29 Ways to Drive Traffic to your Website ... and keep them c
In 1998, if you wanted someone to find your website,
you placed some "meta tags" on it, and submitted it to free
search engines or directories. In 2002, there are many
ways to help your website be found including...
1. Build a solid business foundation. Design a business
plan, marketing plan, ideal client profile, and a site map
for your web site.
2. Be consistent. Brand your company.
3. Make your website trustable. This article will show you
10 ways. www.coachmaria.com/articles rustableweb.html
4. Create policies that build trust: customer service, code
of ethics and newsletter privacy policy.
5. If you have pages on your site that you update monthly
(like an articles page or recommended links page) say so on
the page.
6. Find easy and secure ways for your clients to pay you. A
shopping cart with paypal and a secure merchant account
works very well.
7. Network locally to bring people to your site.
8. Check your links regularly to make sure they all work.
Use a free link checker like:
http://home.snafu.de ilman/xenulink.html
9. Place your website address on all your printed
literature -- business cards, brochures, newsletters,
letterhead, email signature, ads - everything!!
10. Offer added values that make sense to your business and
ideal client. This can include affiliate programs, books,
and recommended links to websites.
11. Use your web address in your signature for emails
(change it regularly to highlight something new you're
promoting).
12. Add a "Recommend This Site" on your site. If someone
visits your site and knows someone else who may appreciate
it, this feature will email the page's link to a recipient.
13. Provide monthly chats or bulletin boards (forums) to
build a relationships and community.
14. Instead of a link to subscribe to your ezine, offer a
subscription box on your most viewed web site pages.
15. Teach classes or speak to groups about subjects relating
to your products.
16. Permission market by gathering the email addresses of
students or the audience as part of your evaluation form.
17. Add a favorites script such as "add this page to your
favorites list" to some pages.
18. Conduct periodic contests and announce the winners on
your site.
19. Offer a free ebook on your site. This could be two pages
of information that would be helpful to your visitors that
contains your business information, too. Recommend that this
ebook be forwarded to others for their personal use.
20. On large websites, create a "What's New Page" or even
better, ask your webdesigner to design a "Site Map" for your
visitors.
21. Write articles, post them to your site, and submit them
to article banks
www.coachmaria.com/articles/articlebanks.html.
22. Design some quizzes. Statistics show that visitors love
quizzes and assessment tools.
23. Participate in online forums as an expert. You get to
"quietly" promote your business in your 3 or 4 line
signature.
24. Join a few web rings. Some sites to visit are:
www.webring.com/rw and www.bravenet.com.
25. Search engines look for certain things so it is crucial
to make sure your site is "search-engine friendly".
oTITLE tags: Title tags should be 60 or so characters
and have some keywords in them.
oHeader tags are numbered from 1 to 7: Header 1 tags
are recognized by some search engines. So make sure you use
this tag.
oKeyword meta tags: Add no more than 15 to 20
keywords to keep the seach engines from flagging your site
for keyword spamming. Prioritize your words. The best way to
submit to search engines is to submit to each engine
individually.
oUse keywords in the text area of each page. They are
especially important at the beginning of sentences and
higher up on the page.
26. Search engines do not find your site unless you submit
your site's information to them. Below are three ways to
submit your site:
oIt is recommended that you submit to search engines
individually (this is also the way I do it and it works
great, but is time consuming)! Visit
www.coachmaria.com/webmarketing.html.
oSince some people prefer to use a free service to
submit, I recommend that they open a free e-mail address to
use when you do "anything" for free on the world wide web.
Three good search engine submission services are
www.registerit.com, www.submitit.com and
www/scrubtheweb.com.
oPaid submission programs can be purchased through
companies such as: www.se-optimizer.com,
www.webpositiongold.com, www.positionagent.com
27. Visit these search engine information sites:
www.searchengineguide.com and www.searchenginewatch.com
28. Want to know more about Internet Marketing? Visit this
excellent Internet Marketing Index at
www.internetmarketingindex.com
29. If this list seems overwhelming, visit your favorite
search engine and start interviewing experienced Search
Engine Optimizers and Consultants.
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