You want people to come flocking to your newly launched WordPress site, to be impressed by what they find and to keep coming back again and again – you want to generate traffic, visitor engagement and retention. So where should you start…? Hiring a 'Google professional' who promises to get your site to number one spot in Google by the weekend? Writing a 100-page marketing plan that will be your pathway to Internet success? Spending days sending begging e-mails to other webmasters requesting links to your site? Implementing the latest brilliant idea that suddenly came to you at 3 in the morning?

Do you feel out of your depth?

Well, you shouldn't. The most important element by far in the promotion and marketing of your site is totally under your control and within your competence – your web site's content!

The quality and topicality of your site content should always be your absolute priority regardless of any other actions you take to increase awareness of your site.

Your site needs to have regularly updated, well-presented content that visitors, interested in your area of expertise, will find of value. Otherwise, you might as well forget your Internet ambitions at the outset.

Putting in place a thought through marketing programme, whilst essential, can wait until you are confident you have this critical prerequisite in place. You need to have confidence in the ongoing quality of your message/offering – otherwise, how are you going to convince others of its merits?

So, look, perhaps for the umpteenth time, ultra critically at your WordPress web site or blog and ask yourself, "Is it as good as I can make it and have I plans in place to make sure this quality is sustained?"

If the answer's "No", you know what you need to do before you make that call to the slick Google professional!