Ten Ways to Increase Website Traffic

Search engine optimization , or SEO, plays a very large role in increasing your site traffic. While it’s not the only thing that determines your traffic, it does take the most planning. The goal of SEO is to be listed as high as possible in keyword search results that you think are most relevant to your business. For example, you sell musical instruments on your site. Ideally, what you want is for your site to appear in the top five when someone types in “instruments” in Google, Yahoo or another search engine. Generally, web users will not click beyond the second page of search results when looking for information. Earning top placement in search engines can be done in two ways – organically or paid. We’ll discuss paid listings a little later.

Search Optimization Basics

The first step in SEO is to ask yourself how you think people are searching for what your site offers. For example, do you think they are typing in “musical instruments,” “band instruments” or “trumpets”? Next, test out these keywords by typing them into the search engine and see who appears in the top of the listings. Finally, determine which keywords or phrases you think you can win or at least be competitive with.

During the next step, you need to look at your website. When it comes to SEO, content is key . Do you have appropriate content on your website that matches the keywords or phrases you’ve chosen? Realistically, for every keyword phrase you want to win, you will need at least one page of carefully-written content. This content not only needs to include these keywords and phrases, but it has to be relevant. For an extreme example, you can’t just have a paragraph repeating the word trumpet. Think of it this way, it is the job of the search engines to give users the most relevant pages related to what search terms they use. You don’t want to be searching for musical instruments and have the search engine return with pages selling surgical instruments.

Now for the more technical side of things. When addressing the rest of your website, keep the following tips in mind.

• Use unique title tags on every page. The title tag is displayed at the top of the page (on the blue bar of your browser). Maybe your company name is Band Stuff. When the user clicks on the page for trumpets, you don’t want to see just Band Stuff in the title. Instead, change it to Quality Trumpets and Brass Instruments at Band Stuff, or something to that effect.
• Add meta keyword tags to every page. Meta tags are essentially keywords that appear “behind the scenes” of you site in the html code but can’t be seen by users. While meta tags aren’t as important as they used to be, since there is a history of misuse with these (for example, adding sex as a meta keyword tag) they are still important. For every page, choose the keywords that are most closely matched to what you are displaying on your page.
• Add meta description tags to every page. The meta description tag is what appears under your title in a directory listing – it’s a summary of your page’s content. Keep it under 200 words.
• Use text, not images, in your navigation. Research has shown that both users and search engines respond better to text-based navigation. Try to use your keywords in this navigation.
• Create a text site map. Update it regularly and make sure it links to every page on your site.
• Submit your site to directories. Try to get your site listed on all of the major directories and establish backlinks to reputable and relevant sites. In the future, backlinks may play less of a role in SEO considering this practice has been abused frequently, as well.

Entire books are published on the subject of search engine optimization; however, to truly increase traffic, you cannot stop there. Many other factors and techniques come into play. Here are ten popular tips to help increase your traffic. Most of them are fairly easy to achieve.

Ten Ways To Increase Web Traffic

No. 1 -- Banner Ads

Either buy them or exchange them. Buying banner ad space is just like buying space in a newspaper. When looking at pages on which to buy space you’ll want to consider not only the amount of traffic by the quality of traffic and relevance to what you offer. You can agree to exchange banners with another site – you just have to be comfortable on what you’re placing on your own site so you don’t lose customers. Banner ads are a great way to establish branding.

No. 2 -- Pay-Per-Click Advertising

This is the non-organic version of SEO. PPC campaigns can be very effective, but they must be monitored carefully to make sure they’re really paying off. A pay-per-click ad appears in the “sponsored links” section of the search engine results page when a user types in a keyword relevant to your services. The process involves bidding on these specific keywords or phrases that you think your ideal consumer will type into a search engine. When you “win” a bid, your site will appear higher in the paid search result listings. PPC campaigns can also assist in the branding of your product.

No. 3 -- Set Up an Affiliate Program

This is similar to a banner exchange or buying banner ad space, except the host site has a stake in how many people click through to your site and purchase. This also helps you build up your backlinks.

No. 4 -- Write Press Releases

Send your press releases to distributions services that will post them on their pages for pick-up by various news agencies. Or send them yourself to your press list. Most newspapers and magazines have websites and an article about your company is likely to end up somewhere on that site.

No. 5 -- Market Off-Line

These days, it’s strange to see a television ad or billboard that doesn’t have URL displayed on it. Make sure your URL is displayed prominently on every ad or marketing piece you send out.

No. 6 -- Forward-to-a-Friend

Include a forward feature in every email or newsletter you send out. This leads to viral marketing and brand awareness.

No. 7 -- Create an RSS Feed

An RSS or Really Simple Syndication Feed is a way for you to broadcast what’s new with your site, product or company. All you need to get started is content that you want to share and an RSS text file.

No. 8 -- Create a Blog

A web log, or blog , will not only add relevant content to your site (which the search engines love) but it will encourage your visitors to keep coming back for updates.

No. 9 -- Run a Contest

Just like people will drop their business cards into fish bowls (even though they know they’ll get more junk mail) to win a cool prize, the same goes for website visitors.

No. 10 -- Post to New Groups

Get involved with the forums related to your industry and don’t just post promotions and ads. Rather, deliver relevant news and make sure you put your URL in your signature.