Master Strategies for Creating Traffic on Your Website!
(Over the course of several articles, we will develop key concepts and strategies for increasing traffic on your website. We're not sure how many installments there will be - we keep finding new ideas which need to be developed and exploited!)
So you've got a website. Yeah, you and thirty million other people. If yours is like most, it might as well be a Yellow Pages ad - in a telephone book that's about thirty feet deep, with no index, and your ad is lost in the middle!
But there are ways of changing all that. There are dozens of tried and true traffic-generating tips and techniques, and new ones being developed all the time.
Of course, you should realize up front that no website (or business) is going to survive for long if it doesn't provide Value to the visitors. You can follow all these suggestions for creating traffic, but if there is no reason for people to be there when they get there, they will leave in a hurry.
So to begin with, make sure you have a well thought out and articulated Selling Proposition on your site, and remember to give something of value away for free to the people that visit - it's the Internet way! And you must remain interactive, constantly updated with fresh content, and on the cutting edge of what you do, or your competitors will eat you up. These are the basic concepts of creating value on your website.
But "creating value" is a whole other course - let's assume for a moment that you have a viable business going, and that all you need is for traffic to come to your site, see what you have to offer, and you will start making sales.
Traffic can be created from numerous sources on the Internet. Today, we'll focus on the most common, and, for the majority of businesses, the most important road that leads to their doorstep: Search Engines and Directories. Virtually everyone starts their search for what they need in one of these powerful tools. Getting high placement here is the single most important thing you can do for your business.
I have seen numbers that suggest there are between 600 and 2000 Search Engines and Directories (hereinafter referred to as "SED's" for ease of reference). The number is so unreliable because of the fluid nature of the Web, as well as the fluid nature of the definition of a viable SED. Many of them are very poorly trafficked, or are very specialized in the audience to which they cater. Nevertheless, building traffic is about building as many paths as you can that lead to your doorstep.
Almost everyone agrees that the top 8, or 10, or 12 SED's are responsible for the vast majority of traffic on the Internet. So concentrate your initial efforts there. After you are successful in getting your listings placed in the top 8-12, then concentrate on the smaller ones, for added effect.
But how can you get high placement in a SED? That is of course the gold-plated question. Obviously, no one searches down to the tenth page in a list of 20,000 returned hits on a query to find your company. They choose from the top 50 or so selections, and usually the top ten. Being in the first page of results in a search can mean hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars in extra sales.
There are several recognized strategies for improving your placement:
For complete details on these techniques, you should mailto:Guide4@WorldWideGuide.com for our FREE report, "Secrets To Getting Your Internet Business Top Billing In Search Engines" (it is lengthy - jammed with information - and we don't have the space to reprint it here. Also, this is a FREE version of similar reports you see for $10-$50 elsewhere on the Net, so take advantage of it!)
Different SED's have different criteria for indexing and ranking sites. To maximize your exposure, you will probably have to create several customized pages to act as doorways into your site, and link certain SED's to certain pages which cater to their idiosyncrasies. More about that subject in the article on Mirroring (to read this article, visit http://www.WorldWideGuide.com/Free-Articles/Mirrors.htm).
Once you tweak your web pages with Meta Tags, proper titles, and other techniques, you can either submit to various SED's by hand, or use one of the many submission services that exist for that purpose. Doing it by hand is a LOT of work, trust me, I've done it several times. Time is money - what is yours worth? If you are the type of person whose time is more valuable, drop us a line and we can advise you on several services available to perform the bulk of these services for you without charging you an arm and a leg.
Many authorities recommend doing it by hand to ensure it is done properly, and considering the importance of achieving good placement, this is sound advice. However, I have had good success with a slightly different strategy: I use a service to submit automatically, and then I visit the top SED's to check results and tweak them if I am not satisfied. Often only a few need additional work, instead of doing them all by hand.
Taking these steps is your first course of action in building a continuously expanding stream of new and returning clients to your website. Don't wait - the Internet is exploding right now with millions of new users, thousands of new businesses. If you are serious about creating a successful Virtual Business, then you must position yourself in the front of the pack. And SED's are definitely the front of the pack when it comes to sourcing traffic on the Net.
For more tips and information on creating traffic on your website, please watch for Part Two: Through the Looking Glass (or, Mirroring your Way to More Traffic!)