Improve Web Site Traffic

10 Simple Ideas You Can Use Starting Today

<1> Your web site must have appropriate content. People are searching the web for information. Search engines help people to find the info. Latent semantic indexing is utilized by Google, so you must provide lots of quality info sprinkled with the appropriate keywords in order to entice the search engines and to satisfy the people.

<2> Your info must be fresh and relevant and useful. Add new info on a regular basis. Each new page should focus on another keyword so that over time your web site will include lots of pages, each targeted to on-topic material.

<3> Your image files must have appropriate keywords in their names. Many people use Google Images (images.google.com) to search for graphics. You can take advantage of this by carefully choosing the file names of each image. For example, if you are promoting 57 Chevys, "57-chevy.jpg" is better than "red57.jpg."

<4> Effective keyword research is critical if you want to improve web site traffic. You need to know the exact phrases people are using in their searches. This will not only give you an idea of the demand for what you are supplying, but will also allow you to incorporate into your content the keywords people are utilizing. You should choose long tail searches to target appropriate keywords.

<5> Type any phrase into the search box at Google and look at the titles of the top 10 sites returned on the first page. Some of them look like they might contain the info you were searching for. Some of them look like they were designed to trick the search engines. Some of them look like there was no thought put into them. You can view the titles of your won web site pages by searching for site:yoursite.com. This is what people see when your site is returned. You might improve web site traffic by making sure your page titles are written for both people and search engines.

<6> You can create high quality links to your web site and impress the search engines by submitting your web site to the main directories. Carefully read the submission rules at each web site. Manually submitting your web site to each directory is a slow process but improves the odds of getting your web site listed.

<7> You can get links back to your web site and actually create traffic to your web site by submitting articles to article directories. Each article should be high quality and focused on one keyword. You can improve web site traffic by adding a link to your web site in the "About the Author" box at the end of each article. Make sure the article is well written and you give people an incentive to visit your web site.

<8> Reciprocal links are becoming less important in the optimization process. Topical theme vectoring is used by Google to analyze the relationship between linked sites. One of the warnings from Google is, "Keep in mind that our algorithms can distinguish natural links from unnatural links. Natural links are links to your site that develop as part of the dynamic nature of the web when other sites find your content valuable and think it would be helpful for their visitors. Unnatural links are links to your site placed there specifically to make your site look more popular to search engines". Google also advises, "Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank."

<9> You can encourage visitors to keep coming back to your web site by publishing a mini-course structured around genuinely useful content. After sending several messages, give readers links to appropriate pages on your web site. Your pages might include informative content, AdSense ads, and affiliate links.

<10> Build your reputation (brand yourself) by making helpful posts in appropriate forums. Be sure to read the instructions for each forum to understand their rules for signatures. Create a signature appropriate for each forum and you should end up with plenty of free one-way links to your web site because people will recommend you as a good source of info. You can locate forums in Google by searching for "yourkeyword + forum".