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What better way to get started with more
traffic to your web site.
Web traffïc is a critical part of your internet business and it
is imperative that your web site
is designed to bring you the most amount of traffïc possible based
on your type of business,
services and/or products that you wish to promote !
Designing your site for traffïc includes offering good
content, easy navigation and a logical flow.
Additionally you must also have a site built to draw traffïc from
the search engines because
if you can obtain high search engine ranking, you can enjoy free traffïc.
It's important to note however, that good ranking won't
do you much good without a well
designed site and a well designed site can't bring you visitors if no
one knows it's there.
Both high ranking and good design need to work together.
How do we pull all this together? Let's take a more indepth
look . . .
A word about web site design and the basic aspects -
A huge mistake I see many website owners make is that they
get caught up in making their
new web site cute, they love the little animations, buttons and dramatic
backgrounds, but
what they fail to consider is that these things are worthless if you
don't offer good content,
easy navigation and a logical flow.
First of all don't try to be everything to everyone.
Design your site around a theme, preferably a niche theme and don't
confuse your readers
and visitors with links all over the page. Design a logical flow ~ lead
your viewers to where
you would like them to go and leave plenty of white space and keep your
pages organised.
Clearly state at the top of your pages what you are about and what you
would like your
viewers to do - basically, direct them !
Secondly, I don't recommend automatic pop-ups and
the majority of internet users find them
annoying - the demand for pop-up blockers is a good indication that
viewers don't want them !
Thirdly, offer good content and provide information
on your site that will help viewers solve
a problem. Offer information that they might not get elsewhere and write
reviews regarding
your products. Write newsletters and articles and most importantly offer
something of value
for free - basically, give your viewers a reason to come back, it will
also build trust in you.
Traffïc Builders . .
Good search engine ranking can bring lots of visitors to your site,
but it often takes a few
months to rank well but it's worth the wait for qualified traffïc.
While it's not always practical
to depend solely on search engines for traffïc it can complement
your other advertising campaigns nicely - aiming for high search engine
placement is always a plus.
Keep these in mind when having your site developed for the
search engines:
Domain Names. . .
Try and choose a domain name that has your site keywords in it.
For example, if you're a site about 'window cleaning', try to include
the words "window and/or
cleaning" or words related to 'window cleaning' in your domain
name if you can.
Keywords . . .
Keywords require research and there are several tools to help you out
in this area, but
basic common sense normally helps. The following links can help you
with keywords . .
www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
I suggest focusing on only one keyword or keyword phrase
per page of your website.
This may not seem like a lot but if your site has 20 pages you can focus
on 20 keywords.
Each page should be considered a landing page/area for your site and
if you have correct
navigation on your pages, it will easily allow viewers to see everything
you have to offer.
Include your keyword or keyword phrase at the top of your
page as well as in at least one
header phrase and also work the keywords into the body of your text
as often as you can
without sounding redundant.
Your keywords should be in the 'title tag' as well as in
your page 'description tag'.
Many search engines no longer look at the keyword tags, but I recommend
using them
and including the plural forms as well.
Alt Tags . . .
Search engines don't index images, therefore any text on your site that
is presented in image
format won't get indexed, so to solve this problem we can enter the
image description in the
ALT tag. To be sure that the search engines recognise all the content
on your site, fill in your
ALT tags with your keywords and this will normally boost your keyword
frequency and help
your site achieve a better ranking.
Linking . . .
Search engines will rate your site by who is linking to your site, so
it's important to establish
quality, yet related links. This can be accomplished in a few ways and
one way is to establish
reciprocal links with other like sites. When exchanging links be sure
to include your keywords
in your site title. Review the page you are exchanging links with and
be sure it is a site that
you find easy to navigate and informative. I also recommend that the
site's index page have
a Google PR rating of at least one, this ensures that the site is not
being penalised by Google.
If it is a penalised site then you could be penalised as well simply
for linking to it.
Include a 'tell a friend' and 'bookmark' scrïpt on
your site, this gives viewers an easy way
to bookmark you and most of all return to your site.
Include a Site Map . . .
Site Maps let visitors know what information you have, and how it's
organised, where it is
located with respect to other information, and how to get to that information
with the least
amount of clicks and effort possible. Site maps also provide spider
food for search engine
robots and this too can increase your chances of becoming indexed because
a site map
allows the search engines to easily visit every page of your site. A
site map works best if
you include a link to your site map in the navigation of every page
on your site.
Finally, don't let your site become stale. I have found
that my search engine rankings improve when you are periodically adding
updates and/or new pages to the site and keeping the
content new and fresh.
About The Author . . .
Dave Small has spent over 10 years in the service and
support industry, and has moved
his expertise to the world wide web helping businesses find trusted
tools to enhance
customer services, build confidence and increase sales.
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