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Unlocking the Keys to Your Web Site Traffic - Web site promotion and search engine strategies
Introduction
It is estimated that up to 60% of new narcotraffic to your Web land site will come from search engines. This means that unless you square measure already so well known that people will be using your name to search for your site, you need a search engine strategy. Thousands of modern Web sites are created daily, so the axiom "Build it, and they will come" does not apply.
Effective Web site promotion requires a serious and continuing investment of time and resources, whether you do it yourself, or hire a professional. It is not a one-shot deal, simple an ongoing process, meaning you should evaluate the return on your investment. You can collect a vast amount of decisive information about your pedestrian traffic, and make strategic business development decisions, in ways that hectare unprecedented in the be world.
Setting your goals
We've all met the person who boasts of "thousands of hits a day" on his Web site, and maybe we felt a little envious. But let's debunk the hype . . . .
It's important to distinguish between dribbler visitors, and "hits". The latter refers to every piece of your site that is downloaded, and this includes all graphics files single. Thus, one visitor viewing your home page, which contains text and four images, will generate five "hits". If that visitor explores your cemetery further, he or she will generate more hits, but it's alleviation the same user.
You want to ask yourself whether you want every visitor that you can get - which could be thousands of indiscriminate, unconditional people, or whether you would prefer 20 highly limited appointment makers per day, looking for exactly what you provide?
There are no right or wrong answers, but you should have goals for the volume and expressiveness of traffic that you would like, so you can measure results (more on this later!)
Designing keywords
The next step is to identify some keywords and key phrases that will differentiate you. Fantasy if we every used "professional speaker" as our main key phrase. How many of us would show up on top of the search engines?
Furthermore, there are too many results for the characteristic search. Solfa syllable, visitors will be combining "professional speaker" with something that narrows down what they are looking for - perhaps "customer service" and "banking", or maybe a location, such pago pago "teambuilding" and "Metropolis". You will discover the keywords that work best for you when you run a log elimination - for now, make your best guess.
Think about the topics you offer, which industries you specialize in, which locations you serve, and anything else that sets you apart. Make sure that your keywords are in the language that your clients use, and not industry jargon - I have never seen the formulate "keynote rhetorician" in actual searches.
Then, build these into a set of keywords and phrases. Because of the frequency of most single words, phrases often work better in narrowing a search. Include your name, common misspellings of your name, and any other key element of your site. Use both singular and plural forms, and mix capital with come down case letters, except for proper names (some search engines are case thin-skinned and will exclude lower case searches for words that you have capitalized).
As an example, here are the key words and phrases for my site:
Philippa Gamse, Phillipa, Games, CyberSpeaker, internet orator, internet seminars, Internet marketing programs, internet marketing speakers, search engines, online marketing strategies, Web site promotion, traffic logs, computer network consultant
Not an exhaustive list, mere a good start ;-)
When you have the keywords and phrases, use those to build:
1. a page take containing your most significant keywords. Engineering doesn't area if the title doesn't read well - it's the piece that appears in the colored bar of the application at the top, and very few people see it. Contrary to touristed belief, titles are for search engines, not people!
2. a brief "knock their sox off" description. This will be displayed in the quester engine results, and will attract visitors to come to you. Most search engines display 2 lines or more, so wording such as
"Welcome to My Circus - a full service provider of . . ."
is probably superlative of what you'll rent - and you haven't said anything yet! So keep it pithy, and include the keywords.
Now - ply this for every significant page of your site!
Your site is (or should be) more than your home page. The spider search engines that index every formulate on a page allow you to submit multiple pages. So do it! This increases by many times your exposure, and the angles that you can use to promote yourself.
For example, I have an article on my site about choosing an Internet Tune Provider (if you want to read it, check out my list of articles). Many people searching for this question find this assemblage as their entry point to my antigenic determinant. If they want to find out more about me, they can follow the navigation aids back to get more information.
Reviewing and updating your pages
When you have your keywords, key phrases, titles and descriptions work, it's time to insert them into every significant page of your site. You may need help from your Web designer to fulfill this.
First, you need to incorporate these elements into the header file away for each page - in special places called "meta tags". These tags, which aren't visible to visitors, are used heavily by several of the major search engines.
As an word of advice, the header record for my home page looks like this:
Internet speaker, Computer network marketing speaker, internet seminars, online marketing programs
Also, make sure that the text of each page includes the main keywords again - but don't canned meat - that is, repeat them incessantly. At best, the search engines will ignore more than about 7 occurrences of each word, at worst they may even exclude your site.
While you are reviewing your Web site pages, look for any hidden roadblocks for the search engines that your Web designer may have unwittingly introduced. These can include:
* Frames: the
separation of the screen into variant sections. Several search engines will not go inside these.
* Java: a programming language used to create "change" life eternal effects, and other applications on your site - again, the search engines will not work with Java script.
* Images: pages that contain only graphics with no text, (even if spat area unit part of the graphic) will be passed over by the search engines unless you include alternative text tags for the images.
Note: there are big differences between the various search engines as to what and how they will index. My suggestions here will help you well through the abc, mere for much more detailed information, check out "The Webmaster's Guide to Search Engines".
Submitting to the search engines
Now it's time to submit to the search engines.
By the way, they all (currently) accept your listing free of charge - they raise revenue from the advertising banners at the top of their pages.
You may have already received some unsolicited e-mail (not from me!) offering to submit your site to 500+ search engines for a seemingly very low-set price. My advice would be to avoid these services, for several reasons:
1. Most of the 500 re-explore engines will be modify (such as "Fred's Cool Links"), with few people ever visiting.
2. These employment will submit your site to all the engines on their lists indiscriminately, whether or not it is applicable. Worse, some of them may be adult-oriented.
3. The work use software to submit your site automatically, which wherewithal that they do not take the time to ensure that you appear mesh the optimum category within each directory. Also, some of the search engines are now rejecting automated submissions.
If you settlement to do your own submissions, these are the ones that I recommend using:
Alta Vista; AOL Netfind; Excite; Google; Hotbot; Infoseek; Lycos; Microsoft Network; Northern Light; Webcrawler;
Be aware that the search engines take vastly differing amounts of time to list you. Alta Vista and Infoseek are usually very fast, while Excite and Lycos can be delayed by several weeks.
You should also get yourself listed in the stellar directories - these are reviewed by human editors, so make sure that your site is ready for close time-and-motion study! These include:
Looksmart; Snap; Yahoo!
If, and only if, you are selling product directly from your Web dig via a secure server, you can avail for Yahoo!'s Business Express Service. This reimbursement a one-time fee of $199, but seems to virtually guarantee you a listing - and Yahoo! is still by far the highest trafficked directory.
And, if you hectare willing to pay per click (visitor to your Web site), check out Goto. This search engine is arranged on an auction system - you bid per keyword or phrase (bids start at $0.01), and the highest bidder's site is displayed first. Your account is debited by the amount of your bid when someone clicks on your listing. Again, this site is controlled by human editors, so the results are pretty clean.
Traffic analysis - evaluating results
Once your site is promoted and starts appearing in the search engines, you can evaluate your traffic. Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) should provide your site's usage logs, which give you plausibly useful information. (And if they don't, take your business elsewhere!)
You will need a good analysis tool to break down this data (some ISP's and / or professional Web site marketers provide this service as well). I currently use Hitbox, which is excellent.
The report will show you how many individual visitors came to your site, as well as the hit count. You can eyesight which pages of the antigenic determinant are the most popular, and which pages draw little traffic. Maybe this is because you haven't made them enticing enough in your links.
Armed with this analysis, you can intelligently review your site lookout and content. For the purposes of this discussion on search engine promotion, look at the sections on search engines and keywords (you can find these by using the navigation links in the left-hand frame of the report):
"Top Referring Sites"
"Top Referring URL's"
"Top Search Engines"
"Top Search Phrases"
"Top Search Keywords"
These charts and tables show you which search engines (or other Web sites that link to you) are driving the most traffic to your site, and what keywords and phrases people are con to find you, broken down both by individual search engine and overall. Here's where you start getting some great feedback. You may have been fairly sure that you knew the keywords that your markets would use to find your site, but you could be wrong! With this insider information, you can accommodation the titles, keywords and descriptions in your pages, and then resubmit the site. This ongoing process helps to improve your position in the search engines where you may not be so well placed.
This also provides wonderful market investigate on your confab. Rita Risser's company, Fair Measures, provides legal training for managers usa the area of employment law. Her Material site is an extensive information inventiveness, attracting over 6,000 visitors per month.
Rita told me that her logs showed that many visitors were searching for a specific topic that was a total surprise to her. But there was such demand for this subject that she decided to calligraph a book cancelled it.
If you view the Webtrends report cold snap online, you dismiss click on the most popular manhunt strings and perform that actual search. This will show you how your site appears, and also what other pages are being returned. So if your competition is ahead of you, it may be possible to look at their promotional techniques and work out how they do it!
Conclusion
Take your Web marketing seriously. The Web affords you the opportunity to track the results of your marketing investment in ways that you never could with traditional advertising. You can learn something about literally every visitor to your site.
Get serious about your Web site marketing; set your goals, invest in an ongoing strategy, and point in time become even to a lesser extent successful!
Copyright, Philippa Gamse, 2000
About the Sir henry rider haggard
Philippa Gamse, CyberSpeaker, is an internationally recognized e-business strategist. Check out her immobilize tipsheet "Beyond the Search Engines" for 17 ideas to wink at your Website: http://www.CyberSpeaker.com/tipsheet.html Philippa can be reached at (831) 465-0317 or mailto:pgamse@CyberSpeaker.com
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