6 Ways to Pump Up Your Website Traffic
by Rick Hendershot, Small Biz Tips
No matter what you sell or are trying to promote online, you want traffic. And
you want to turn that traffic into sales. To turn your website and other
online activities into a powerful traffic and sales generating system, the
simple fact is you need an aggressive website promotion program that is
ongoing and relentless.
Website promotion is not brain surgery, but it must be done correctly. Here
are the main components that should be emphasized in a good website promotion
program:
1. Know Your Product, Define it Clearly
2. Use Powerful Copy in Your Website, and Sales Materials
3. Create an Aggressive Link Program
4. Write Articles and Submit Them Everywhere
5. Turn Site Visitors into Leads
6. Get Instant Traffic with PPC Advertising
1. Know your product and define it clearly
Many of us have difficulty telling other people exactly what we do. Imagine
you're at a party, a meeting, or on the golf course and you get asked the
inevitable question, "So, what does your company do?" What happens? Do you
stumble around trying to remember what you told the last guy who asked that
question? Or do you have a clear, precise and memorable answer that you can
recite back to them in one or two sentences.
It goes without saying that your clarity or confusion will be reflected in
your website promotion. Make it one of your primary objectives to develop a
clear explanation of your product or service, and your website promotion will
fall nicely into place as a result.
2. Promote your product with powerful copy
If you want your website to create sales, then the job of your most important
pages is to get your primary selling message across quickly and
powerfully before your impatient visitors click on to another site.
For your people audience you must get to the point quickly and
precisely, and with sufficient emphasis to impress your visitors that you know
what you are talking about.
The Search Engines also demand a clear product definition and clear
product descriptions. But in this case the result should be Search Engine
Optimized copy. This is because the Search Engines do not read between the
lines. They look for clear indications of what your pages are about. And they
make their decisions on the basis of "keywords".
If the task of "optimizing" your website seems too daunting, then look for a
website promotion expert who can bundle this service with other promotional
services. See "website
promotion programs".
3. Create an aggressive link program
Trading links with "relevant" sites serves two important purposes. First,
relevant links create an important source of direct traffic. A visitor to a
related site will see the link to yours, click on it, and become your visitor.
Some estimates put the percentage of internet traffic resulting from this kind
of link as high as 21% of total traffic.
The other important purpose of your linking strategy is to impress the Search
Engines. Links to and from other sites indicate other site owners in your area
of interest consider your site worth looking at. That is why Google and most
of the other major Search Engines give a much better ranking to sites with
incoming links from relevant high traffic sites.
The bad news is a productive link exchange program takes quite a bit of time
and effort, and will take up to six months or more to do properly.
The good news is there are website promotion professionals who will plan and
execute a link exchange program for you as part of a package of promotion
services. This makes it very economical. See "website
promotion programs".
4. Write Articles in your field of expertise, and distribute them wherever
you can
Publishing articles in online publications, directories and ezines is one of
the most effective and least expensive kinds of website promotion. It is a
perfect way to generate interest in your site, and create traffic.
Well written articles can be used to highlight various aspects of your
products or services. At the same time you will establish yourself as an
authority in your field. And the articles you write and publish today will
continue to be available on the web for years to come.
Distributing articles is also an important way to create incoming links. Other
websites and ezines publish your articles and in the process create links
pointing back to your website.
5. Turn visitors into leads
The online sales process starts with traffic — visitors to your site. But
traffic is not enough. You want to turn some of these visitors into leads. A
"lead" is a visitor who expresses an interest by contacting you. This puts
them in "most-likely-to-buy" category, and gives you a clearly defined group
of people you can target with more specific sales messages.
To capture leads you need a carefully planned strategy. You need to get beyond
the usual "send us an email for more information" approach.
Simple online forms backed up with autoresponders are perfect for this task.
6. Use Pay-Per-Click Advertising for instant traffic
Pay-Per-Click advertising — especially Google Adwords — can be an amazingly
powerful tool to reach your exact target market and generate pre-qualified,
targeted leads almost instantly.
But this service is also becoming increasingly expensive. And when you make
mistakes they can be very costly. There are ways of maximizing your Google
Adwords results. Ways you have probably not heard about. These techniques can
save you thousands of dollars, and greatly increase the effectiveness of your
Adwords campaigns.
The best website promotion program is one that combines all six of these
techniques into an organized program. If you are too busy getting your
business started, or too busy servicing your clients, then your best bet is to
look for a website promotion professional who can prepare and maintain a
program for you.
For more details about such a program see "website
promotion programs".
Rick Hendershot is based in Conestogo, Ontario, Canada. He has spent many years as an advertising consultant, and
small business owner. He currently publishes several small business websites and ezines, and provides web design and
online marketing services to small business owners wanting to jump start their online marketing efforts. He can be
reached at rh@small-business-online.com.
For more information, contact
Richard J. Hendershot,
rh@small-business-online.com
Originally published in Small-Biz Tips
and Click-Partners.com
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