Five Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Internet Presence
1. Track and analyze your web site traffic.
Most web hosts offer traffic analysis data to their clients, and
it is arguably the most important tool at your disposal in
measuring the effectiveness of your website. By taking the time
to understand this data, you can begin to understand the
motivations and interests of your audience. Are many of them
leaving on one particular page? Perhaps you should make some
changes to keep their interest. Are most of them looking at one
particular part of your site? Perhaps you should make it a more
featured area. Since this data updates on a regular basis, you
are also able to gauge the effectiveness of any changes that you
make. These are the most basic examples, as there are many more
useful bits of information available- what search terms your
visitors are using to find you, what sites are bringing you the
most traffic, how long your visitors are staying, etc.
Maintaining a successful website is an ongoing process, and
visitor data is crucial to getting optimum results.
2. Exchange links with non-competing, quality companies related
to your industry.
This is a simple but effective way to get quality traffic while
increasing the prestige of your business. Visitors that enter
your site from a link that they find on another site are
predisposed to believe that they will find something of value
there (if not, why would the site take the time and effort to
link to it?). By making sure that the companies you exchange
links with are not direct competitors, you are unlikely to lose
business. The added benefit to this strategy is that it can give
a tremendous boost to your link popularity, which is a major
factor in determining how your site gets ranked in most search
engines.
3. Write informative articles about your business or products
and make them available to online publications and webmasters.
There are numerous sites that will allow you to offer original
informational articles for others to publish. Such an exchange
benefits you in several ways. First, all of these sites require
anyone who is reprinting your article to provide a link back to
your site, which can provide highly targeted visitors (visitors
that most likely already have a good impression of you from your
article). This is also another way to boost your link
popularity, which is vitally important to your search engine
rankings (as discussed above). Moreover, if you offer a service,
a reputation is your most valuable asset. Widely distributed
articles can help to establish you as an expert in your field
and help you to gain credibility with your future clients.
4. Give your website visitors a clear call to action.
If your site isn't intended to sell a product or gain a
customer, than what is it for? Every page on your site should
focus on getting the visitor to take an action. This could be
purchasing something online, filling out a form or sending an
email, making a phone call, or even simply moving on to the next
step in the process. Your website should be more than a static
billboard proclaiming that you are open for business- it should
compel your visitors to follow a specific path that leads to a
sale. The answer can be as simple as placing a prominent
suggestion on each of your pages (such as "Request a Free Demo"
or "Ask Us a Question").
5. When it comes to your site, don't overlook the obvious.
Compare your website to an actual store- is everything clean and
organized, or is everything messy and cluttered? Many websites
give bad first impressions with issues that could easily be
avoided. Broken links are a sign of sloppiness that are fairly
common. To combat this, there are several websites that will
automatically scan your site and identify any broken links.
Seeing little red "x's" where a graphic or photo should appear
is another common problem that is easily addressed. Does your
site maintain its look and functionality with most browsers?
People are sometimes dismayed to learn that their site (which
looks great in Internet Explorer) doesn't maintain its look or
functionality with other popular browsers such as Netscape. The
time and resources required to fix these problems are small when
compared with the cost of tarnishing your professional image.