So you have got a shiny new website. How do you go about letting people know it’s there and building up your numbers of visitors?
The first thing is to make sure it is appearing in Google when you search for your town or parish council name. We’ve written an article about how to optimise your content so that you get a prominent listing in Google (and other search engines) that you can read here: How to improve your search engine ranking
The next step would be publicising it to your parishioners who may not even know that you have a website. Ways to do this is include:
- adding the web address to your email signature so that it appears at the bottom of each email you send out
- putting posters in your village noticeboard, shop and/or pub
- including the web address on all council documents such as minutes or notices
- you could also deliver flyers around your village advertising the site
Another way to keep visitors coming back it to keep publishing lots of news items and useful information.
Other councils publicise their site or information on social media – usually Facebook or Twitter. We’ve published a series of guides about setting up social media here: https://parish-council.website/category/marketing/social-media/
It is also good to get incoming links to your site. This will have the effect of bringing more visitors to your site and will also help with your search engine ranking. These could come from your local and district council, neighbouring parish councils or local institutions such as the church or the WI. If you set up links to them, you can ask them to return the favour and set up a link back to you.
