Top 10 Tips to Increase Traffic to Your Site

A few years ago (near the dawn of time - for the web at least), there was a preconception that has unfortunately stayed with us till this day… ‘If you build it, they will come’. This phrase should be banished the big dark void in the sky, along with tea-makers and annoying mobile phone ring tones! The whole idea that thousands of visitors will suddenly swarm to your site minutes after you finally upload your work and ‘launching’ it, is now unheard of.

Those days are now gone! (Which is a shame!)

Instead, you have to actually invest a little time per week/day to insure that your site is getting the traffic that it deserves. There are MANY companies out there that offer ‘Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Services’ that are not worth the money! You can gain the same (if not more) amount of exposure without spending the money, and have total control. Here are the top ways I insure my sites get good listings within search engines (mainly Google):

(In no particular order)

1 Content
This is THE most important part of any site, and needs to be thought out from the beginning – instead of being an after thought. Your site can look pretty, but if the information held within it isn’t of a good quality, there is no point even investing the time, effort and possibly money in to it. Wherever possible your pages should also contain relevant keywords that are based upon what your target audience will be searching for in Google. This subject has already been discussed in an article called ‘The Long Tail: The Myth Explained, and how you can implement it’.

2 Link Exchanging
The more your site is linked to, the more Google thinks it is a trusted and relevant source of information. The simplest way to get your domain around is to add it your signature if you frequent forums. Obviously it helps more that your website is based upon the subject of the forum – ie Sci-fi to Sci-fi, Golf to Golf etc. Another quick and easy (and in theory cost-effective) way to get more traffic is to use a relatively new site called ‘Buy a Box’ (www.buy-a-box.net). This is an experimental site run by a few friends of mine and is well worth the look – basically in theory you can double your money while advertising your site… I would get in fast through!

3 Keywords
These are SO powerful… that anyone serious about making money via their site should worship the pixels they are made of! If you get them right, Google will be able to get a much better understanding of what your website is about. Each page of your site should not only have the basic keywords that tell Google the subject matter of your site – they should also contain keywords relevant to the information contained on that page. Thirdly, the content itself can be chosen by the type of searches people are making – this will also increase traffic as you will hopefully be able to cover the exact subjects they are looking for, instead of thinking of subjects and hoping for traffic. Once again, this is also discussed within: ‘The Long Tail: The Myth Explained, and how you can implement it’.

4 Hosting
The amount of people that are still using the freebie hosting that comes with their ISP (Internet Service Provider) is unreal! If you are not willing to invest the money to have high-quality and reliable hosting, then why would visitors come to your site? Not only does professional hosting give you piece of mind as they back-up your files religiously, but you also have a lot more freedom to expand your site. More importantly, they are faster, you are able to gain a lot more information about your visitors from dedicated statistics, and you have the support if something goes wrong. I would recommend 1 & 1 Internet Services to anyone – they are fast, reliable and are the biggest on the web – in fact nine times out of ten if you purchase hosting from a small company (if they do not have their own servers), it is very luckily 1 & 1 will be involved somewhere. They are the leaders in the hosting world at the moment.

5 Meta Tags
Once again yet another form of keyword manipulation…
There are some webmaster-type-people who say that meta tags are dead – but there are still a lot of search engines that still use them, even Google. In fact, I would still go as far to say that they should be a standard addition to EVERY page. Meta Tags include: Title of the page, a description of the site / page, the keywords that represent the page, and then the author / owner details. To help gain creditability with Google, as a rule of thumb, try to put your main keyword / phrase in the title, description and the keywords section of the tags.

6 Domain Names
Obviously an important part of any site. If you get it wrong, you will make it extremely difficult for people to find you. You should try to keep away from domains that could have many different ways of spelling them – unless you are planning to get several, one for each way to spell it! Of course this can turn out to be expensive. However, another factor that a lot of site owners forget about is that potential customers / visitors may not have heard of ‘ABC Company’, instead they using Google to search for the services that ABC Company provides.

A new marketing method is to not only register the domain of the company’s name, but also one or more ‘marketing’ domains like: gardendesigns.com, diyhelp.com etc. Perhaps think about what your main keywords / phrase is, and see if it is available? A little known fact is that Google now also uses the domain name of the site to determine how relevant a site is for it’s results. Also be warned that some domain registering companies only allow you to ‘rent’ the domain from them, whereas 1 & 1 Internet Services maybe slight more expensive, but you actually OWN the domain instead of just ‘renting’ it. Basically you have a lot more control over it.

7 Site Maps
It was only a year ago that most websites did not have a sitemap, but the Google has made it a standard, and suddenly everyone needs one! A site map basically makes it easier for Google to understand your site, and then log the information within it’s databases for people to search. Google has now launched a free service for anyone to use to log their site: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/siteoverview

8 Avoid producing a flash / javascript based site
It always amazes me of the amount of people that do not listen to this piece of advice… and then wonder why their site has a poor ranking within Google (if at all!). At present, it is almost impossible for Google to log a completely flash site effectively enough for it to be listed – even through there are now methods to produce your flash site so that it can (JUST!). The best thing to do is just be safe than sorry! If you want to expand your readership, or want to sell your product, then you have to design a site that makes it as easy as possible for it to be logged at Google. The biggest mistake is when people produce very ‘pretty’ javascript or flash sponsored navigation buttons / menus for their site. This does not help Google do it’s job by finding all the links to all the pages that make up your site. There are of course exceptions to every rule… but if you are unsure, just do not do it!

9 Alt Tags for Images
When you place a picture on your site, it is always advised to include ‘Alt Tags’ to describe the picture. Alt Tags are the comments that you see when you choose not to download the pictures of the site, or when a picture is not found. They are also used by screen readers which are used by the blind. But most importantly, with Google’s Image search function, it is just another way for people to enter your site and see what you are about.

10 Footers
The simplest suggestion! At the bottom of each page always place links to the main pages of your site. This will not only help Google catalogue your site by finding the main sections of your site easier, but it will help your visitors to navigate around – instead of scrolling back to the top of the page to continue. You can almost call it a mini site map!

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