Entries Tagged 'Website Traffic Building' ↓

Strategies For Submitting Your Website To Web Directories

Copyright 2005 Brad M Callen

Webmasters like you and me are always on the lookout to enhance the link popularity of their sites. One method of doing so is to seek out authority sites in your niche – sites that are widely known on the Internet (through the sheer number of back links) and have been around for some time (think more in terms of several years). Unfortunately, such websites are often at a Page Rank of 6+ and as such, link exchange or text link ad placement is very, very expensive .

Luckily, there is a cheaper alternative. You can use web directories to not only enhance your search engine visibility (through increased link popularity), but by targeting niche categories and using sponsored listings where necessary, you can get a big jump in your traffic as well.

So, let’s get started.

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Copyright 2005 Michael Murray

If you run any type of Internet business, Adware and Spyware can be a very serious issue. These programs hide themselves on your computer and do all sorts of annoying and potentially dangerous things.

Viruses spread on your PC. The good news is that Spyware applications usually stay put, much like a parasite. Spyware collects information about your messaging and browsing behavior and your online preferences with the intent to sell it to online advertisers.

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Getting The Most From Traffic Exchanges

Author: Brian Pratt

If you are a new to web site promotion or an experienced campaigner, you should include Traffic Exchanges as part of your marketing plan.

When you join a Traffic Exchange you agree to surf other peoples pages and in return, they will surf yours.

Traffic exchanges have been around for a while now, with the largest ones numbering subscribers in the tens of thousands. So submitting your webpage to a Traffic Exchange will potentially give it exposure to a large number of people.

There are basically two types of exchanges, manual surf and auto surf. With the manual surf exchange you click through websites. The Autosurf site presents pages to you automatically without the need to click.

Some of the advantages of Traffic Exchanges are as follows:

1. A cheap and often free method of sending traffic to your website. This can help with your page rank

2. The traffic you generate arrives almost instantly

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GoogSpy: Business Counter Intelligence for Everyone

Copyright 2005 Sandra Stammberger

So, you want to know what your competitors are up to these days, or maybe you want to research a keyword campaign that will rank you at the top of the heap for whatever product or service you’re selling? Meet GoogSpy, a special search engine that not only shows you what Google AdWords your competitors are buying, but it will display all of the search terms that rank them in the top 10, PLUS it even displays their top 25 competitors.

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Online Advertising Traffic and the First Law of Web Surfing

Author: Joel Walsh

Hint: don’t send send your online advertising traffic to your homepage.

How do you convert online advertising traffic into customers? The key is a phenomenon of human behavior that only comes into play on the web.

You won’t read about this phenomenon in books or articles on general principles of advertising or direct marketing. In fact, traditional advertising professionals and direct marketers often create only so-so online advertising campaigns simply because they’ve never heard of this phenomenon, even though it’s essentially the first law of human web surfing behavior.

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Ten Ways to Tackle Keyword Research and Selection

Author: By Michael Murray, VP of Fathom SEO

You need to be extremely careful with keyword research so that you don’t miss excellent opportunities or aim so broadly that you target phrases that will never rank well. Here are 10 strategies to guide you along the way:

1. Know your potential customers. We can’t tell you how many businesses we’ve met who simply pick keywords out of thin air. They don’t talk to customers or hot prospects in order to determine what might be a useful set of keywords.

2. Start with core words. A core set of keywords - even if too broad - can stimulate creative thinking.

3. Look at the industry. Examine industry trade group web sites and related newsletters to find potential keywords.

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21 Questions to Ask Any List Service Before You Sign on With Them

Author: Alexandria K. Brown

If you publish an e-mail newsletter, or “e-zine,” you’ll need to sign on with a list service (or “listserve”) to manage your subscriber list. There are many types of listserves out there, so here are some guidelines to help you choose one that’s right for you.

1. Do they use MULTI-PART MIME technology?

You’ll need this if you want to publish an HTML newsletter. Otherwise you’ll have to send out multiple versions for users who can read HTML, users who can’t read HTML, and users on AOL.

2. Do they offer some type of ORIENTATION OR TUTORIAL?

If you’re new to the game and/or technologically challenged then you’ll appreciate any type of help they offer for new clients.

3. What’s their CUSTOMER SERVICE like?

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Author: Robin Eldred

One of the most difficult challenges that website owners and designers face today is how to get a brand new website noticed. In other words, how to get your site indexed by the major search engines so that it can start appearing within search results.

The best approach to this problem is on a case by case scenario of course, but there are some fundamental activities that you can undertake that will expedite the process and give you that kick start that your site needs.

(There are a variety of tools that can help you get these tasks done. The most popular include WebPosition Gold, WebCEO and IBP)

On-page Factors

Before any search engines arrive at your front door you want to ensure that your content is going to be indexed favourably. This has to do with what are called “on-page” factors. This includes your visible content, META tags, page names, directory names, ALT tags, TITLE tags, HTML structure, etc. Using one of the aforementioned tools can help to ensure that your pages are optimized for particular keyphrases relevant to your business.

Of course, before you optimize your pages you’ll need to know what keyphrases to optimize them for. One of the best tools for researching the search engine landscape is WordTracker. It’s an affordable service that you can make use of on an as-needed basis. There are a couple of nice free tools, however, including Overture’s Keyword Selection Tool and Google’s AdWords Selection Tool.

Once you’ve identified your most potentially lucrative keyphrases you can then proceed to work on your “on-page” factors and optimize your web pages.

Off-page Factors

Off-page factors are things outside of your website and web pages. Essentially, they are how other websites link to your site. This is where life gets a bit tricky. It’s no wonder that Google, the world’s number one search engine, is placing more and more emphasis on “off-page” factors; they’re much more difficult to control.

Submission Still Works

Contrary to what you may have heard (or perhaps right in line with what you’ve heard) website submissions still work. This is not to say that all website submission tools are created equal, however. Some tools (like SubmitWolf) will submit to thousands of search engines and directories – this is not very useful. You need to focus on the handful of search engines and directories that mean something.

Using a tool like WebPosition Gold, WebCEO or IBP can help automate this process. Keep in mind that the true goal of website submission is to get your site indexed by the major search engines (i.e. Google, Yahoo, MSN). Once your site and most of its web pages have been indexed there is no point in further website submissions. This is an early task only and shouldn’t be necessary for a site older than about 6 months.

Inbound Links

Getting quality, relevant links to your website from other websites is essential to your site’s success. Each of these “inbound links” is considered a “vote” for your website. But, unlike the democracies of our modern era, all votes are not created equal. Differentiating factors include:

• Link type. Is it an image link (e.g. a banner ad), a Flash link, or a text-based link? If it’s a text-based link, what words are contained within the link? Are they your keywords? E.g. A link title of “Web design company” is more useful to your web design business than a link title of "click here".
• Relevance of the linking site. If your business is web design and the site that’s linking to yours is all about pet grooming then the relevance just isn’t there. Mind you, if the site linking to yours had to do with software development or internet marketing, that would be much better.
• Importance of the linking site. As you are well aware, not all websites are created equal. Some are more important than others. In other words, some receive more traffic and better search engine rankings than others. A link from yahoo.com is going to be much better than a link from pet-grooming-tips-sweden.com; a site nobody has ever heard of.
• Direction of links. Do you link back to the website that links to you? If so, that is called a “reciprocal” link and is not as valuable as a “one-way” link. Links that you pay for are often more valuable than links you exchange for free – but every little bit counts! So don’t discard reciprocal links altogether.

Online Advertising

Advertising your website online is usually a great way to gain some immediate traffic while you wait for your website to be indexed by the search engines. Properly done, this advertising can put links to your website directly in front of those web surfers most likely to buy your products or services.

Some of the more popular services include pay-per-click advertising (e.g. Google or Yahoo) as well as running ads on relevant/high traffic sites.

Online advertising will give you that initial boost of traffic to your site and help increase the chances that someone will link to you and/or the search engines will find and index your site quicker.

The Final Word – Patience

Now that you have effectively implemented your on-page and off-page strategies you’ll need to sit back and relax. Getting your website indexed (and indexed favourably) takes time. Be patient. Google is notorious for putting new websites in what is known as their “sandbox”. This sandbox effectively holds a new website down for a period of time. This is done to prevent businesses from creating scores of new websites to quickly promote their primary site. Of course, a very popular website with lots of initial traffic can minimize its time in the sandbox.

I advise you to wait between 6 to 12 weeks to see results. If you’re still not seeing any results after 3 months then I encourage you to contact an internet marketing company (such as Apis Design) for professional help. There are a host of factors that contribute to how well (or poorly) a website ranks so don’t throw in the towel until you consult a professional.

Good luck!

About the author: Robin Eldred is the president of Apis Design, a Web Design and Promotion company located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Apis specializes in building and promoting eye-catching, user-focused websites that work.

Author: Trevor Lewis

Market my website? Why should I have to spend time and money marketing my website? It’s supposed to be marketing my business!!!

That’s how so many business owners feel, they spend a bit of money on their website design and then sit, doing nothing, waiting in vain for it to start paying dividends and bringing in the customers.

It’s very simple really, nobody is going to come to your new site if they don’t know about it - if they don’t see mention of it, a link to it or aren’t recommended it.

So how can you get your website noticed? Here’s a list of the common methods you can use:

• Traditional Ads & Marketing
• Search Engines
• Online Directories
• Links Development Campaign
• Participation in Online Discussion Forums
• Article Submission
• Pay Per Click
• Banner Ads

Traditional Marketing Magazine & newspaper ads, Yellow Pages, PR articles, leaflets & door drops, business cards, email signatures, company stationary, company vehicles, the front of your store. These and many more are places you can and should advertise your website’s URL.

Search Engines Getting to the top of a keyword search on the major search engines - Google, Yahoo etc. - is high on the wish list of most website owners. Unfortunately it’s not something that will happen straightaway. It can take many months of adding content, getting links from other sites and optimising your content for keywords to get a high listing.

Online Directories Directories are collections of website addresses that are collated by human beings. Most will charge a fee for inclusion, DMOZ/ODP is the one everyone wants to get listed in - it’s free and will have a great effect on your search engine ranking, but expect to wait months if not years for a listing.

Links Development This is one of the most powerful ways of promoting your site. It means getting other (hopefully related) sites to include links to yours. To get a link simply email the site owners and ask for one. Often you’ll have to reciprocate the kindness i.e. link to their site as well but some will be happy to list your URL for nothing.

If you’re a member of local business groups then don’t forget to include your web address on their sites. What about all your suppliers, can you get a listing on theirs?

Not only will you get people visiting your site via all these links, you’ll also improve your position on search engine listings (search engines algorithms take the number of links to your site to be an indication of its importance).

Discussion Forums Another way you can attract attention is by participating in online discussion forums (to do with your area of expertise of course!). Most will allow you to include a website link in your signature, i.e. a link to your site in every post you make.

Article Submission This is a brilliant way of getting noticed. If you don’t have any problems writing essays then get your pen out! There are many sites that allow you to submit your articles for free and they should all allow you to include a resource section on yourself or company with a link back to your site.

Pay Per Click Pay Per Click (PPC) is a very good way of driving traffic to a site in the short term. Google’s Adwords is one of the best known PPC systems around, Overture provide another.

When somebody searches for keywords in Google you get a list of ’sponsored links’ on the right hand column (go to Google and search for ‘catering work’ and see the sponsored links on the right). The owners of the sites don’t pay anything unless the person browsing clicks through to their site.

Banner Ads It might be worth putting up a Banner Ads on sites you know your prospective clients are likely to visit. The ads, which will be made to click through to your website, come in GIF format or, increasingly, are created in Flash for a more striking and memorable ad.

Pricing is often Cost Per Click (CPC) but most common is Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM). CPM is related to how many people see your ad.

As you can see, there are many ways of building up traffic to your site. If you’ve got products, services or content that people want and you’re willing to put some effort into some of these methods then you will soon start to see a rise in visitors.

About the author: Trevor Lewis has over 10 years in the Software Industry. He is currently a Senior Consultant at EMNM. EMNM offer a range of new media design services including interactive CD presentations and website design.

by Richard Wassell www.websitemaintenance.com.au

Your website can’t be the valuable marketing tool you want it to be if nobody knows it exists. It can have all the ‘bells and whistles’ and look fantastic, but if nobody can find it is really just a waste of your money.

If you’re new to the Internet, and/or new to Internet marketing, these seven ways to teach customers your web address are not to be overlooked.

One. Include your URL at the end of all emails

Two. Mention your website address on all voice mail greetings

Three. Familiarize customers with your website address in ALL conversations

Four. Include your URL on all printed material (i.e. invoices, envelopes, etc.) and on your vehicles

Five. Mention it in any TV and/or print ads.

Six Establish a program that allows current customers to refer friends to your site

Seven. Include your site address on business cards

So there you are: seven simple ways that you can promote your website.

Take advantage of some or all of them, your sales and profits will grow like crazy.

About the author: Richard Wassell is a the website maintenance specialist. If your website isn’t getting results, his Regular Website Maintenance program will keep your site constantly updated and exciting. Your visitors will love it, return often, and BUY MORE from you. Learn more: http://www.WebsiteMaintenance.com.au