10 ways to boost traffic to your website in 2011!
1. Publish Relevant and Quality Content
During the concept and design phases, or redesign, the target audience and subject matter should be unambiguously identified. Keywords that relate to the subject of the website should also be defined and used throughout the site. Your content needs to be well written, grammatically correct, and use an appropriate voice for your visitors.
2. Optimize Your Site
Your website should be optimized so the search engines can properly and easily parse your website for inclusion into their search results. Build and submit an XML site map to the major search engines. If you use a website builder, the software may automatically generate a site map for you. There is an abundance of information out there on this subject. Caveat lector, research search engine optimization carefully. Some of the material available is better than others and a portion of it is just dead wrong.
3. Links, Links, Links
Links to your site are one of the ways that search engines determine the quality and relevance of your site. You should link to your site intelligently and often. Encourage other quality websites to link back to your site.
4. Advertise
Advertising increases the amount of eyeballs that view your website name. The downside of advertising is that you will likely have to pay someone. Advertising can be daunting as the costs can climb very quickly and there is a risk of low return. There are several advertising models people offer such as pay-per-click or pay-per impression.
5. Regularly Update Content
Users and search engines want fresh content. To accomplish this you will need to put in many hours of research in order to discover the information people are seeking. Your objective here is to provide current information that Internet users can not get anywhere else.
6. Attract Return Visits
Once you have attracted a few visitors you need something that will make them want to return. This can come in the form of regularly updated content (see above), games, graphs, or the occasional video.
7. Maintain Your Site
Your site must be in tip-top shape. There must not be any broken links, bad links, or spam. Internet users despise these things and they detract from the impression that visitors have of your website. If you are not quite up to speed with HTML you should use a website builder [http://www.ezweb123.com/build.asp] to create your website in order to simplify the process.
8. Focus on Keywords for Traffic From Organic Search Results
Keywords are another way that search engines organize and display results to searchers. Your keywords should be focused on the subject of your site and be used in reasonable quantity. Search engines have become very good at detecting keyword stuffing and your page ranking will negatively reflect this should you choose to abuse keywords.
9. Give Stuff Away
Everyone loves free stuff! This one is dead simple and if you have the capital it is a surefire method of drawing traffic to your site. For example, imagine you are running a question and answer website devoted to guitars. In order to generate traffic you could hold a weekly contest where you would award a set of guitar strings to the person who has correctly answered the most unanswered questions at the end of the week.
10. Track and Monitor Your Traffic with Google Analytics
Monitoring your traffic is imperative to understanding your audience and their habits. Google offers a free, powerful, and easy to use analytics application. With this tool you can determine your viewers favorite content, the search terms or keywords they have used to reach your website, and any referring sites that have sent traffic to your site.
During the concept and design phases, or redesign, the target audience and subject matter should be unambiguously identified. Keywords that relate to the subject of the website should also be defined and used throughout the site. Your content needs to be well written, grammatically correct, and use an appropriate voice for your visitors.
2. Optimize Your Site
Your website should be optimized so the search engines can properly and easily parse your website for inclusion into their search results. Build and submit an XML site map to the major search engines. If you use a website builder, the software may automatically generate a site map for you. There is an abundance of information out there on this subject. Caveat lector, research search engine optimization carefully. Some of the material available is better than others and a portion of it is just dead wrong.
3. Links, Links, Links
Links to your site are one of the ways that search engines determine the quality and relevance of your site. You should link to your site intelligently and often. Encourage other quality websites to link back to your site.
4. Advertise
Advertising increases the amount of eyeballs that view your website name. The downside of advertising is that you will likely have to pay someone. Advertising can be daunting as the costs can climb very quickly and there is a risk of low return. There are several advertising models people offer such as pay-per-click or pay-per impression.
5. Regularly Update Content
Users and search engines want fresh content. To accomplish this you will need to put in many hours of research in order to discover the information people are seeking. Your objective here is to provide current information that Internet users can not get anywhere else.
6. Attract Return Visits
Once you have attracted a few visitors you need something that will make them want to return. This can come in the form of regularly updated content (see above), games, graphs, or the occasional video.
7. Maintain Your Site
Your site must be in tip-top shape. There must not be any broken links, bad links, or spam. Internet users despise these things and they detract from the impression that visitors have of your website. If you are not quite up to speed with HTML you should use a website builder [http://www.ezweb123.com/build.asp] to create your website in order to simplify the process.
8. Focus on Keywords for Traffic From Organic Search Results
Keywords are another way that search engines organize and display results to searchers. Your keywords should be focused on the subject of your site and be used in reasonable quantity. Search engines have become very good at detecting keyword stuffing and your page ranking will negatively reflect this should you choose to abuse keywords.
9. Give Stuff Away
Everyone loves free stuff! This one is dead simple and if you have the capital it is a surefire method of drawing traffic to your site. For example, imagine you are running a question and answer website devoted to guitars. In order to generate traffic you could hold a weekly contest where you would award a set of guitar strings to the person who has correctly answered the most unanswered questions at the end of the week.
10. Track and Monitor Your Traffic with Google Analytics
Monitoring your traffic is imperative to understanding your audience and their habits. Google offers a free, powerful, and easy to use analytics application. With this tool you can determine your viewers favorite content, the search terms or keywords they have used to reach your website, and any referring sites that have sent traffic to your site.
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