30 Jun
Targeted traffic is essential for any website. It is easy enough to go out and buy bulk traffic and have loads of visitors arriving at your website, but if these are not coming for whatever you are trying to sell, then they probably will not end up buying. If you offer wonderful freebies to attract attention and get people visiting your site but these goods are not related to your product, your efforts are wasted.So, what are the most popular methods for driving targeted website straight to your website? What are the best ways of driving in visitors that are ready to buy from you? Here is my selection, is ascending order of cost and complexity.
Method 1 - Article WritingWrite an article connected to your products, offering or niche. For an estate agent, a set of articles about selling your house, preparing it for sale, what you need to know, frequently asked questions, the stages of a house sale, how to pack items for the removal etc will all provide a very long list of related articles.
Write these up in an interesting and informative manner. To attract more attention, rewrite some in several ways, such as discussion, frequently asked questions, how to articles and so on.
Then publish them in the best of the article directories. This way the readers of the directories will read what you have to say and if they enjoy it, wander over to your site. Yet more will reprint your articles and expand their reach.
Even people, like estate agents, who work locally can benefit from a worldwide audience. OK, maybe not all readers will be potential customers, but articles also help with search engine optimisation, another great source of targeted traffic!
Method 2 - Pay Per ClickMore expensive, but especially if you are a local provider this method can probably drive you a lot of traffic.
Sign up with the big search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo for an account and create a Pay Per Click campaign with them. Each will guide you quickly through the steps and in no time you can be seeing your advert running.
This method is highly targeted as you choose which keywords should trigger you adverts. Pick those that are most relevant and watch the traffic build. Do not go for too many or too broad keywords - these will not be targeted enough, will cost a lot more and the traffic sent will be of lower value.
Method 3 - Get Bloggers Talking About YouQuite easy and simple, but it can be pricey. It can also help your search engine optimisation, depending on which network you choose.
To do this go to one of the many sponsored postings sites, check it out and set-up an account. You can then pay to have bloggers talking about your product. This is probably more for the websites covering a larger area.
Method 4 - Run An Affiliate SchemeThe ultimate method in targeted traffic must be an affiliate scheme, but these come with a cost. Go to any of the big affiliate scheme providers and ask them for help!
They will help you to set-up an affiliate program and give you the advice you need to get going. Very highly targeted as the affiliates themselves are only wanting to send you visitors that will convert to sales. You pay them per sale, plus a monthly fee to the network.
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25 Jun
If you are struggling trying to get more visitors to your website, then maybe you need a little bit of assistance. Maybe it is time to call in the professionals!Paying for advertising on other websites can be great exposure, but short term and are you getting the best out of the advertising. Likewise doing your own Search Engine Optimisation is great, if you know what you are doing.
This is where the services of one of the many professionals in the business can come in. Choose a decent, honest and reliable
Internet Marketing Company and they can combine various marketing activities together.
They can build your short term traffic with a Pay Per Click campaign and combine that with a longer term Search Engine Optimisation campaign. Combined, these produce excellent results. A good company should also be able to help you make any changes to the website that are needed to make sure your conversion rate is high, to get even better value!
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25 Jun
In these days of economic woe, is it really a good idea to be spending valuable money on giving away promotional items? Should we be just giving these products away, or should we be forgetting the whole idea?
My favourite, the EzineArticles Writers' MugFor a long time
Promotional Printed Products have been an essential part of many marketing campaigns. Businesses had their batches of pens printed with their logos and brands ready to hand out wherever and whenever the time suited. Many businesses used such items to butter up their staff, their sales force and their customers. But the cost of sourcing these items is hitting into budgets that many companies are having to tighten.
Why use them?So why should we still continue to use
Promotional Printed Products? What do they offer for us? Well, they offer an incredible amount back to us in return for the small investment that it takes to have some created.
Appreciate your customersGiving such items to your existing customers is a long term marketing strategy. Carefully choose an item that will match to the type of people you are giving them to and it tells the recipient that you care about them, that you are interested in them and that you want them and their business to work with you.
Give them an item that is worth something to the customer and they will keep the item, use it and display it (quite unintentionally displaying it) to other people and see it, hopefully at the time that they next need to place an order.
Show gratitude to your workersGiving promotional products out to your sales force and your workforce can be rewards, incentives and even just reminders of how good an employer you are. You can have bigger and better rewards to encourage good service, running competitions based on sales and production figures for individuals and teams. Or you can just thank them all with a simple diary to show that you do care and to try to increase staff retention.
Don't always give them away!But, you do not always have to give these items away. Look at other companies and how they use such items. Aside from many gift shops that sell promotional products after you have been around an attraction, you can also use them as add on sales and to encourage higher basket amounts.
For a shop, whether a traditional high street outlet or an internet outlet, offering a little extra item on basket amounts that are slightly higher than normal may encourage buyers to add one more item to the basket. Or offer the item for near the cost price as an add on sale when they buy other items from you, maybe even doing as certain fast food outlets do and offering a different add on item for free every week. This encourages repeat business in order to collect the entire range.
They are a success, so use them!So I have to say that yes, it may be a difficult time financially, but without a strong investment in marketing activities, including
Promotional Printed Products as well as media and other avenues of marketing, your business will not be competing the way it should be. All businesses need good value for money marketing at present and that is why, amongst other advertising channels, we should all be using printed promotional products.
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22 Jun
A link, is a link, is a link. Any link will give your site some search engine benefit, well almost. Here are the exceptions and how to get the best from link building!
A Chain Of LinksLink building in one way or another is the life blood of search engine optimisation. You can make all of the changes that you like to the code of a website page, but if you do not have enough links, or enough of the correct links, all your search engine optimisation efforts could be in vain. So, what do you need to be considering?
Links that do not count• Links including rel="nofollow" count for nothing because this explicitly tells the search engines to ignore this link at the request of the website owner. It doesn't mean search engines will not follow the link to see if it is a new page, but no favour is passed.
A scary face, a bad neighbourhood?• Links from bad neighbourhoods are ignored because they are bad. Difficult to say exactly what these are, other than websites that have offended the search engines. But the next point probably covers these also.
• Links from pages that are not cached are not known about, simply because the search engines ignore the pages! If the page does not have a Page Rank, worse still the website does not have a Page Rank, then it is likely that the link might not be seen.
• Link hidden behind redirects and javascript are supposed to be ignored because the search engines do not see them and do not follow redirects. However, I have seen search engines on pages that are only available through redirects, so this might not be completely accurate.
The best linksSo, what is the best link to have? Well the higher the Page Rank of the page your link is on the better, if all other factors are equal. For example, similar number of outbound links, same theme and so on. Without going into full and boring detail of the Page Rank algorithm (which has no doubt changed since it was first published), it is generally accepted that 85% of the Page Rank of the linking page is shared equally between all outbound links. So if there is one link on the page that gets the full 85%. If there are 5 links then each gets 17%. If there are 17 links on the page then they only get 5% each and so on.
It is also generally accepted that because of this splitting down of the value that sites need to have a Page Rank of at least 2 to hold any weight. This is because a site with PR1 is going to have inner pages of PR0, which when they link to you give next to nothing back.
What links to your website?But how are the best links constructed then? What should the anchor text be for the link? Well looking natural is best. Many people say not to use your site's URL or name and instead pack it with keywords, which does have advantages. But, a mixture of everything works best. Search engines have enough data to work out what is natural and what is pre arranged.
I like in link building to have a proportion of the anchor texts being general, for example the URL of the website of the website name. Build a few good links and then start working with new links that use good keywords.
Use The Correct Anchors
Use The Correct AnchorsTo find the best keywords to use, do a little research. Do not go for your most competitive keywords with the highest amount of traffic straight away, you will almost certainly fail. At first, build on the smaller volume keywords with less competition. For example, say I wanted to build for a mortgages site with the phrase
Website Promotion Services, I would start with
Free Website Promotion Services,
Easy Website Promotion Services and
Fast Website Promotion Services.
All terms with traffic and competition, but all achievable. And the best thing is that by the time these are all successful there should be a degree of success with the main keyword as well. It might not be number 1, but it would be a long way there.
Why use keywords as anchors?This is important and something that many people miss. Link building not only gets you the 'votes' for the website because the links exist but also 'votes' for the terms used within the links. If the anchor text is 'Click Here' then that is what you are getting the 'vote' for. However, if it is 'More Website Traffic' then that instead is where you are working towards.
Content really does matter!
Carefully selecting your content!Content of the page you are linking in does matter, for two very important reasons.
First, if the page is about health and your website about mortgages, then they are probably totally unrelated and the Page Rank effect will be reduced. But, it is better than nothing and not to much of an issue when the links are in posts and articles as that can be directly related to your website.
Second, link density. I have had websites built entirely from guest posts, which contain two or three links per 500+ word post to the author's website. These sites are successful, have lots of search engine traffic and the links out do not upset search engines.
However, I have seen sites that just exist for sponsored writing. These have one, two or three outbound links and the posts vary in length from 30 words to 100, sometimes 200 words. On occasion I have even seen these posts just literally containing the link. But quite often these sites are punished by the removal of Page Rank, dropping 2 or 3 ranks.
So what is the difference between the two? Well, just link density. Whilst it is fine to have a couple of links in a few hundred words, constantly writing posts of 30 - 100 words and embedding links alerts the search engines. Whilst they might not punish the site, they probably will punish the page - the page with your links on it.
This means that your links should work best if there are one or two of them on a meaty page - 400 or more words. Shoving 3 links into a 30-word article is asking fro trouble, but burying them in a bigger piece looks natural and appeases the search engines. And that is out aim!
So, what links do we want?In summary, we want links with a variety of anchor texts, some generic and some based on well researched keyword phrases. They should be on PR2 and above websites on content pages with at least a 400 word article that relates to the website linked to. Easy!
I make no apologies that this has been a post nearly three times longer than normal! There is a lot of information to get started with and it is easier to have it all in once place than split over 3 or 4 posts. Do let me hear your comments!
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18 Jun
If you want to be seeing more people visiting your website, then you just need to follow these three simple steps and quite soon your traffic levels are going to be increasing. It is as easy as that!
1 - Do your research and find suitable and realistic keywordsThis is the important piece of work and a little bit of care goes a long way. Think through a few terms that your visitors could be using to find a site such as yours. To begin with, do not go for anything that is going to have too much competition. "Mortgages", for example, would be a very bad idea. But you also want terms with traffic.
How to achieve this balance it is an article in its own right, but terms such as "Best UK Fixed Rate Mortgages" will be more along the lines that we are looking for.
2 - Write a post loosely mentioning these keywordsNow write a post either about the keywords or that can mention them. Do not go over the top trying to mention the keywords! If they can be naturally mentioned in the title and a few times throughout the post then great.
But after you have finished look at your word count and how many times you have mentioned the keywords. Keep the target phrases to less than 2% of the post - so in a 400 word article, no more than 8 references in the title and main post text.
3 - Write more posts, articles and guest postsNow start writing more detail! I like to write an initial post about the subject and then write more detailed posts about different elements of the subject.
For example, if I wanted to do it with this article, I would then write up each step in a single post, maybe adding extra posts explaining how to find suitable keywords and so on.
Publish these to your website, linking from the main post (written in step 2) to the detail steps. This gives the more detail links the search engines see.
Now manually rewrite slightly each of the posts created in this step and submit each one to article directories, to blogs as guest posts and so on. On each submission, have it linking to the post written in step 1 and your website's home page.
This third step is the longest stage of the process and is about getting the word out about your article and loads of links in.
Conclusion1. Decide what keyword you want to target.
2. Write a page including that keyword.
3. Write more detail about the subject and syndicate the writing to get links and visitors to that information.
That is it! Your three steps to getting more website visitors through the search engines, totally for free. Keep doing that for more keywords and your traffic levels will rapidly increase. For a blog, I like to recommend one new keyword per month, quite an easy level to work with.
Plus, as you are working through these steps your general website ranking is improving anyway, so you will also start to see more general traffic arriving at your website.
Good luck. Do let me know how you get on!
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