Recommendations for business owners who wish to generate more traffic to their websites
I am frequently asked by business owners how they can create more traffic to their websites and ultimately convert the traffic into revenue generating customers.
Ultimately, getting traffic to a website comes down to getting the website noticed. There are several methods to do this. I’ll break them into the categories of paid and unpaid.
Paid Advertising
Paid advertising is definitely easier and depending on the value of a business’ customer may be economically viable. Paid advertising on the internet is not terribly different than traditional forms of advertising. Ad copy is written and the ads are submitted. However, the method for presenting the advertisement to the viewer is completely different and there are several pricing models involved. Ads are displayed to a viewer on the internet based on keywords. When an internet user performs a search on the internet he/she enters in a phrase which contains one or more keywords. Advertisers specify which keywords they believe are relevant to their advertisements and businesses and submit a bid amount. The ads with the highest bids for a keyword are presented most frequently and ads with lower bids are shown less frequently. Advertisers control their spending by setting daily, weekly or monthly budgets. When their budgets have been met, their ads stop showing.
There are two basic pricing models for paid internet advertising, Pay Per Click (PPC) and Pay Per View (CPV). In the Pay Per Click model, the advertiser pays only when a viewer actually clicks on their ad and is re-directed to the advertisers specified site. In the Pay Per View model, the advertiser pays each time their advertisement is shown regardless of whether the viewer clicks on their ad or not. Pay Per View is typically charged per thousand views and can be much more productive when the ad is particularly effective.
Unpaid Advertising
Unpaid advertising requires significantly more diligence. It requires becoming what the major search engines consider to be an authority. In order to achieve this status the site must receive frequent relevant content updates and have that content published on other sites which are also considered authoritative. When a websites content is accepted by and reference by authoritative sites a site receives what is called a backlink. Backlinks are simply links from other sites “back” to the target site. In the eyes of the search engines, the more backlinks the better.
Another item which can significantly help a domain rank well in the search engines is in the selection of the domain name itself. Many business owners select the domain of their website based on the name of their business. This is understandable but does little to help us attract traffic. Internet users rarely search for a business name. If they knew the name of the business, they could have just looked it up. Instead, an internet user is typing in a search phrase and is presented with a list of websites that the search engines felt were relevant. There is no higher relevance than the search phrase being contained precisely in the domain name.
When I consult with clients, we first do some preliminary keyword research to identify a significant list of potential search phrases relevant to their business. I like to find a keyword with an adequate search volume and buy a domain for the customer which contains that search phrase. This virtually ensures that we will generate at least some new traffic for that customer.
We then begin the process of examining the keyword list that I have generated, looking at the search volumes and the competition for those keywords to decide where we can get traction quickly. In many cases we find at least one keyword with adequate search volumes and little competition. When this is the case, we can quickly dominate that keyword. Getting a number of the top listings in the search engines can be done in a relatively short time frame when this is true.
The bad news for business owners is that the process is never ending. Optimizing a site for a single search phrase or keyword and stopping there would be ignoring significant volumes of traffic. After I succeed in getting a clients website ranked for a single keyword, we simply repeat the process for the next keyword, and then the next. You get the point. And of course, new keywords keep popping up.
Article Marketing
Business owners possess an amazing amount of knowledge. This knowledge, when shared, is one of the best mechanisms for creating backlinks to a website. There exist literally hundreds of sites which are interested in the knowledge that business owners have to share. These sites are “article directories” and their subscribers are looking for good information. Every time a business owner writes and article and publishes it, another backlink to their website is created. Here’s a free tip, if you really want to get noticed by the search engines, get your business associates to read the articles that you have published and comment on them. This really increases how authoritative the search engines consider the publisher.
Business Directories
When was the last time you opened the yellow pages. If you’re like most people its been a long time. You may not even be sure you still have one.
However, good, valuable business directories still exist. They have just moved online. Online business directories serve the same purpose as the yellow pages except they provide a business’ customer the opportunity to review they business right on line. You probably already guessed this, but reviews in these directories are incredibly important to being considered an authority by the search engines.
Social Network Marketing
There is no denying that Social Networking and Bookmarking sites are taking the internet by storm. Question is, do business owners understand how important they are for growing their businesses. Just one statistic here. Last I heard, Facebook had over 450 million users and gets more than 1 billion visits per day. What’s interesting about Facebook is that its users tend to stay on the site for a long time.
So, Mr. or Mrs. business owner, how is your fan page doing? Don’t know what a fan page is? You better figure it out, and fast.
Of course, Facebook is only one example of a social site. There are literally hundreds of social sites that can help generate traffic to a website. Again, the objective here is to generate backlinks to our target website.
Video Marketing
Do you really want to bring traffic to your website? Then you need to be doing video marketing.
Everyone’s heard of YouTube. Did you know its owned by Google. That may be why Google considers high rankings of videos on YouTube so strongly in establishing their rankings.
I don’t care how you do it, but find out how to get videos made and published on YouTube and then make sure you find out how to get them viewed. Another hint, use videos to share your valuable and unique business knowledge.
Where do I start?
I know this probably sounds a little overwhelming, but here are my recommendations.
- Do the keyword research first. You have to find relevant keywords which have good search volume and have reasonable competition.
- Find out what keywords your top competitors are using. There are a number of good tools available to help you do this.
- Start writing out your knowledge to share. If you have a block, a good place to start is by creating top 10 lists.
- Select your domain based on a good keyword associated with your business niche.
- Create a blog website (search engines like blogs). Install WordPress as your blog software. Its not hard, don’t worry.
- Take your writings from step 3 and create blog posts for each topic. (Hint – include a keyword in the blog post name).
- Take the same writings and publish them to the most relevant article directories. Any internet consultant should be able to direct you to the most highly considered article directorires.
- Create social bookmarks to each blog post everywhere you can.
- Create videos relaying your companies message and publish them to as many video sites as possible. You can start by just reading you blog posts. If your shy, you don’t even need to show your face, create a powerpoint and record your voice giving the presentation.
- Get your business listed in business directories and the search engines local listings.
- Encourage your existing customers and associates to review your publications and listings. You’ll get more results if you review them as well.
Is that all there is to it?
Well, no. But if you can get all of this done, then more than likely you will be a long way ahead of your competition. And isn’t that the point?
