for concrete work.
Both Mary as well as the search engines are going to get a proverbial question mark above their heads thinking"what the heck does concrete have to do with knitting".
However if Mary is on angieslist.com a link and recommendation for Dave's concrete company is going to carry a lot more weight and value to everyone.

Which brings up recommendations and reviews,

Dave should include in his plan to learn how people are finding him,
if Mary tells Dave she found him on angies list, he could help his SEO presence by requesting, perhaps even giving her a discount
if she will go back to angieslist and give him a positive review as well as linking to something on his website
(perhaps to an article about sidewalks built to city code).

Reviews are important to everyone and that includes the search engines, believe it or not they take them into account when ranking Dave's website.

In conclusion

keep this standard in mind and you will soar above your competition both in the market as well as online.
If you make the effort and market your website to the customers you want, the search engines will lead them straight to you. 

After all, more people today use search engines to find what they are looking for than any other resource available.
Master your plan with that in mind and they are sure to find you first and never make it to finding your competition.