"29 Ways to Drive Traffic To Your Website ... and Keep Them Coming Back!"
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.
About the Author:
© Copyright 2002 All Rights Reserved. Maria Marsala, Business & Life
Coach-Consultant. Maria works with successful individuals as they take their
success to an even higher level. Subscribe to "Helping You and Your
Business Grow" our free weekly online newsletter or download our free business
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