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Contents
Increasing Traffic to your website............................................................................... 3
Web Content .............................................................................................................. 5
Sending Newsletters and Info .................................................................................... 8
Become a Community Member................................................................................ 10
Use Experts to Write For You................................................................................... 13
Use Tracking Software............................................................................................. 15
Use of Keyword Tools .............................................................................................. 17
Don't be Afraid to Copy Others................................................................................. 19
Focus on the most Popular Parts of Your Site ......................................................... 21
Always Give Free Stuff............................................................................................. 23
Advertise Advertise Advertise .................................................................................. 25
Build Your Brand ...................................................................................................... 27
Using The Right Software ........................................................................................ 29
Using the Right Content ........................................................................................... 31
Using META Tags .................................................................................................... 34
Your Blog ................................................................................................................. 37
Hold off on Comments.............................................................................................. 39
Create a Sitemap ..................................................................................................... 41
Big Traffic ................................................................................................................. 43
Become Part of an Online Community ..................................................................... 45
Be Patient................................................................................................................. 48
Be Nice to People and Customers ........................................................................... 51
Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 53
CHAPTER 1
Increasing Traffic to your website
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The World Wide Web has truly pervaded all aspects of human existence. Everything
and everyone is going online now, and the move towards a totally connected world is
not “if” anymore, it’s “when”.
Statistics show that up to 85% of the people who spend time online also purchase
online. If you take the North American continent alone where more than 75% of the
population have a broadband Internet connection at home, even if a fraction of these
people buy online, it is still a huge market.
Online purchasing is also seeing tremendous growth and many companies are
projecting a doubling of volume in just three years. If you take PayPal as a case in
point, they have gone from $2 billion in payment volumes in 2002 to $16 billion in
2009 with revenues crossing $2.4 billion.
Amazon is another case that you can take as an example. Considering that Amazon
is one of the largest online retailers, if not the largest, just looking at their total sales
volume will show you that the trend in terms of online purchasing is only going up.
While just a few years ago, in 2006, Amazon was about par with retail sales, since
then they have posted higher growth rates, including during the recession years
while retail sales has seen a steady decline in sales. Amazon has posted a 16%
growth since the last one year alone while retail sales have grown only by 2.5%.
Online is where you will have to be in the future and whether you are selling
something or just blogging about your thoughts, if you are serious about it you will
have to do something to increase web traffic to your site.
There are a number of ways in which you can do this and there are a number of
people who give free advice on what you need to do to increase web traffic. One of
the most common things you hear is SEO or Search Engine Optimization, and while
this is something that you have to keep in mind, there are a number of other things
that you can also think about.
This guide is meant to be informative to help beginners who want to set up their own
websites on the salient points that they will have to keep in mind while they do this.
Some of the tips may be a little complicated, but most of them are very simple and
how popular your site becomes depends on how effectively you can bring them all
together.
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CHAPTER 2
WEB COTENT
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The content that you put up on your website is the most critical thing that you need to
think of. In the same way that a store will do well only if they sell things that people
need, you will get people visiting your website only if you give something that people
are looking for. Of course it also means that you are entering a crowded market
because genuinely unique niches are hard to come by. If you do find one, you are on
to a good thing, but even if not, as long as you make the content appealing, you are
sure to find takers.
Do something that others don't do. For example, selling products or services online
is catching on really fast, and you will find a number of sites with products that link
back to the larger online retailers like Amazon or eBay. If you want to do the same, it
is not that difficult, except that there is something that you will have to give that other
websites do not offer. For example, if you offer a personal review of the product that
you are selling you are sure to develop a certain number of loyal customers and as
long as the reviews are informative and helpful you will only get more customers with
time.
There are other websites that offer the same thing, but most of them will have only a
couple of lines that they probably found in other websites and copied. If you give
information that is more detailed and specific, things that only a user would know,
you are sure to make a hit.
Keep people coming back for more!
This does take more work and time, but unless you are willing to invest in good
content, there is really no point in proceeding further. Make sure that you do your
research. Even if you are only selling dog collars, as long as you give the pros and
cons of each one honestly people will appreciate it. The goal should be to make the
content such that people who even casually visit your site once will bookmark it and
keep coming back.
Keep it short and simple
While writing your content, remember that just because you want to be informative
you should not have long winded articles. Statistics show that between 600 and 800
words is the best length for most online articles. If you want to fill space in your site
use other interactive content. Not only will this make the whole thing nicer to see and
read it will also relieve the monotony of just plain text.
Even if you do not have the expertise to create interactive content, just using bullet
points and charts in-between text will break it up into smaller more easily read
pieces.
Stay who you are
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Lastly, while writing, never lose your human voice. While writing it is easy to lose the
personal touch that you give when talking and instead go for a more professional
voice. The only thing that this will serve to do is to make visitors feel unwanted.
This becomes more of a problem as you grow, because as you see more money
come in you will start to streamline the content. You need to walk a tight rope here
because it is very easy to lose what brought people to your site in the first place
while doing this. The risk of changing anything is that just as there is potential for
success, there is an equally good chance for failure too.
One more thing that you should keep in mind when developing web content is that
the more graphics you have, the more time it takes to load the page. While this may
not be a problem with many people because they have a broadband connection, a
number of people access the net through their phones and tablets, and heavy
websites really slow down these machines when not on a wifi connection. Find that
balance.
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CHAPTER 3
Sending Newsletters and Info
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Newsletters and subscribers are a big thing in many websites nowadays. Websites
ask people to subscribe to their free newsletters and keep sending out information
every week or sometimes more frequently depending on the strategy that they
follow. A few years ago, there may have been an issue with spam filters and emails
being placed in junk folders. Today, this is still true but ISP are realizing the fact that
news letters are here to stay, so place news letters and email info high on your list of
to do's when feeding your subscribers.
When you do send out your email's and newsletters it is a good idea to get creative
with content and the title of your email. Interesting titles create open rates, and open
rates create revenue. Try to offer interesting titles which offer value. Depending on
your business you should be able to work out what your subscribers want to read
and what sells after some time of research.
Give them the option
A better idea is to give the option to people to subscribe to an RSS feed. This gives
them the option to either choose to subscribe or not which means that only genuinely
interested people will. It will also give you a much more accurate idea of how popular
your site is because most of those who subscribe will actually read what you have to
say. You now have three good option for people to read your content.
1. RSS Feed
2. Email Newsletters
3. Your website content via bookmarks
Give value
When you have your subscriber interest, the best ways of generating interest is to
give huge value. Don't just write rehashed information that is easily found in other
places online. If you are recommending a particular software for a specific purpose
give honest impressions that are not found elsewhere. You may think that this is too
much to give away freely, but look at it this way. Open Source is catching on like
blazes now, and there is a free alternative to almost everything, including Operating
Systems. If you want to charge for your opinions as well as for the product that you
sell, you will find that someone else is only charging for the product and is offering
their opinions freely resulting in a movement away from your site.
In conclusion to giving value, ensure you give the best value. Remember, you are in
competition with a lot of other websites and newsletters around the globe. stand out
to make a difference.
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CHAPTER 4
Become a Community Member
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If you are starting a website business, chances are that there is already an online
community on the niche that you want to start yours in. Make sure that you become
involved and join them. Don't get so high and mighty that you think that everything
that you write online should get you money. Write on other people's blogs and
websites too. Just make sure that you link back to your site. Usually this is done in
the signature and is one of the most effective ways of generating traffic to your site
as long as what you write is worth reading. If the posting was good, people will come
to your site just to read other articles written by you which is what you want. Gone
are the times of selfish business owners. Giving and sharing content are the new
ways to do business. People respect the knowledge of others and follow that
knowledge. This is how you will generate your content.
Quote, but link
If you are pushed for content, another way is to quote from an article written
elsewhere on the net. Usually nobody minds you quoting as long as you give them
credit for it and link back to their site as well. Not only is this good etiquette, it will
also improve your standing within the community which means that slowly, other
more established people will start to link to your site. Remember, people respect
knowledge.
Apart from the traffic that this linking generates, there is another more valuable
reason for doing this. Most search engines do not index a website as soon as it is
hosted. There are a number of people who create sites on free to use communities
and then do not follow it up. Obviously no search engine wants any site like this in
their results. One way that they identify if a site is in use and is genuine is by the
number of links back to it. If these links are from sites in good standing with the
search engines, the chances of your site getting indexer faster are greater.
However, you do need to remember to write original content 99% of the time and do
not quote everyone else's content 100% of the time. The search engines love
original content.
Use article directories
An older , but still very popular way of getting these links back is by posting articles
on article directories and then linking it to your site in the bio section. There are many
such article directories that allow you to upload content free although they have
certain criteria about the kind of articles that you can upload. Ezine Articles is only
one among them and there are a number of others that you can post to.
What this does is help you upload a lot of content in places other than your website
and then back link to your website thus improving your website standing with the
search engines. This is where you use the SEO optimization that you hear about
frequently. There are two goals to doing this, one is the already mentioned improving
of ranking with search engines, and the other is that sometimes these articles will
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actually come up higher in the ranking than your site. If this happens you will be
driving traffic to your site from there too. Remember, original content is always the
best way to achieve the best rankings from your articles and your website content.
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