Tweet

Drive Web Traffic - Common SEO Practices

Guest post by: Ilya Bodner

Article Overview: What good is having a store without customers? A TV commercial with no viewers? Similarly, a website without visitors is a waste of cyberspace and money. The reality is that many businesses have ineffective website marketing that fails to deliver sufficient return for the time, effort and money spent. How does a small business draw visitors to its site? It can be like finding a needle in a haystack without the proper methods of identification and promotion. One solution is Search Engine Optimization.

Drive Web Traffic - Common SEO Practices

DRIVING WEB TRAFFIC What good is having a store without customers? A TV commercial with no viewers? Similarly, a website without visitors is a waste of cyberspace and money. The reality is that many businesses have ineffective website marketing that fails to deliver sufficient return for the time, effort and money spent.

How does a small business draw visitors to its site? It can be like finding a needle in a haystack without the proper methods of identification and promotion. One solution is Search Engine Optimization.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

There are millions of websites vying for attention. The worldwide web contains over 5 billion web pages, with nearly 7 million new pages-added daily! Optimum search engine optimization (SEO) is one way to ensure a constant stream of traffic to the site.

SEO is a necessity so that your website ranks in the top 30 search engine results. Submitting a site that is successfully indexed by a search engine is only the beginning. Content must be relevant to the search terms. Reciprocal links with complimentary websites also give a big boost in search engines.

HINTS FOR UTILIZING SEO

When you use the internet, what do you use for searching across billions of websites for the information you need? Do you use Google? Yahoo? AOL? MSN? There are hundreds of smaller search engines, but over 95% of all web searching is done on these search engines.

So how do you actually find relevant information? Do you go to Page 31 for results, or do you stop on Page 1 or 2? Search Engine Optimization is the art of structuring a website and providing content that is clear, cohesive, relevant, and popular-a crucial element of internet marketing.

It is the most economical method of achieving best results with search engines, and a great accomplishment to appear on a search engine under a keyword that is relevant to your business. Here are a few things to consider for your website so you can get the most out of SEO:

ü Content. Offer lots of content that is relevant to your small business or industry.

ü Keyword Enrichment. Make sure keywords that relate to your small business appear often throughout the body of your content.

ü Clarity and Grammar. Complex algorithms can look at the sentence structure and format, and will favor the sites that are well written.

ü Links. Send links to your website to your friends and family through email and explain what the company does in a clear, cohesive method. Have them forward the information to their friends, family and even acquaintances. Encourage them to talk about it with people on the internet.

ü Forums. Find forums that are related to your industry, product, or service. Create an account and offer free advice. Make sure to provide some links to your website where they can go to get additional information, but be careful to avoid spamming. (See below.)

ü Chatrooms. Offer free help and advice in chatrooms. If your website contains useful information, direct people there. Avoid spamming at all costs.

ü Traffic.Websites that receive high traffic are more popular than those that don't. Even if the content is better on one that receives less traffic, it will not appear as close to the top of the first results page as the one with poorer content with higher traffic. In order for your website to be considered popular, it should receive more traffic than your competitors for that top position. This is where all visitors to your website make a difference. The more news you spread about your website (non-spam), and the more people you get involved, the more visitors your website will receive. With increased visitors, your website is more likely to be ranked higher, and therefore displayed higher.

SEARCH ENGINE ADVERTISING

Web advertising through search engines is also called sponsored search and search engine advertising. The most popular programs are offered by Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft. Some offer Pay Per Click (PPC) services, also known as Cost Per Click (CPC), where the advertiser is only charged when a user visits the ad. Others use a Cost Per Impression (CPM) model where advertisers are charged every time the Advertisement appears on their website. Ads can take many forms, including text, banner ads, video ads, map ads, and even audio ads.

KEYWORD-BASED WEB MARKETING

Marketing based on a keyword search could take place through a search engine such as google.com, or a search engine partner site, such as shopping.com. For example, Google offers a service called AdWords, which allows companies, for a small fee, to have a link to their website featured when a user searches a specific keyword.

CONTENT-BASED WEB MARKETING

Many search engines (Google, Ask.com, Yahoo!, Search, etc.) have partner websites with specific content. The websites agree to let the search engines place content-specific advertising on their website, in return for a fee. The search engine then finds companies interested in advertising on websites with their desired content. For example, an online dog food retailer might have their advertisement placed on a site about dogs.

Both of these advertising formats allow advertisers to target specific users with certain interests. Generally, these advertisements are paid for based on either a pay per click campaign or an impression-based campaign.

SPAM AND OTHER BAD INTERNET MARKETING PRACTICES

Spamming is the abuse of the internet and email in order to send unsolicited and undesired bulk messages. The best recognized method of spamming is junk email. In fact, over 95% of email messages transmitted over the internet is SPAM.

Sincerely,

Ilya Bodner

Small Business Owner

Related Articles
  How Do I Drive Traffic To My Website?
  Search Engine Optimization Versus SMO (Social Media Optimization)
  Using Google Adwords To Drive Laser Targeted Traffic
  Article Marketing: An Article A Day Drives Web Traffic Your Way
  Search Engines Forget the Quick Fix
  Car Insurance - Pay-Per-Mile Coverage
  Search Engine Optimization is not always the answer
  The Power of Gift Cards
  Online Marketing Strategy,Getting Website Traffic
  Successful Internet Marketing Doesn’t Just Happen
  Internet Business - Do You Need a Website When Starting One
  How to Make Money Blogging!- Untold Secret Revealed
  How to Find and Attract Highly Targeted Prospects to Your Website
  The Cheapest Way To Generate Traffic To Your Website
  6 Time Tested Ways To Increase Targeted Website Traffic
  What Is The Best Way To Get More Traffic?
  The Web Marketing Pipeline - And Why Yours is Leaking Money
  Internet Marketers Proven tips for Beginners
  Internet Home Business Tips - The Importance of Baclinks
  Top 5 Ways To Low Cost Traffic For Your Online Business

Article Tags: business financing, Ilya Bodner, strong business credit



Related Forum Posts
Re: What are your May Goals? - Thanks Evan! I just changed one of my business goals from setting up a video site on Traffic-Geyser to: "Set up a newsletter email series (let's say 10 messages) on Get Response..." I reviewed Traffic Geyser in the latest episode of "David's Den" on my blog (see sig file), included an excellent video review of Traffic Geyser by John Detlif and decided against taking that particular project any further. Still lots to get done!
Re: Alexa Ranking Goals - LOL, I spoke too soon. Within a few hours of my post, Alexa updated the Traffic Rank on the toolbar. Note however that the 3 month Traffic Rank on Alexa.com has still not been updated...
Re: Picking an external hard drive to backup my files - So I ended up buying a Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini 250GB External Hard Drive from TigerDirect.ca for $97.99. While I wasn't able to get the pre-installed software to work on my computer for whatever reason... I was still able to transfer all 14 GB of my personal files via the old fashioned "copy" and "paste" method. Hopefully this won't compromise the safety of my stored data.
Re: Why Your Business' Website Is Not Making You Money - Hi Jackie, As GT has said, word of mouth has a place on the Internet but is usually more associated in a local sense. I have seen some fantastic websites that don’t get traffic and very poor sites that get lots of traffic but no sales. The trick is to find a niche or a product where there is a demand. Design a relevant website full of interesting and updated content. Drive as much traffic by whatever means that you can. If you can bring these three elements together then you are far more likely to make a success of your Internet business. regards, Mal.
Top Franchises For 2007 - Entrepreneur came out with a list of the top franchises for 2007. They are: 1. Subway 2. Dunkin' Donuts 3. Jackson Hewitt Tax Service 4. 7-Eleven Inc. 5. UPS Store, The/Mail Boxes Etc. 6. Domino's Pizza LLC 7. Jiffy Lube Int'l. Inc. 8. Sonic Drive In Restaurants 9. McDonald's 10. Papa John's Int'l. Inc. It still seems to be dominated by food companies (70% of the list!) Can non-food companies make it as a successful franchise?


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Why Use an Advertising Agency

Sales Courage and Resilience

Your Local Small Business Online Marketing Funnel

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.