Category Archives: web traffic

6 Ways to Drive Targeted Traffic to Your Website

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Posted by admin on April 13, 2009 – 6:17 am
Filed under Copywriting, Gain Brand Loyalty, Marketing Strategy, RSS Feed, article marketing, blogging for business, ezines, increase site traffic, market in economic crisis, social networking, web traffic, website copywriter

1. Blog for Business: Blogging for business is free and is an excellent way to attract thousands of potential customers to your website, increase your search engine rankings, and boost company credibility. Regularly posting a blog also builds loyal readership and attracts more people to your website.

2. Comment on Blogs: Posting comments on blogs, forums, and discussion boards related to your target market and industry is a great way to increase site traffic. Use these platforms to post comments, get consumer feedback, and search for industry updates. Posting relevant and helpful comments increases your credibility and lures more readers to your website. After every comment, include a link to your blog or website to increase targeted traffic.

3. Socialize Online: Social media sites effectively integrate your business into the online community and help give your company result-driven online exposure. They’re a great place to post inbound links to your website and are a way to express industry expertise. Social media sites allow you to post recent news, company events, company information, discussion questions, and other useful tools to build solid online relationships.  

4. Bookmark Your Business: Bookmarking your online articles, blogs, and website in specific categories on a social bookmarking site, such as Digg, allows you to reach out to your target market. These sites permit you to share web content with others and allow them to vote on the content. If this content becomes popular among viewers, it will be voted to the front page of the bookmarking site and be viewed by thousands of potential clients.

5. Utilize RSS Feed: RSS feed allows you to reach subscribers interested in what your company has to offer. RSS feed is similar to emails since they’re both sent to subscribers, providing them with updated information. RSS feed makes it easy for subscribers to be alerted immediately and allows them to click on the link to your website. Using email together with RSS feed will increase your client base and increase site traffic.

6. Post Articles: Online article directories allow you to place niche-oriented articles into specific categories, targeted at your specific market. For example, if your real estate company writes an article for ezinearticles.com and submits it under the real estate category, you’ll receive viewers who are specifically searching for your articles.

10 Reasons Your Website Doesn’t Work

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Posted by admin on March 13, 2009 – 7:27 am
Filed under SEO, attract clients, increase online sales, increase site traffic, market in economic crisis, online buying behavior, professional web design, web copy, web traffic, website navigation

Award-winning designer and owner of Bourn Creative, Jennifer Bourn, shares her top 10 website design tips:

10. You Hired Your Friend’s Kid.
You’ve heard all about how he is great with computers and is a tech genius. He took a design class in high school or maybe a couple courses at the local community college and he has done a couple websites. Your friend mentions this a few times and you see a chance to get your website done and save some money. At first you’re excited, and then you start to realize that developing a professional polished website that works isn’t as easy as you thought. Soon you’ve spent hundred of dollars and you’re unhappy. You don’t even want to tell people your have a website because you’re embarrassed. So not only did you waste your money, but you wasted your valuable, billable time and lost out of some potential new business.

9. You Used Free Do-It-Yourself Software.
You knew you needed hosting of some sort and you decided to buy it before consulting with your web designer/developer. In the process of buying hosting you saw a cool tool to design your site yourself. Awesome, right? I mean how hard can slapping together a website be? So you used the free tools, maybe took a class on HTML, or you bought a template to work on. Good for you. But then you start to wonder why the search engines aren’t finding you – in fact why no one is finding you. And you begin to wonder why your site isn’t converting visitors into customers. The bottom line? Go ahead and dabble with HTML and put together a website for fun, or learn enough to make some quick edits on the fly. But when it comes to your business, if you want a site that will attract attention, get remembered, bring in new business, and get the results you want, you should hire a professional. I mean you wouldn’t cut your hair yourself would you? Heck no! For that head-turning, double-take, fabulous cut, you go to a trusted professional.

8. You hired a Marketing/PR/Advertising Consultant Who Does Websites.
Ok. The title of this one alone sounds ludicrous. Would you hire a gardener to take care of your pool? No! Yes, they are in similar fields, but no they are not the same. Most marketing professionals who offer design services do so because to make more money. They outsource the work to a designer, mark up the project and then sell it to you. And then you’re left getting advice from a pseudo expert and the not actual expert. Plus if you hire a good designer who understands the marketing aspect, you’re duplicating costs! Now, in some cases this works great. I subcontract for select marketing professionals because I am brought in on the project from the first day and work directly with the client. The problem arises when the consultant is the intermediary. First, you must be careful your consultant is not outsourcing design work to third-world countries because they can make more money on the project with a cheap subcontractor (Remember the saying you get what you pay for). Second, you want to make sure your message, desires, goals, etc. are not getting lost in the translation from person to person. Don’t let your communications end up like the game telephone we all played as kids.

7. Your Website Design is Awful.
Kym Yancey commented from the stage at the eWomenNetwork conference in 2008, If you don’t take your business seriously, if you don’t value your business enough to have it designed by a professional visual communications expert, then how can you expect anyone else to take you seriously and value what you offer. If your website looks like it was done by a high school kid, was slapped together in a weekend or is just pain unprofessional people will not want to give you their money.

6. You Are Using A Splash Page.
Splash pages with maybe some Flash animation may have been considered cool when they first came out, but they are not anymore. If you’re using one of these on your website, you are loosing out on potential new business every day. Splash pages actually do more harm than good. They add clicks the visitor has to make to get to your information, they usually have no content the search engines can index, and they interrupt the flow of information.

5. Your Website Content is Missing.
If you have a basic website with maybe three pages and barely any content, you’re telling your visitors that you only have a site because some told you that you had to have one. You’re sending the message that you don’t think your site is worth paying attention to and you don’t really value what it can do for you, so you posted something pretty and just left it to sit there. What you need is valuable timely content the user can relate to. Deliver content they want and include information they need on a regular basis

4. Your Website is Boring.
Your site is your opportunity for you to educate visitors on why they need you, what you offer and how you can help them. Answer the questions: 1) What can you do for me and; 2) Why should I care? Make sure the content is interesting and fun and add some personal touches too. People do business with other people they trust. Use your site as a launching ground for building new relationships, invited communication and interaction and have fun doing it.

3. You Forgot SEO and Traffic Building.
You can have the most amazing, fantastic, gorgeous website design ever seen, but if no one can find the site, it was a waste of money. Don’t forget to include in your budget various Search Engine Optimization (SEO), site marketing, and traffic building techniques.

2. Your Website is Too Generic.
You can have the most amazing, fantastic, gorgeous website design ever seen, but if you don’t stand out from your competition, you will not be remembered. A pretty site is completely different from a memorable, “sticky” site that stands out among the rest. A branded site communicates a completely unique selling proposition. It communicates why you are different, what sets you apart, and why your visitors need you. The worst thing a small business is to do is compete on price and that is what your visitors will default to if you don’t give them something else to focus on.

1. Your Website Didn’t Begin at The End.
The absolute first thing you should do when planning your website is to identify the primary and secondary goals of the website. Define exactly what you want to get from completing the project, what change or difference you want to see and what action you want the visitors to take. Be sure to clearly guide your visitors to take that action by communicating with “you” communications instead of “me” communications. If you jump right into the design and development of the site without addressing these issues, it more than likely will not give you’re the return on your investment you were hoping for.

About Jennifer Bourn
Award-winning designer, Jennifer Bourn of Bourn Creative works with entrepreneurs to build their business, generate leads and make more money by effectively communicating their unique message and personality with proven marketing strategies, beautiful attention-getting design and organic search engine optimization techniques. Specializing in Internet marketing and brand development, Jennifer can not only deliver the results you want on time and in budget, but she can help you build a brand everyone else will envy. http://www.bourncreative.com/

Increase SEO and Attract More Site Visitors with the Right Meta Title Tags

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Posted by admin on March 1, 2009 – 2:00 pm
Filed under SEO, attract clients, client attraction, increase online sales, increase site traffic, market in economic crisis, web traffic, website

The title tag is the most important type of meta tag and is an extremely important component of your website. What exactly is meta title tag?

This tag includes the words that appear at the top of your browser and describes what the page is about. It’s also the first thing search engines recognize on your website and is the default title that bookmarking sites (such as Digg and Stumbleupon) will use when a visitor decides to bookmark your site.

You want a separate title tag for each main page on your website. This allows search engines to identify what your page is specifically about. It’s important to create effective meta title tags for all pages on your site because each has the potential to be listed in the search engine results page–not just your home page.

Changing title tags to reflect what the web page is about not only helps with your page ranking but also helps get more visitors to click your link on the search engine results page.

Be Found on the Web: Five Steps to Optimize Your Website

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Posted by admin on February 24, 2009 – 8:19 pm
Filed under Marketing Strategy, SEO, SEO copywriter, increase online sales, increase site traffic, market in economic crisis, marketing in bad economy, online marketing, web traffic

You can have a beautiful website with a clear business message. You can have a growing email list and an ezine that people love to read. But if you aren’t working to up your search engine rankings, all your hard work won’t get you found on the internet. 

If you want to grow your online presence and compete on the world wide web, it is imperative to optimize your website. It isn’t hard. And you don’t have to be tech savvy. All you need is the understanding of how it works and the tools to know how to do it.    

Here are five key steps to organically optimize your website:

Step One: Determine key phrases or keywords that potential website visitors will type into a search engine to find you. Remember, your target phrases must describe what your web page is about. One of the best ways to determine your target keywords is to ask people how they would search for you. Ask your current clients, colleagues, friends, and family. You can also use one of the many keyword tools.

Step Two: Analyze your competition. In the world of SEO, your competition isn’t who you might think it is because you’re working on a page level, not the entire site. The best way to determine competition using the same keywords as you, is to get on Google or Yahoo and type in your keywords and phrases. See what comes up and make note of the competition. Click on all the links on the first search engine result page and make a note of where and how that site uses their keywords. 

Step Three: Incorporate keywords and phrases into your web copy. Make sure your copy reads organically, or naturally. If it reads as if keywords have been stuffed into every single sentence, you need to rewrite it. Overstuffing won’t help you motivate visitors to call you or buy from you. And it might get you into trouble with the search engines and hurt your rankings. Also, including your main key phrases and keywords in the title of your page and in subheads helps with SEO.

Step Four: Get those links! Search engines love links. You’ve probably heard the term backlinks. Backlinks are external links from other web sites and blogs that link to the site in question. The more like-minded, quality sites that link to you, the more the search engine thinks your site keywords are important and will rank the keywords higher. In a nutshell, links are vital to your website if you want to rank high in the search engines. Search engines place a higher value on one-way links as opposed to reciprocal links. 

Step Five: List your website on directories. Directory listings are vital to your online visibility and should be a top priority for your online marketing strategy. Directory submissions provide inbound links to your site. These links help your search engine rankings. The more inbound links you have, the better your placement in the search engines. Submitting your link to relevant directories is a great way to maximize your SEO efforts.

Navigation: Increase Chances of Customers Taking Action on your Website

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Posted by admin on February 18, 2009 – 2:33 pm
Filed under attract clients, increase online sales, marketing in bad economy, web traffic, website navigation

Design a website that is clear and easy to use, and decrease your chances of customers leaving based on difficult navigation. You’re less likely to have customers leave your site when it provides clear navigation and a result-driven layout. Don’t leave website traffic to chance; do your research on effective website design and layout.

 

The main goal of your company’s website is to get your target client to take action. Before designing the website layout, decide what action you want your client to take. This action could be to call you for a consultation, apply for your services, purchase your product, make a donation, or join your cause. Make the action obvious on your website. This is where result-driven copy comes into play.

Copy works with design to help facilitate easy navigation through the site. You want visitors to be able to investigate your services / products easily on your website, which means links, contact information, the newsletter subscription box, and the company’s blog should be easy to find. It’s important to have well-written web copy to motivate viewers to move about the site.

 

For example, a travel agency wants clients to call for more information on booking a trip to Italy. This means, there should be a Contact Us tab on your tool bar, your phone number should be in plain sight, and your call to action on your homepage should motivate visitors to call your agency today. Placing your contact information in several spots decreases the chances of a client moving on to your competitor’s website. If your website navigation is confusing, visitors won’t take action because they won’t know how to find the button to contact you.

 

Many businesses lose their customers due to poorly designed navigation. Easy navigation is crucial. Eliminating any ambiguity about where to look for information within a site is important.

The four main things to remember about navigation: Make it simple. Make it fast. Make it clear. Make it work.

SEO Efforts: Rank #1 in Search Engines with Effective Web Copy and Website Design

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Posted by admin on February 13, 2009 – 4:40 am
Filed under SEO, SEO copywriter, client attraction, increase online sales, increase site traffic, market in economic crisis, marketing in bad economy, online marketing, update webcopy, web traffic, website navigation

Designing a company website requires some compromising. It involves the perfect balance between visually appealing and functional elements. It’s important that one element doesn’t dominate the other. This is where many companies go wrong.

 Many times company websites are polluted with too much flash, pointless graphics, and unnecessary copy. The combination of these elements is a major risk factor for decreasing website SEO.

In order to ensure your website ranks #1 in search engines, you must adhere to some kind of compromise. Make sure your entire website isn’t in flash. Many people might think flash is more appealing—and it is at times—but it greatly reduces your SEO if overused. Flash limits the amount of copy you can have on your page. Great copy is your best chance at ranking #1 in search engines and should never be substituted for unnecessary elements.

Result-driven copy . . .

·         Increases SEO with effective keywords placed throughout. It’s important that these keywords add to the message and mission of your company.

·         Converts leads into sales and motivates visitors to take action on your website.

·         Increases site traffic.

·         Targets your company’s specific market and keeps them on your website.

·         Works to reinforce your brand image. Compressed, informative, and concise web copy is easy to read, gets to the point, and expresses your brand image in merely a few sentences without compromising important details.

It’s important to hire a web designer and web copywriter who work toward expressing your brand image online. An excellent web designer will ensure your site is attractive and functional, while an effective web copywriter will guarantee your company message comes across accurately and thoroughly.

The functionality and visual elements of your website may require a slight compromise, but you shouldn’t compromise on a web copywriter and web designer who don’t understand your needs and message. Grow your business. Grow to success. Hire the right copywriter and web designer.     

 

Targeted Traffic: How to Bring the Right Prospects to Your Website

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Posted by admin on January 6, 2009 – 7:56 pm
Filed under Growing Business, SEO, SEO copywriter, attract clients, blogging for business, client attraction, grow your business, increase site traffic, market in economic crisis, online marketing, target market, web traffic

Reaching your target market online ensures a steady flow of clients from different online sources. Making your business visible in numerous areas on the web increases the number of potential clients who will look at your site. This can eventually increase sales, skyrocket site traffic, and boost your conversion rates.  

Here are some ways to bring in targeted traffic to your website:

·       Posting online articles on directories, forums, and social bookmarking sites is a great way to present your business to your specific targeted market. These sites have categories where articles can be posted, allowing viewers to immediately click on categories related to their specific interests. For example, if you offer skin care services and write an article on revolutionized products, you would place it under its associated category and viewers interested in this category would be viewing your article. Right there, you’ve reached your target market.

·       Research the richest keywords for your website. For example, if you own a high-end day spa, it’s important to anticipate the most popular words your target market is using on search engines. This will allow you to increase your SEO (search engine optimization) and reach out to clients with a specific interest in your company and its offerings.

·       Comment on blogs and forums that relate to your industry. These comments can be chock-full of tips and information about your industry, while expressing your opinion in the blog or forum conversation. Know what kinds of blogs and forums would interest your target market and make frequent appearances on them to show you are interested in comments, news, and updates related to your area of work.

Observing Customer Behavior Online with Heat Maps

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Posted by admin on January 3, 2009 – 11:16 pm
Filed under Marketing Strategy, Marketing Tip, marketing trends, online marketing, small business marketing, target market, web traffic, website navigation

In-store selling allows you to make useful observations, helping you to better understand the customer’s wants and needs and helping you to interpret ways to satisfy these needs. You’re able to answer questions immediately in person, observe if the customer seems confused and notice what the customer’s attention is focused on. In-person communication can also help you to use different selling tactics to sell the product / service based on customer objections.

Observing customers online is difficult since there’s no direct interaction with the consumer. There are now excellent online tools that allow you to collect data on where customers are looking on the website. One such tool is a heat map. A heat map is an excellent way to help you make positive changes to your marketing campaigns, selling tactics, advertisements, website element positioning, and web copy changes.

Heat maps track eye movement on a website page to show where viewers are looking the most. Knowing the key areas where consumers are focused allows you to understand where important links and information should go. “Hot spots” are color-coded areas on the webpage, showing where consumers are looking the most.

Let’s say there’s a great deal of eye movement toward a certain area of your site but not many clicks in this area. This is a hint that perhaps the link isn’t enticing enough to click or it’s not important to the user. At this point, you’d either change the phrasing of the link or switch the link with a more significant one. Heat maps can help you redesign your website and try new additions, replacements, and more.

A great website offering heat maps is Crazyegg.com. It provides heat map services for a low price. 

Maximize Your Marketing Efforts in Any Economy

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Posted by admin on December 29, 2008 – 5:55 pm
Filed under Marketing Strategy, Marketing Tip, SEO, SEO copywriter, attract clients, blogging for business, grow your business, increase site traffic, market in economic crisis, marketing trends, online advertising, online buying behavior, online marketing, press releases, small business marketing, social networking, target market, web traffic, website

How would you like to be able to keep growing your business no matter what the economy does?

Sign up for expert online copywriter Michelle Salater’s Online Business Marketing Bootcamp for Beginners, and she’ll show you everything you need to know to go where the customers are—online—and grow your business by maximizing your marketing efforts.

And do it in any economy. 

Over the course of 8 weeks, you will work one-on-one with Michelle as she shows you the same tips, tactics, and strategies she used to take her own business from flat broke to so busy she has to turn customers away…and she did this all within one year.

 

Because Michelle really wants to help you grow your business online without struggling so you can skyrocket your sales in 2009, she’s offering a $200 Early Bird Discount to those who sign up before January 4, 2008 (midnight PST). 

 

— http://www.marketingonlinebootcamp.com/

Now is A CRITICAL TIME for businesses to invest in their marketing. And the best way and most cost efficient way to do this is to market online.

A 2001 McGraw-Hill study found that aggressive recession advertisers / marketers increased their market share 2 ½ times the average for all businesses than in post-recession.

How would you like to increase your market share 2 ½ times?

If you’d like to skyrocket your online sales, increase website traffic, and save thousands of dollars by implementing online strategies on your own, NOW IS YOUR TIME to sign up for Michelle’s Online Business Marketing Bootcamp for Beginners. The course begins January 21st.

She can’t make it any easier for you than the 3-payment option she’s made available and the Early Bird Special (save $200) that ends at midnight January 4, 2009.  

Remember, this special offer won’t be available after January 4…

–http://www.marketingonlinebootcamp.com/

5 Tips To Increase Traffic to Your Website

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Posted by admin on December 11, 2008 – 5:58 pm
Filed under Growing Business, RSS Feed, SEO, SEO copywriter, article marketing, blogging, blogging for business, increase site traffic, market in economic crisis, online articles, online marketing, social networking, web traffic

Increasing targeted traffic to your website can cost a small fortune. But it doesn’t have to if you know the right tips, tools, and strategies to get a significant amount of targeted traffic that you need right now. 

·       Post comments on blogs, forums, and discussion boards related to your target market. It would be highly beneficial for you to join a discussion board / forum related to your industry in order to post comments, get consumer feedback, and be introduced to new industry information you may not already know. Posting relevant and helpful comments can increase your credibility and lure more readers to your website link. After every comment, include a link to your blog or website to increase targeted traffic.

·       Social bookmarking is a great way to increase targeted traffic. Bookmarking your online articles and website on a site, such as Digg, under specific categories allows you to reach out to your target market. It permits you to share your web content with others and allows them to vote on its content. If it becomes popular among viewers, it will be voted to the front page of the bookmarking site and be viewed by thousands of potential clients.

·       Utilizing RSS feed and email lists allows you to reach subscribers interested in what your company has to offer. RSS feed and emails are similar since they’re both sent to subscribers, providing them with updated information. RSS feed makes it easy for subscribers to be alerted immediately and allows them to click on the link to your website. Using these combined marketing strategies will increase your client base and will likely ensure an increase in visits to your website.

·       Exchange links with others to increase targeted traffic. If your link can be found on a handful of sites, it can dramatically increase the number of clients visiting your site.

·       Online Article Directories allow you to place niche-oriented articles into specific categories. Your target audience is more likely to be searching for articles in a specific category. For example, if your real estate company writes an article for ezinearticles.com and submits it under the Real Estate category, you’ll receive viewers who are specifically searching for Real Estate articles. This will eliminate viewers who are not in your specific target market.

For more helpful tips on marketing in economic crisis and to learn about our many marketing services, visit Michelle Salater Writing and Editorial, LLC.