How can you get more visitors to your website?
What can you do to stimulate traffic?
Here's the
1st checklist of 10 items you need to consider.
Many of these you're probably doing already,
others you meant to do and forgot about,
still others you've never heard of. Of course,
a great deal has been written about this.
While we're not breaking any new ground
here, we've tried to summarize some of the
most important techniques.
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Search
Engine Strategies
Perhaps the
most important and inexpensive
strategy is to rank high for your preferred
words on the main search engines in "organic"
or "natural" searches (as opposed
to paid ads). Search engines send robot
"spiders" to index the content
on your webpage, so let's begin with steps
to prepare your webpages for optimal indexing.
The idea here is not to trick the search
engines, but to leave them abundant clues
as to what your webpage is about.
1. Write a Page Title
Write a descriptive title
for each page of 5 to 8 words. Remove as
many "filler" words from the title,
such as "the," "and,"
etc. This page title will appear hyperlinked
on the search engines when your page is
found. Entice searchers to click on the
title by making it a bit provocative. Place
this at the top of the webpage between the
<HEAD></HEAD> tags, in this
format: <TITLE>Web Marketing Checklist...Ways
to Promote Your Website</TITLE>. (It
also shows on the blue bar at the top of
your web browser.)
Plan to use some descriptive
keywords along with your business name on
your home page. If you specialize in silver
bullets and that's what people will be searching
for, don't just use your company name "Acme
Ammunition, Inc." use "Silver
and Platinum Bullets -- Acme Ammunition,
Inc." The words people are most likely
to search on should appear first in the
title (called "keyword prominence").
Remember, this title is nearly your entire
identity on the search engines. The more
people see that interests them in the blue
hyperlinked words on the search engine,
the more likely they are to click on the
link.
2. Write a Description
and Keyword META Tag
The description should
be a sentence or two describing the content
of the webpage, using the main keywords
and keyphrases on this page. If you include
keywords that aren't used on the webpage,
you could hurt yourself. Place the Description
META Tag at the top of the webpage, between
the <HEAD></HEAD> tags, in this
format: Some search engines include this
description below your hyperlinked title.
<META NAME="DESCRIPTION"
CONTENT="Increase visitor hits, attract
traffic through submitting URLs, META tags,
news releases, banner ads, and reciprocal
links">.
Your maximum number of
characters should be about 255; just be
aware that only the first 60 or so are visible
on Google, though more may be indexed.
3. Include Your Keywords
in Header Tags H1, H2, H3
Search engines consider
words that appear in the page headline and
sub heads to be important to the page, so
make sure your desired keywords and phrases
appear in one or two header tags. Don't
expect the search engine to parse your Cascading
Style Sheet (CSS) to figure out which are
the headlines -- it won't. Instead, use
keywords in the H1, H2, and H3 tags to provide
clues to the search engine. (Note: Some
designers no longer use the H1, H2 tags.
That's a mistake. Make sure your designer
defines these tags in the CSS rather than
creating headline tags with other names.)
4. Make Sure Your Keywords
Are in the First Paragraph of Your Body
Text
Search engines expect
that your first paragraph will contain the
important keywords for the document -- where
most people write an introduction to the
content of the page. You don't want to just
artificially stuff keywords here, however.
More is not better. Google might expect
a keyword density in the entire body text
area of maybe 1.5% to 2% for a word that
should rank high, so don't overdo it. Other
places you might consider including keywords
would be in ALT tags and perhaps COMMENT
tags, though few search engines give these
much if any weight.
5. Use Keywords in Hyperlinks
Search engines are looking
for clues to the focus of your page. When
they see words hyperlinked in your body
text, they consider these potentially important,
so hyperlink your important keywords and
keyphrases. To emphasize it even more, the
webpage you are linking to could have a
page name with the keyword or keyphrase,
such as blue-widget.htm another clue for
the search engine.
6. Make Your Navigation
System Search Engine Friendly
Some webmasters use frames,
but frames can cause serious problems with
search engines. Even if search engines can
find your content pages, they could be missing
the key navigation to help visitors get
to the rest of your site. JavaScript and
Flash navigation menus that appear when
you hover are great for humans, but search
engines don't read JavaScript and Flash.
Supplement them with regular HTML links
at the bottom of the page, ensuring that
a chain of hyperlinks exists that take a
search engine spider from your home page
to every page in your site. A site map with
links to all your pages can help, too. If
your site isn't getting indexed fully, make
sure you submit a Google Sitemap following
directions on Google's site (www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login).
Greg Tarrant's Google Sitemap Generator
and Editor (www.sitemapdoc.com) is a free
tool to build these. Be aware that some
content management systems and e-commerce
catalogs produce dynamic, made-on-the-fly
webpages. You can sometimes recognize them
by question marks in the URLs followed by
long strings of numbers or letters. Overworked
search engines sometimes stop at the question
mark and refuse to go farther. If you find
the search engines aren't indexing your
interior pages, you might consider URL rewriting,
a site map, and targeted content pages.
7. Develop Several Pages
Focused on Particular Keywords
Search Engine Optimization
(SEO) specialists no longer recommend using
external doorway or gateway pages, since
nearly duplicate webpages might get you
penalized. Rather, develop several webpages
on your site, each of which is focused on
a different keyword or keyphrase. For example,
instead of listing all your services on
a single webpage, try developing a separate
webpage for each. These pages will rank
higher for their keywords since they contain
targeted rather than general content. You
can't fully optimize all the webpages in
your site, but these focused-content webpages
you'll want to spend lots of time tweaking
to improve their rank.
8. Submit Your Webpage
URL to Search Engines
Next, submit your homepage
URL to the important Web search engines
that robotically index the Web. Look for
a link on the search engine for "Add
Your URL." In the UK, the most used
search engines are: Google, Yahoo, MSN,
AOL Search, and Ask.com. Some of these feed
search content to the other main search
engines and portal sites. It's a waste of
money to pay someone to submit your site
to hundreds of search engines. Avoid registering
with FFA (Free For All pages) and other
link farms. They don't work well, bring
you lots of spam e-mails, and could cause
you to be penalised by the search engines.
If your page is already indexed by a search
engine, don't re-submit it unless you've
made significant changes; the search engine
spider will come back and revisit it soon
anyway.
9. Fine-tune with Search
Engine Optimization
Now fine-tune your focused-content
pages (described in point 7), and perhaps
your home page, by making minor adjustments
to help them rank high. A great product
that we use is:
10. Promote Your Local
Business on the Internet
These days many people
search for local businesses on the Internet.
To make sure they find you include on every
page of your website the street address,
post code, phone number, and the five or
10 other local community place names your
business serves. If you can, include place
names in the title tag, too. When you seek
links to your site, a local business should
get links from local businesses with place
names in the communities you serve and complementary
businesses in your industry nationwide.
We certainly haven't exhausted
ways to promote your site, but these will
get you started. To effectively market your
site, you need to spend some time adapting
these strategies to your own market and
capacity. Right now, why don't you make
an appointment to go over this checklist
with someone in your organisation, and make
it the basis for your new Internet marketing
strategy?
Next month we'll be focussing on 'Linking
Strategies'
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