Many people who launch a website don’t realise quite how competitive the internet is. If you want to start gaining traffic, you must put in some work to start telling people that your website is live. This article gives you a few ideas that can help bring traffic to a new website, and if you use a long term approach these methods can be very successful. As with any form of marketing, building a website’s reputation takes time but even with a little bit of regular work there is no reason why you can’t start to get some good traffic numbers. Below is a list of some things that you can do for free, all you need is a little bit of regular time.
Through experience, I have found that the most effective way to use the following tactics is to sync them all up. With minimal effort your facebook fans, twitter followers, and blog readers can be fed the same information. This will also help any SEO and or link building work that is being done for your website.
Videos
Putting together a successful video campaign can result in a very high amount of traffic and exposure for your website. Video blogs and promotional videos are easy to put together and with websites such as Youtube; publishing your videos has never been easier. The biggest decision to make is whether to host, or post your videos. I would argue that doing both is the best way. Having a great video on your website can attract a good number of natural links, and posting a video on Youtube should attract traffic. I would advise that you put the full video on your website, and a shorter ‘promo’ version on Youtube. This way, anyone who watches your video on Youtube will then have a reason to visit your website.
Twitter/Facebook
Using both twitter and facebook gives you the opportunity to reach an extremely wide audience. Both can be synced up together feeding the same information out to your online friends and fans, with each site adding momentum to the other. Popular activities on these sites include fan competitions, publishing company news, promoting new content and generally growing an ‘online community’. If your content is always of a high quality, and interesting and useful to the user, your groups should grow naturally and also gain links and traffic back to your site. The most important thing is that they are updated regularly with good content; it’s not enough to just set up some profiles and hope for the best!
Blogs
Having a regularly updated, useful and interesting blog can really help your website grow with regards to returning traffic. A well composed blog can attract a following of it’s own, thus giving you traffic that you would never have otherwise benefited from. Popular ideas for blog entries could include; top ten lists, product reviews; tips; industry news or company news. Once you have published a new blog post, make sure you promote via your facebook page and your twitter account.
Sunday, 28 March 2010
Friday, 19 March 2010
Improving Website Usability
No matter how much effort you put into SEO and online marketing, your website must be user friendly in order to get the most out of your new traffic. In addition to this, having a website that aids the user in their needs will also help the SEO process as great content will always attract natural links. Therefore, anyone undertaking SEO work should be aware of website usability and try to ensure that some basic measures are put in place.
Window Of Opportunity
So many people fall into the trap of designing their website to display what they want to display, and not what their target users are looking for. If you look at any analytical software you will see that most traffic from the search engines will only stick around for about 15 seconds; unless of course they find exactly what they are looking for. This is a very small window of opportunity and needs to be carefully thought through to gain success.
Research
As with any other type of SEO work, you should always start with some keyword research. This will show you exactly what your potential visitors will be looking for, and help you to identify what words and phrases they will need to see on your website. When conducting your research, think long and hard about exactly what it is you’re offering on your website. If you have a website offering ‘luxury airport pick ups’, titles such as ‘airport pick ups’ might be too vague. Use ‘luxury airport pick ups’ and you know this will precisely target the market you are looking for.
Content
Writing content for your website can be quite hard from an insider’s perspective. It’s all too easy to waffle on and on, after all you know your business better than anyone else. It’s always advisable to have a third party check over your content to make sure the message gets across quick enough. Remember, give your users exactly the information they want and need; nothing more, nothing less. It might help when writing content to think about the ‘four W’s’: What, Where, When, Why. Try to be as focused as possible always remembering that you only have about 15 seconds at the most to capture a potential client.
Navigation
Once you have your traffic hooked into your website, it is vital that they can navigate their way through the website in a clear and structured manner. Many websites fail by being too complicated with different bits of information everywhere. Drawing out a plan will help you to decide on the layout of the website from the user’s perspective. Be as ruthless as possible in your approach, if a page isn’t needed...remove it.
Website Features
You should also be thinking about a couple of features that you could have on your website that are aimed at trying to increase return visits. These features could be anything that’s helpful to the user, and they don’t have to be fancy or expensive. A simple, well written blog can keep people returning, or in a similar vein, a regularly updated news page should also do the trick. If you want to go a bit further you could offer free tools or widgets to your users, this will certainly keep traffic returning and at the same help your link building efforts.
Window Of Opportunity
So many people fall into the trap of designing their website to display what they want to display, and not what their target users are looking for. If you look at any analytical software you will see that most traffic from the search engines will only stick around for about 15 seconds; unless of course they find exactly what they are looking for. This is a very small window of opportunity and needs to be carefully thought through to gain success.
Research
As with any other type of SEO work, you should always start with some keyword research. This will show you exactly what your potential visitors will be looking for, and help you to identify what words and phrases they will need to see on your website. When conducting your research, think long and hard about exactly what it is you’re offering on your website. If you have a website offering ‘luxury airport pick ups’, titles such as ‘airport pick ups’ might be too vague. Use ‘luxury airport pick ups’ and you know this will precisely target the market you are looking for.
Content
Writing content for your website can be quite hard from an insider’s perspective. It’s all too easy to waffle on and on, after all you know your business better than anyone else. It’s always advisable to have a third party check over your content to make sure the message gets across quick enough. Remember, give your users exactly the information they want and need; nothing more, nothing less. It might help when writing content to think about the ‘four W’s’: What, Where, When, Why. Try to be as focused as possible always remembering that you only have about 15 seconds at the most to capture a potential client.
Navigation
Once you have your traffic hooked into your website, it is vital that they can navigate their way through the website in a clear and structured manner. Many websites fail by being too complicated with different bits of information everywhere. Drawing out a plan will help you to decide on the layout of the website from the user’s perspective. Be as ruthless as possible in your approach, if a page isn’t needed...remove it.
Website Features
You should also be thinking about a couple of features that you could have on your website that are aimed at trying to increase return visits. These features could be anything that’s helpful to the user, and they don’t have to be fancy or expensive. A simple, well written blog can keep people returning, or in a similar vein, a regularly updated news page should also do the trick. If you want to go a bit further you could offer free tools or widgets to your users, this will certainly keep traffic returning and at the same help your link building efforts.
Friday, 5 March 2010
Ten Link Building Tactics
Link building is a hard task and should be seen as an ongoing long term effort, not a quick sprint. The best way to go about link building is to have a solid, yet varied strategy. Read below for my top ten ways to gaining inbound links to your site:
1. Creating Interesting Content
Creating great content is the best way to gain natural links back to your site. The aim is to publish content that your website users will want to link to. The search engines love these links as they produce a really natural link profile. Your new content could be anything from videos, to articles.
2. Giving Away Free Tools
Web users love free tools. If you can create tools that can really help people go about their work, you are guaranteed links. The idea is that whenever a tool is given away, it comes complete with a link to your website. Tools could include maps, analytical software, widgets and more.
3. Free Directory Submissions
There are thousands of directories on the internet offering publishers the chance to list their websites into relevant categories. This can be an effective method of building a large amount of links, especially for new websites. However, care must be taken to ensure that the directories actually pass value with their links.
4. Paid Directory Submissions
This is a very similar tactic to the one above, however in this instance you opt to pay for links in premium positions within the directory in choice. This can be a great way of gaining traffic, and most directories will give you multiple links if you pay for premium submissions. However, it is still vital that you make sure the directory has value.
5. Social Media
Having busy and active social media profiles will give you a great outlet for promoting your website and the content within it. With social media, the aim is to create an exciting online community that will generate interest back to your website. The more interesting content you post, the more interest you get, and the more links you should achieve. This also a very good way of increasing your traffic.
6. Blogging
Setting up a blog and keeping it updated can be hard work, but eventually you should end up with a base of regular readers. If you can create an interesting blog for your industry, this should help establish you within your field and generate interest and links back to your website.
7. Blog Comments
Finding relevant blogs and commenting on them not only gives you an opportunity to leave a link, it should also get you seen within the online community. Being seen as an active member of the online community in your field should make promoting your content easier.
8. Article Writing
Writing interesting and useful articles that are relevant to your industry is an effective way to keep pushing out new content. Leaving links within the article body should mean that when someone reposts your article, they in turn give you a link. There are many websites that allow you to post your articles, all of varying quality.
9. Press Releases
If you’ve got great content, shout about it! Taking care to write a carefully constructed press release should entice journalists and bloggers to write about your website (with a link of course). Try to target journalists and bloggers who write about your industry, and also make use of news wires that can distribute your press release to thousands of writers.
10. Forum Posts
Most forums allow their users to leave a link within their signature. Try to find relevant forums within your field and get stuck in. Don’t be spammy, just try to be useful and interactive. This should also lead to gaining some traffic.
1. Creating Interesting Content
Creating great content is the best way to gain natural links back to your site. The aim is to publish content that your website users will want to link to. The search engines love these links as they produce a really natural link profile. Your new content could be anything from videos, to articles.
2. Giving Away Free Tools
Web users love free tools. If you can create tools that can really help people go about their work, you are guaranteed links. The idea is that whenever a tool is given away, it comes complete with a link to your website. Tools could include maps, analytical software, widgets and more.
3. Free Directory Submissions
There are thousands of directories on the internet offering publishers the chance to list their websites into relevant categories. This can be an effective method of building a large amount of links, especially for new websites. However, care must be taken to ensure that the directories actually pass value with their links.
4. Paid Directory Submissions
This is a very similar tactic to the one above, however in this instance you opt to pay for links in premium positions within the directory in choice. This can be a great way of gaining traffic, and most directories will give you multiple links if you pay for premium submissions. However, it is still vital that you make sure the directory has value.
5. Social Media
Having busy and active social media profiles will give you a great outlet for promoting your website and the content within it. With social media, the aim is to create an exciting online community that will generate interest back to your website. The more interesting content you post, the more interest you get, and the more links you should achieve. This also a very good way of increasing your traffic.
6. Blogging
Setting up a blog and keeping it updated can be hard work, but eventually you should end up with a base of regular readers. If you can create an interesting blog for your industry, this should help establish you within your field and generate interest and links back to your website.
7. Blog Comments
Finding relevant blogs and commenting on them not only gives you an opportunity to leave a link, it should also get you seen within the online community. Being seen as an active member of the online community in your field should make promoting your content easier.
8. Article Writing
Writing interesting and useful articles that are relevant to your industry is an effective way to keep pushing out new content. Leaving links within the article body should mean that when someone reposts your article, they in turn give you a link. There are many websites that allow you to post your articles, all of varying quality.
9. Press Releases
If you’ve got great content, shout about it! Taking care to write a carefully constructed press release should entice journalists and bloggers to write about your website (with a link of course). Try to target journalists and bloggers who write about your industry, and also make use of news wires that can distribute your press release to thousands of writers.
10. Forum Posts
Most forums allow their users to leave a link within their signature. Try to find relevant forums within your field and get stuck in. Don’t be spammy, just try to be useful and interactive. This should also lead to gaining some traffic.
Monday, 1 March 2010
Google's Page Rank
Page rank was invented by Larry Page, co-founder of Google. Page rank is intended to measure the importance of a website on the internet and is sculpted by the amount of links a page has pointing at it, and the quality of those links. It is not a measurement of how relevant a page is to a particular term...it just measures the importance of that page. Therefore, by increasing the page rank of a web page, we can increase the importance of that page. However, if the page is not relevant to the search phrase in question, it won’t show up in the results no matter how high the page rank is.
The page rank you can see displayed on the toolbar of your web browser is different to the actual page rank used by Google to calculate the results. The toolbar page rank goes from 0-10 where as the real page rank can run into the millions. The difference between the two values in unknown, however we do know that the toolbar page rank is not linear. A toolbar page rank of 6 is not twice the value of 3. An increase of 2-3 is fairly easy, whereby an increase from 4-5 would take a considerable amount more effort. From this we can’t assume that if a publisher has a website with a page rank of 5 and their competitor has a site with page rank 6, that the difference is neither large nor small. It could be that their real page rank is miles away, or maybe that they are actually quite close.
Page rank is definitely a grey area for SEO’s, and the calculation changes regulary. However it is safe to assume that the value of page rank is still vital in search engine rankings, and also that it measures the importance of a website, not the relevance. As this is the case, Link building is still of upmost importance to gaining a website higher rankings. Gaining high quality links from authoritative websites will no doubt increase your page rank and also your position in the results. It is also vital that you have a good variation of domains linking to your site. A broad link profile is always the best.
When coming up with a link building strategy, it is important that you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Try to have a varied approach; there are many ways in which to build links. Below is a list of four approaches that could be used together to produce a healthy link profile:
1. Links from authoritative domains
Possibly the most important step. Try to identify which domains are the most ‘important’ in your field, and how you could go about striking up a relationship and gaining a link. Examples could include relevant trade bodies or education centres.
2. Directories
Submitting your site to directories is a good way of gaining links from a large amount of different domains. Be careful when paying for links, this can be a dodgy tactic, and always make sure you place your site in the most relevant category.
3. Social Media
Setting up social media profiles and optimising them can be a great way of gaining links. Avoid being spammy and try to be ‘natural’ and you should reap the benefits.
4. Blogging
Setting up and writing a good quality blog can be another great tactic. Remember content is king, so keep your blog updated and full of great information and hopefully you’ll find people will want to link to your blog.
The page rank you can see displayed on the toolbar of your web browser is different to the actual page rank used by Google to calculate the results. The toolbar page rank goes from 0-10 where as the real page rank can run into the millions. The difference between the two values in unknown, however we do know that the toolbar page rank is not linear. A toolbar page rank of 6 is not twice the value of 3. An increase of 2-3 is fairly easy, whereby an increase from 4-5 would take a considerable amount more effort. From this we can’t assume that if a publisher has a website with a page rank of 5 and their competitor has a site with page rank 6, that the difference is neither large nor small. It could be that their real page rank is miles away, or maybe that they are actually quite close.
Page rank is definitely a grey area for SEO’s, and the calculation changes regulary. However it is safe to assume that the value of page rank is still vital in search engine rankings, and also that it measures the importance of a website, not the relevance. As this is the case, Link building is still of upmost importance to gaining a website higher rankings. Gaining high quality links from authoritative websites will no doubt increase your page rank and also your position in the results. It is also vital that you have a good variation of domains linking to your site. A broad link profile is always the best.
When coming up with a link building strategy, it is important that you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Try to have a varied approach; there are many ways in which to build links. Below is a list of four approaches that could be used together to produce a healthy link profile:
1. Links from authoritative domains
Possibly the most important step. Try to identify which domains are the most ‘important’ in your field, and how you could go about striking up a relationship and gaining a link. Examples could include relevant trade bodies or education centres.
2. Directories
Submitting your site to directories is a good way of gaining links from a large amount of different domains. Be careful when paying for links, this can be a dodgy tactic, and always make sure you place your site in the most relevant category.
3. Social Media
Setting up social media profiles and optimising them can be a great way of gaining links. Avoid being spammy and try to be ‘natural’ and you should reap the benefits.
4. Blogging
Setting up and writing a good quality blog can be another great tactic. Remember content is king, so keep your blog updated and full of great information and hopefully you’ll find people will want to link to your blog.
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