7 Ways to Increase your Website Traffic
Internet. Business. Profit. To fully integrate all of these words into a successful merging you will need another word. Traffic. Every article you will find about making your site or company successful will always include the importance of generating traffic.
So, we all know that in the core of it all, qualified traffic is the most essential item to a successful internet based business company. Aside from ensuring that you have a great product to sell, and you have your company’s internal organization well taken core of, it would be time to get to the nitty gritty of things, generating traffic.
If you already have a site and you think that you’re not getting the traffic that you’re supposed to be getting, then its time to start reading and learning. If you are going to be competitive only, you should always be a step ahead of your competition, increasing your traffic flow should have started yesterday.
To help you out in generating more traffic for your site, here are some seven surefire ways to increase your traffic.
1) Invest in good advertising with search engines
Google’s Adwords provide great advertising schemes that are very popular and assures great traffic. Although with this surefire way to increase your traffic it will cost some money. While some would shy away from spending money to increase traffic, it is imperative in this case to do so because Adwords are the top surefire way to increase your traffic.
Also be sure to optimize your site for the organic search results. This way you will be sure to appear in both the paid and organic sections. The organic results will last longer and more people tend to click on these results.
2) Exchange or Trade Links with other sites
With exchanging links with other sites, both of you will benefit from the efforts both of you do to enhance your web sites traffic. When one site features another sites link, they could provide one another with the traffic one site generates. The efforts are doubly beneficial because it would seem like both of you are working to generate more traffic. The more links traded with more sites the more traffic could be expected.
3) Use Viral Marketing
Viral marketing allows you to spread the word about your company and product without any, or very low costs. This is a marketing method that can be quite sneaky; you can attach your company’s name, product or link to a certain media such as a funny video, entertaining game, an interesting article or a gossip or buzz. With this method, people get infected with the creativity and entertainment of the medium that they will pass it on to many people.
4) Search and use proper keywords or keyword phrases for your sites content
Search engines look for certain keywords that they would show in their results page. In doing so, having the right keyword and keyword phrase is a high requirement in ranking in high in search engine results. You could write your own content or you could hire someone to do it for you.
5) Write Articles that can lead traffic to your site
Submit articles to sites that would contain the same subject that your site deals in. If you sell car parts write press releases and articles about cars and car parts. Attach your sites description and services at the end of the article as well as the link.
6) Join forums and form online communities
Capture a market and show your expertise and credibility. When you have a good foundation for your site, people will trust you and your site and will pass on to many people their trust. Traffic will certainly increase because they know that you can provide what they need.
7) Lastly, Offer newsletters.
If many people know what you are about and your existence is shared with many others, you will find a loyal traffic that can provide you with more traffic by recommendation. If you arouse the curiosity of your customers they usually will help bring in traffic to your site through forwarding of the newsletter to other people or direct linking to the website from the newsletter.
About the Author
Chip Curle is the owner of Charles Curle Design, a North Georgia web designer that develops and manages web sites and drives companies to the top of internet search engines through search engine optimization. His work has earned Chip 14 ADDY (American Advertising Federation) awards including 8 Gold, 4 Silver, and 2 Best of Show.
Why Search Engine Optimization is a Great Investment For Any Company
How much money do you pay to have a sales person sell your services or products? How many hours does that sales person work each day/week/month? Did you know that your website is a sales person that works for you 24/7? Having an optimized website is the single most powerful marketing tool that every company should be aware of and implement into their business.
Here are 5 reasons why SEO should be implemented into your marketing strategy before your competition beats you out.
Absence of risk
Search engine optimization is free of any risk. In many cases, paid advertising (banner ads, pay-per-click) is subject to click fraud risk. There are people that that use software to click on their competitors ads, which cost you money each time it is clicked. Google AdWords has protection against this, but it isn’t 100%. Nothing can stop a competitor from clicking your link a few times, costing you money.
Reliability
Banner ads and pay-per-click campaigns work great until the marketing budget for these campaigns depletes for the month. When this happens, your website is no longer listed and customers can’t find you anymore. SEO obtains an organic listing and your company’s website will always be found by your customers. Consumers are more likely to purchase from a site ranked high in the search engine results rather than from a pay-per-click ad.
Brand Awareness
A website that is ranked high means that more people will see the name of your company and become familiar with it and it’s products or services, even if they haven’t made a purchase. Consumers recognize businesses ranked in the top 3 in search engine results compared to those appearing in banner ads. With so many people using pop-up blockers and banner blockers, many people don’t even see the banner ads that are being displayed.
Targeted Traffic
SEO brings those paying customers to you. When a consumer is looking for a specific product or service and you rank high, they will enter the key words/phrases that they are looking for. When they find your site, they are a target lead and more likely to purchase from you. How much money do you spend on sales people getting you targeted leads and sales?
Affordability
In comparison to banner ads and pay-per-click advertising, SEO is a much more affordable service. With banner ads and pay-per-click, you set a budget and when that budget is met, the ads are gone. This could happen a week into your campaign. This means you would go three weeks before your ads appear again. With SEO, your website will stay listed on the search engines and won’t drop off.
As you should be able to see, search engine optimization is vital to your business. If you have a website and people can’t find it when entering keywords of the products or services that you sell, then why did you pay all of that money to have the website built? Remember, your website is a sales person that works day and night and has a global territory. Can you afford to pay your sales person to work day and night?
What is Search Engine Optimization and Why Do I Need It?
What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and do I need it?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of analyzing and enhancing your website to help potential customers find it on Google, Yahoo! and other search engines. In today’s competitive environment, proper SEO is critical to the success of any business website. It can help you gain visibility, get your site found, and increase traffic to your website.
What is a search engine?
A search engine is a website that people use to search the Internet for products, services and information. The three primary search engines are Google, Yahoo!, and Bing which account for nearly 90% of all Internet search traffic. Other search engines include Ask.com, Lycos, AOL and AltaVista.
What is search engine optimization?
Search Engine Optimization is the process of analyzing and enhancing your website so that it’s easier for potential customers to find your site from a search engine.
Do I need SEO?
YES, and here’s why:
You may have a great website, but if nobody sees it, your business is not going to be successful.
SEO can help you tap into the vast market of potential customers who are out there right now searching on Google and other search engines.
Proper SEO can help you gain a competitive advantage by helping your site get seen before your competitors’.
What’s involved in optimizing my site for search engines?
Although it may sound complicated, optimizing your site is a fairly straightforward process. Anyone can do it – it doesn’t take any special technical skill or knowledge – it just takes a little time and some dedication to improving your business. Keep in mind, though, that even the most serious SEO efforts can take several weeks to take effect. If you are committed and willing to manage your website’s SEO on an on-going basis, you will likely see your results increase steadily over time. As a general rule, the more dedicated and persistent you are with site optimization, the better your results will be.
What are keywords?
Keywords are terms that people use to search the web. For instance, if someone wanted search on Google for a doctor in the Atlanta area, they might enter “Atlanta Doctor” in the search field – these would be the keywords for that particular search. A critical part of the SEO process is deciding which keywords are the most valuable for your business. Obviously a doctor in Atlanta would want to optimize their site for “Atlanta Doctor”. If the same doctor also specialized in pediatrics, they would want to optimize their site to perform well for the keywords “pediatric specialist”, and so on. The keywords you choose and how well your site is optimized for those keywords can make all difference in getting qualified traffic to your site.
What are search engine rankings?
Your site’s “ranking” is where your site appears in a list of search results returned by a search engine. The higher your ranking (position #1 is the highest ranking) the more visibility you’ll get and the more traffic you are likely to bring to your site.
What are meta-tags?
Meta-tags are part of your website’s HTML code that search engines use to help rank your site. The three primary meta-tags are the title tag, header tag and keyword tag. An important part of SEO is to optimize these tags so that search engines can more easily evaluate your site and rank you higher in search results.
What are site links and why are they important?
When search engines evaluate your site for rankings, an important factor is how you use links on your site, as well as how many other websites link to your site.
What’s a search engine spider?
A spider is an automatic indexing tool – or robot – used by search engines. Spiders continually “crawl” the web evaluating websites for content, html tags, etc. With proper SEO in place, your site can be more easily and completely indexed by spiders, which can help improve rankings.
What is search engine submission?
Submitting your site to a search engine is a way to help your site get indexed and ranked – so that your listing will appear in that engine’s search results.
How to Integrate Social Media Into Your Website
Integrating social media into you website or blog is very easy. Just follow the steps below to get started. Why would you want to integrate social media onto your website? Easy, you will get more targeted visitors to your website.
Bob Buch, from Digg, says “Each story that makes it onto the frontpage of Digg gets a minimum of 20,000 clicks back to the publisher. The best stories will get 200,000 – 250,000 clicks. Digg sends 80 million clicks per month to 3rd party websites.” That is pretty powerful if you ask me.
Facebook is another powerful tool to use. Most websites see an increase of 30-80% increase in registration, and an additional 15-80% in comments and user generated content as a result of a clean Facebook Connect integration. You can even import user photos and other demographic data back into your site – such as location, gender, and other information that might otherwise drag down your sign-ups if integrated into your own registration process.
One of the biggest successes of Facebook connect is being able to virally spread your message, by appearing on the “News” wall for users who use post on your site, vote, upload, or otherwise interact with your site.
With each Facebook user having an average of 120 Facebook friends, this is a very quick way to expose your brand to a lot of people, really quickly, while providing “social proof”.
Here are the steps to integrating social media into your website.
Step 1
Go to the website addthis.com. There you will need to create an account with a valid email address, username, and password. Once you do this, you will be directed to a page where you get the code to create your button for your blog or website.
Step 2
Choose the style of button you want and select one of the two options: Sharing/Bookmarking or Feed. This article is about social bookmarks, so pick the first option. Then select the type of site you have, whether a regular website, or a blog.
Step 3
For a website, Add This generates html that you can insert yourself. If you have a blog hosted on Blogger or Typepad, you can get the codes to either put the button in the sidebar or below your posts. Follow the instructions on where to copy and paste the code. Add This currently supports wordpress.org blogs, but not wordpress.com blogs.
Step 4
Now on your website or blog you should see the Add This button. When you click on it, you get a huge list of social bookmarking sites that your readers can submit an article to. Your readers will need to have an account at one of these sites in order to add it, but you yourself do not need to have accounts at any of these sites.
Step 5
If you want to try the button out, sign up for an account, if you already don’t have one, with Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Facebook, or Yahoo Buzz and bookmark your article.
About the Author
Chip Curle is the owner of Charles Curle Design, a Cumming, GA web designer that develops and manages web sites and drives companies to the top of internet search engines through search engine optimization and search engine marketing. His work has earned Chip 14 ADDY (American Advertising Federation) awards including 8 Gold, 4 Silver, and 2 Best of Show.
Google Alerts
You have a great business with a great reputation. Wouldn’t you like to know when something about you or your company has been found on the internet? This is where Google Alerts come in. There are millions of web pages being added to the Google database daily. With all of the new web pages, blog posts, etc, there is new information coming in every second of the day. When you subscribe to Google Alerts for a keyword or keyword phrase Google will send you an email informing you when the Google bot has found something based on your keyword or keyword phrase.
What can you use Google Alerts for? You can keep track of your company and seeing what people are saying about you or y our product. If someone puts your link on their website, you will be notified. You can keep track of your competition by tracking their keywords. If they put out new content, you will be notified. This allows you to keep up with your competition and allows you to plan accordingly.
Here are 4 quick ways to use Google Alerts.
Note that you’ll need to have a Google login to use the service.
For each Alert, you’ll need to decide the following:
- The syntax / content of the search This is simply the Google search query that you’d insert in the search box (i.e., “my topic” or “my name” or simply: words without quotes) To get more accurate results, you will want to utilize some of the Advanced Search options (+, -, “”, or, not) or Search Operators (link:, site:) to narrow down the search. For example, if you wanted a search on digital camera but wanted to make sure it returned results only when they were talking about a nikon you might insert: digital camera +nikon.
- How often the alert should be sent (as-it-happens, once a day, once a week). Google will send notifications only when it actually finds new material in the top 20 (web) / 10 (news) results, so you won’t be getting messages unless there’s something to report. For a topic that you want to keep an eye on but it’s not urgent, you might select “once a week” or if you wanted to be notified quickly, “as it happens”.
- How you’d like to receive the alerts (email or via RSS feed) For each alert you create, a separate email will be sent depending on how often you’ve chosen to receive it. You can also subscribe to the alert via RSS feed in Google Reader instead of email.
- Type of information to search This tells Google which information to include in its search (News, Blogs, Web, Comprehensive, Video, Groups) You can decide to search only blogs, or just news, or videos, depending on your needs.
Here are some suggestions for some Google Alerts to set up if you’re just getting started:
- Do a “vanity search” for your name, nickname and/or your blog’s name to find out when your name or your blog is mentioned by someone else. This can be helpful especially if someone mentions your blog or name but doesn’t link to you (like example below).
- Syntax: “first last” or first last or nickname
- Create a Google Alert for each of the following: your name (first and last), your blog’s name (not URL), your “handle” or nickname if it’s unique, and your Twitter username. If you have a common name, make sure you put your entire name in quotes.
- Track incoming links to your site Insert your blogís URL to track any links from other sites to your site.
- Syntax: link:www.yourdomain.com
- For all links to your site, insert your URL at the highest level where you have content. If you want to track incoming links to a particular post, you can enter in the exact post’s URL. Note: since Google recently started indexing blogrolls people have displayed on their sites, sometimes you’ll get alerts when someone who lists you in their blogroll posts a new blog post. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re linked in the post’s content, and I suspect that Google will try to repair this soon.
- Keep your eye on your favorite topics Possibly my favorite type of alert as it’s like a personal news service that is not restricted in any way. You can let your imagination run wild with it. I find it a great way to do research on a topic as well as see articles/posts that are talking about a subject that interests me.
- Syntax: keywords that interest you or “specific keywords” or word notthisword or spelling OR another-spelling OR another
- I find these alerts are best refined over time as you can use the Advanced Search options (+, -, “”, or, not)or Search Operators (link:, site:) to narrow and refine the search to get exactly what you want.
- Get notified of spam links inserted in your site – This last alert is a little different from the rest, because it uses the site: operator to look for links inside your own site.
Syntax: site:www.yourdomain.com viagra OR cialis OR otherspamword
About the Author
Chip Curle is the owner of Charles Curle Design, a Cumming, GA web designer that develops and manages web sites and drives companies to the top of internet search engines through search engine optimization and search engine marketing. His work has earned Chip 14 ADDY (American Advertising Federation) awards including 8 Gold, 4 Silver, and 2 Best of Show.
The ultimate Twitter resource page
I have compiled one of the longest twitter resource page that you will ever see. Whatever you wanted to know about Twitter can be found here.
Click here for the ultimate Twitter resource guide
5 Benefits of Google Analytics For Your Website
Google Analytics is a free tool that can be used to track information about the way visitors to your website interact and navigate through it. You can use Google Analytics to track the performance of your keywords, adwords campaigns and get a visual output of your ROI when selling products. Google Analytics will open up a world of information that you probably didn’t know about the visitors to your website.
Here are 5 benefits of using Google Analytics on your website:
1. It is free. Even though it is free, it offers the same, and even more functionality than some of the tracking tools that you must pay for.
2. Discover how visitors to your website found you. You will be able to see what keywords visitors are using to find your website, what search engines they used and the number of times those search terms were used. You will also see what other websites referred visitors to you. This is important if you are doing link trading.
3. Identify which pages and links your visitors click the most. You will be able to see which pages and links are the most popular and you can measure whether your search engine optimization campaign is sending traffic to the correct pages.
4. Visitor segmentation. You have the ability to know how many new visitors that your keywords brings you from the search engines. You can segment your results by new/returning visitors, geography and referral sources.
5. Fine tune your website. With the Google Analytic report, you will be able to fine tune your website as you will see what pages are working and which ones are not. By editing the copy on the pages that aren’t performing well, you will be able to help those pages convert better bringing in more quality potential customers.
About the Author
Chip Curle is the owner of Charles Curle Design, a North Georgia web designer that develops and manages web sites and drives companies to the top of internet search engines through search engine optimization and search engine marketing. His work has earned Chip 14 ADDY (American Advertising Federation) awards including 8 Gold, 4 Silver, and 2 Best of Show.
Get listed in Google Local Listings in 3 easy steps
If you have ever done a search in Google you may have noticed that there is a map and listing for local providers that shows up before the google results. Is your company listed here? If not, follow the 3 easy steps below to get listed.
Step 1: Enter in your Business Details
Visit the Google Local Business Center and log in. If you haven’t registered with Google before, go ahead and do so, and once you complete the registration, log in.
Once you are in, you will be prompted to enter in your Business Name, Address, Phone Number, Email address, website url, a description of your company and up to 5 categories that your business falls under.
Step 2: Verify Your Listing
Once you have entered in all of your information, you will need to verify that this is your company. You can do this 2 ways.
1) Phone Verification. You enter in your phone number, Google calls you immediately with a PIN number
2) Mail Verification: Google sends you a postcard with your PIN number.
I would recommend the phone call as calls you immediately. The mail verification can take up to 6 weeks to arrive.
Step 3: Confirm Verification Code
Once you receive your verification code, you will click the button that says verify pin. Enter the number that was given to you and your site will be listed in a few days.
Getting listed is very easy and very beneficial. Once you get listed, then you need to optimize your website so that you can get listed at the top of the local directory page.
About the Author
Chip Curle is the owner of Charles Curle Design, a North Georgia web designer that develops and manages web sites and drives companies to the top of internet search engines through search engine optimization and search engine marketing. His work has earned Chip 14 ADDY (American Advertising Federation) awards including 8 Gold, 4 Silver, and 2 Best of Show.
Why Optimize a Website?
When you build a website for your company, you are wanting to increase the traffic to the website and turn the visitors into potential customers. Everything you do while working on the website has a direct relation with the number of visitors your website will attract. Just putting in information is not the only thing that will attract the visitors, you will need to go a step further. If you optimize your website for the search engines, you will bring in more qualified traffic to your website.
There is a common myth about the website optimization process in the minds of people. It says that this process is beneficial only for those websites that are not popular with the people and have less in-flowing traffic. But the statement is incorrect because the process of optimization works to transform your website and make you earn greater revenue. This is the best way to publicize your website to more number of people and making it more search engine friendly. When you optimize your website, it will rank higher on the search engines and the visitors will be able to find it easily.
Website optimization is using the proper keywords, and relative content. It’s also about making your title tag contain keywords and the proper usage of the meta tags. When you do this properly, you will get more visitors, they will get better information from your website and will recommend it to others.
When you have an optimized website, you have more chances of turning the visitors into prospective customers. With the number of visitors, the authority of your website would also rise. It would eventually become a better paying source for you. This is why more people are opting for website optimization. It is good to understand the benefits of the process and make the best use of it.
About the Author
Chip Curle is the owner of Charles Curle Design, a North Georgia web design company that develops and manages web sites and drives companies to the top of internet search engines through search engine optimization and search engine marketing. His work has earned Chip 14 ADDY (American Advertising Federation) awards including 8 Gold, 4 Silver, and 2 Best of Show.
The importance of a website
In today’s business world, it is imperative that your business have a website. Nearly every household has internet access, with many having more than one computer. The internet allows people to view companies around the world, not just your hometown. If you have a product or service to sell, you are able to sell it to anyone, anywhere.
Your website is open 24/7 and can be more effective than any other form of advertising. If done correctly, you will have a better return on investment. Your website needs to be professionally designed and be able to transmit your company’s message in a few seconds. It needs to have enough content that can let the user know what you do and what you sell.
Having a website is not to be ‘hip’ any longer. Not having a website is very damaging. Compare it to going to a Business 400 networking event without business cards. In today’s world, people study businesses more and research more on the product/service that they are wanting to buy. If you don’t have a website, you probably just lost a sale.
A website is able to be updated at any time. If you made an error posting a price, you can fix that in a few seconds. How long, and expensive, would it be to have to replace 1,000 brochures that contain the same error? Websites allow you to put endless amounts of information on it. With print and television advertising, you are very limited as to what information you can put out. With the web, you can have as much information about your products and services as you desire.
Now that you have a website, how do you get people to get to it? The best way is through search engine optimization. Being able to get listed high in the search engines will allow more people to find your business. You don’t want to have a great website hidden on page 12 of a google search for your product. You want to be on page 1. Most people quit searching after page 2 of the results. Can you afford to not have a high listing? Other forms of promoting your website online are paid advertising through search engines, links from other sites, and banner advertising.
When deciding to build your website, you need to fully understand that it’s another tool to use to bring in business. If done correctly, it will bring in a lot of business. Your website is your identity, so make sure you have one.
About the Author
Chip Curle is the owner of Charles Curle Design, an Atlanta web design company that develops and manages web sites and drives companies to the top of internet search engines through search engine optimization. His work has earned Chip 14 ADDY (American Advertising Federation) awards including 8 Gold, 4 Silver, and 2 Best of Show.
