There are many ways to increase your website traffic, but traffic
really is not the key. The key factor is trying to get qualified sales
leads and customers. I would rather get 25 people that are actually
looking to purchase a new website than 2500 people that are not.
Listed below are some of the ways you can get the kind of visitors you
want. I will however, keep the descriptions short as I will be writing
a full article about each one of these topics in upcoming months. Keep
in mind that some of these techniques will not work for every business
but most will. TRY THEM, THEY WORK!
1. YOUR PAGE TITLES. Your page titles should be short
and descriptive and should be 5 to 8 words. This is a safe amount for
all search engines and will insure people searching for your website
will be able to read your page title when the search engine results
are displayed. This is a very important tag for search engine
placement. Your title should be in the header of your HTML code
<HEADER> </HEADER> and should look something like this.
<TITLE>Web Site Promotion - Increasing Your WebSite Traffic</TITLE>
2. KEYWORDS AND PHRASES. Look at every one of the
pages in your website and prepare a list of keywords and key phrases
that go along with the content of each page in your website. If they
end up to be the very similar, simply rotate them so that you don't
have the same keywords in the same position on every page. So many
people make the mistake of placing keywords on their first page and no
where else. Your keywords should be different on every page of your
website. You should also be careful not to repeat any words more than
3 times and you should not have more than 30 keywords in your page.
Your keywords should also go in the header section of your HTML page
<HEADER></HEADER> and should be in a meta-tag that the search engines
can read. If after a while you are not getting the traffic you
expected try changing your keywords and resubmitting to the search
engines.
<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="promoting, promotion, Website
promoting, ...">
3. PAGE DESCRIPTION.
Write a precise description of
every page in your website using as many of the keywords that you
prepared in step 2. Try to leave out as many filler words as possible,
like if, that, is, are, to leave more space for the keywords. This is
the description that the user will see when the search results are
displayed. The description will also be placed in the header section
of your HTML page. <HEADER></HEADER> and again will be in a meta-tag.
Your description should be about 200 to 250 characters in length.
<META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="Increase your Website traffic using,
meta-tags, descriptions, and effect page titles">
4. PAGE CONTENT. Your page content is also very
important to search engine placement. The content of your pages should
be keyword rich and should be about the same subject of the keywords
and phrases in your meta-tags. Don't try to fool the search engines,
it will only hurt your placement. Again try to leave out as many of
the filler words as you can saving more room for the important words
and phrases. Your page design should not include frames, to date there
are only 2 search engines that understand frames, the rest don't.
5. SUBMIT YOUR PAGE TO THE SEARCH ENGINES AND DIRECTORIES.
There are so many search engines in many different countries, among
the largest are Alta Vista, Infoseek, HotBot, Excite, Lycos, just to
name a few. There are also many services on the net that will charge
you to submit your site to all these search engines ranging from
$25.00 to $250.00 dollars. WHY PAY for something that you can do
yourself, FREE. Unless you really don't have the time, I would
recommend using this service here:
http://www.addme.com/submission.htm Fill in one form and this
script will submit your site to 30 search engines. Do this once a
month or every other month to keep the search engines up to date with
changes to your pages.
6. SUBMIT YOUR PAGE TO YAHOO. Yahoo is the most
important and a highly visited directory on the internet. This is
probably the single most important submission you can make, however it
must be done manually unless you have expensive software to do just
that. Instructions can be found at Yahoo.
http://www.yahoo.com/docs/info/include.html
7. REQUEST
LINKS ON SITES THAT PERTAIN TO YOUR INDUSTRY. Search for
sites that support your industry, such as trade organizations and
suppliers. Write the webmaster a nice letter or email asking for a
reciprocal link to your site and in return put a link on your site to
theirs.
8. INCLUDE YOUR URL ON STATIONERY, CARDS, AND LITERATURE.
Make sure that all your business card, letterheads and brochures have
your web page address and email.
9. KEEP THEM COMING BACK WITH A FREE USEFUL SERVICE.
If your a realtor, put a free amortization calculator on your website,
free reports, free email address and useful things that make them
bookmark your site and keeps them coming back. If you sell used
equipment or merchandise, add an Auction to your site. Be creative,
there are a host of free CGI scripts on the internet, get one and
install it. The largest resources I have seen are listed below. You
will have to know how to install CGI scripts but if you can't do it
ask your webmaster or Hosting Service to install it for you.
The CGI Resource
Index http://www.cgi-resources.com
Search Script
http://www.scriptsearch.com (5400 scripts)
Hot Scripts http://www.hotscripts.com/
10. START A RESELLER OR ASSOCIATE PROGRAM. Just about
every business can use a sales force. One of the secrets to being
successful on the net is to duplicate yourself and your efforts. These
sites will show you how to do it.
http://www.associateprograms.com
http://atlnetwork.com
http://associate-it.com
11. LOCAL BUSINESS DIRECTORIES. Do a search on the
search engines for your local city, town and state. Many have local
business directories that are free to place ads or links on. Write
them a short email and description about your business.
12. START AN OPT-IN MAIL LIST OR NEWSLETTER. People
love to belong and be accepted. You can start an eGroup (email group)
for your business to keep your visitors, customers, suppliers up to
date on just about any topic you desire. Learn how here.
http://www.egroups.com
13. BUY KEYWORDS FROM THE SEARCH ENGINES. Very few
people know that you can buy "keywords and phrases" from all the top
search engines. Buying keywords will insure excellent engine
placement. Make a short list of your most important keywords and
phrases. Contact the sales department at the major search engines and
ask them what it would cost for each one of your keywords and phrase.
The cost will depend on what words you are asking for and the number
of times that they are searched for on that particular engine. They
keep close track on every search that is placed with there service. If
your in the right business you might be surprise at how inexpensive
this can be, however if you are in the type of business that is very
"big business" like cosmetics or web development, your budget probably
won't allow for this type of cost.
14. KEEP A DATABASE OF VISITORS.
Keep all your
contacts that you obtain through your website for future use, you will
want to use them later for such things as announcements, specials and
sales. Always respond quickly to any inquires you get from your
website. The internet is a "instant gratification" medium, meaning
people don't like to wait. I would also suggest setting up an
Auto-Responder for your website.
15. CREATE A "SIGNATURE" IN YOUR OUT GOING E-MAILS.
Most e-mail programs such as Eudora, Microsoft and Netscape allow you
to designate a "signature" to appear at the end of each message you
send. Limit it to 6 to 8 lines: Company name, address, phone number,
URL, e-mail address, and a description of your business offerings.
16. NEWS GROUPS. There are over 40,000 news group on
the net on just about every topic you can imaging. Find some
pertaining to your industry and partake in the discussions. Do not
send Advertisements to these groups, let the Signature File At the
bottom of your email do the work for you. Use a service like DejaNews
http://www.dejanews.com or the
news client in Microsoft Outlook or Netscape with the news service
that your ISP subscribes to, and most of them do.
17. HAVE A MONTHLY CONTEST. People
love getting something for free. Usually no matter what business your
in, whether your selling products or a service you should be able to
do this one. Having a contest brings a surprising amount of people to
your site. If you sell baskets for example, give one basket away per
month, or every other month. There are many places on the net to
announce a contest.
18. TRACK
YOUR VISITORS. I also highly suggest adding a Tracker to your
website. Trackers will tell you where your visitors found your
website, keywords they used, what country they're from, day of the
week, time and a many other statistics that will allow you to tweak
and change your website and really know what advertising is working
for you. There are many Free Trackers available but the one I suggest
is http://www.extreme-dm.com/
19. ACCEPT CREDIT CARDS. If you are really serious
about making money on-line, you must accept credit cards. There a
couple of ways to do this, however. You can add a shopcart service
like AmeriCart http://www.americart.com , I have used this service for
some of my clients and they are very professional and the service
works very well. This will save you from having to buy a Site
Certificate to add security or SSL to your site, a site certificate
runs about 300.00 dollars and your hosting service usually charges and
estimated 20.00 per month for the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) The only
draw back to a service like AmeriCart is that you will need to have an
existing Merchant Account which you can set up through your local bank
Another alternative is a service like Total Merchant Solutions (TMS)
which will accept and verify credit cards over the net. This is a
little more expensive but easiest way since there is no intervention
required from you, except to fill the order. A service like this will
automatically deposit your money directly into your account.
20. BANNERS.
There are many ways to drive traffic to your site that other marketers
may recommend, such as banner exchange programs, awards programs, Free
For All Link Pages, etc. etc. etc. They in fact add very little value
to your site or business, and even distract your visitors away from
your products, when you've worked so hard to get them there. I just
hate to go to sites that are filled with other peoples banners. If
your going to do banners, do them right, buy space for your banner
on other sites that will drive the kind of traffic to your site that
you need, and keep other peoples banners off your site if you can. If
you need banners try this on-line banner maker, it's free and it's
fast. http://www.animationonline.com/
I have certainly not even touched on all the ways to generate sales
leads to your website. The business of E-Commerce is basically a
numbers game. The more links and more search engines you are listed
in, the better chance of your success. Advertising on the internet is
just like any other business, YOU HAVE TO WORK IT in order to succeed.
Success is a very relative term, success is not making a Million
dollars on the internet, unless that is the goal you set. If you
planned to make a hundred dollars and you've made a hundred and one,
you have been successful. Set your goals and achieve them!
About the Author:
Robert Boilard is a professional developer, marketing strategist
and one of the principals' at i4Market, LLC. Since 1993 Robert has
been producing successful website and marketing campaigns for
companies from the 2 person office up to the Fortune 500's. Visit us
today! http://www.i4market.com
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