To have traffic, leads and sales into your website you need very basic things: -Content -Links to your site -To capture emails, names and phone numbers -Patience
Yes, you probably heard of having good content, links and capture emails but not patience.
Let's talk about every point listed to see what the differences are?
+++ Content +++
Good content will make you a star with the search engines and with visitors. Content is what people and search engines are looking for. Always have a lot of content. More is always better, and the more content, articles, blogs, or other types of information the more traffic you will get and the more the search engines will like you.
Now, don't just do it for the search engines! Visitors and prospective customers also like content. Chances are that's what they are looking for when surfing the internet.
+++ Links +++
Content on its own will not do it. You also need other people with good websites linking to your website. Now, changes are that if you have good quality content many people will appreciate it and link to your website.
Now, just having this great content is not enough, you have to let everyone know you have it. You have to communicate to the online world what you have. How to do it? Well, now it's easier than ever. You can do press releases, have a blog, or two or three (I have 4 blogs) and write articles just like this one.
Having links pointing to your website is called "link popularity" and along with content is what search engines like Google and Yahoo look for when listing your website high in their search engine.
+++ Capture Emails +++
This is an easy one. Now that you get some traffic you need to capture the leads. Don't just let traffic come in and out. Capture it.
The best and most popular way to capturing traffic is with a newsletter sign up. You offer visitors a way to get "more content" in your email newsletter in exchange for their name and email.
Once you have their name and email you send your newsletter. Now, you don't have to be a columnist, poet or best selling author to write up a few newsletters once in a while. You can send your newsletter once per month and it does not have to be long. It can be your thoughts, news, a trade show you attended, a problem you have, anything.
I personally have about 20 websites that are just one page websites offering a free newsletter packed with information on Marketing or Distribution or Exporting or something like that. They are successful because I back it with very good, free, content like articles, white papers and case studies.
+++ Patience +++
OK, the last one, Patience. What do I mean? Well, you will not be #1 in Google under 10 key words or categories over night. Maybe not in 3 months. It can take some time.
Now, your strategy has to be short, medium and long term. Your search engine strategy will be medium and long term. Google, Yahoo, and all the other main Search Engines want your articles, blogs and other content to stay in your site for a ong time. Search engines don't want people to take a quick way out. They want you to keep you content and update it.
The Internet is primarily two things. It's a huge reference library with information of varying quality, free to anyone accessing it. And it's the biggest marketing and advertising engine ever invented. You can take advantage of the enormous advertising potential of the Internet by using well-written and optimized content articles.
Content articles are the key to: ? Delivering good information to your customers ? Showing that you are the master of your topic ? Placing well on search engines ? Keeping your customers happy enough to come back
Good websites, laid out in a friendly way, with excellent and constantly fresh keyword-optimized content, are the ones that will wind up at the top of the search engine rankings. How can you own one of those websites? First, always have unique, friendly, keyword-rich content articles on your website. Spiders, web crawlers, and robots sound icky, but they're really the tiny little engines that drive the Internet. They are constantly roaming the Web, looking for changes in pages they've cataloged, seeking keywords so that they can determine how to rank your page. If you have articles on the first and subsequent pages of your website, these electronic critters will go through them, seek out how often, say, "feather boa," is mentioned on your website, and then catalog it according to that (and other variables).
Now, when a customer does a search at Google for "feather boa," he or she will find your website ranked with others that offer this keyword. Free advertising, targeted to customers looking to your product ? that's what search engines really are to businesses. Always ensure your content is friendly to the customer, not just the web crawlers. Here's the number-one mistake made by webmasters: they think about the web crawlers, but not about the proven fact that you have ten seconds, tops, to captivate your customer from the second they click your link. This means your page must download fast, it must have easy-to-find content, and it must be easy to read. And that's all before you get to the quality of the content! Keep your pages skinny, without huge graphics and moving pictures. Keep them simple and attractive as well, without loads of heavy design.
And make sure the content is at the top, with plenty of headers and bullets to make it easy for your prospective customers to find what they're looking for. Always keep content fresh. This may be the second most common mistake made by webmasters ? putting content up, then sitting back and ignoring it. Web crawlers seek out fresh content, and sites that are always fresh get ranked higher. Also, the most valuable customer is a repeat customer. If you have captivated your customer by providing the perfect feather boa, and now he or she is looking for items to add to that boa, you aren't doing yourself a favor if you have the same old information about using the feather boa as an everyday accessory.
Instead, you should have information about the shoes you're also selling; or the sequined tops designed to go with the boas; or how to treat the boa so feathers don't molt from it. If the customer never sees new information, they get tired really quickly, and go to the next person on the search engine listing. You've just lost a sale. Use reciprocal linking. Search engines are great, but what do they really do? They link to your site. An awful lot of web traffic, however, comes to people laterally ? in other words, they find a link on one website leading to another, and it looks interesting so they click it. How do you do this without paying tons of money to advertise on other people's sites? With reciprocal linking. You have the feather boa site.
Another website you frequent sells how-to videos on burlesque and bellydancing. Another is a teen fashion site, and you know feather boas have just become popular with teens. Yet another is a Phyllis Diller fansite. Set up a win-win situation. Email the webmasters of these other three sites to ask if they are interested in linking to the content on your site. Offer, in rinternet marketing eturn, to link to their sites from yours ? ideally from inside content articles. You get three new links to your website, and they get mentions to your current customer base, from inside your articles. You all win in a different way, too. Search engines rank by keyword quality and freshness of articles. They also rank the number of links other sites have to yours, though. If you have fifty links to your site from other places and Bob the Boa Maker has only ten, guess who ranks higher, and thus is likely to get more traffic directed from search engines?
Both Jorge Olson & Pooja Gupta are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
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