| 3 Easy Ways to get more traffic to your site |
 |
 |
|
Everyone wants more traffic for their website. Here are some ideas for generating more visits. We'll be adding more over time. The best part is that they are all free and only require an investment in time.
1) Update your website, regularly When was the last time you added content to your website? If you don't update your website, at least on a monthly basis (preferably weekly), the search engines (and your visitors) will notice. And you will drop in rankings and in customer mindshare. If you want to increase your ranking, the first step is to make sure your site is updated regularly. This can be through adding a Blog tool like WordPress for a "News" section to your static site, or using a CMS (Content Management System) like Joomla to manage your entire website. Total Hosting Customers can install these types of great tools for free via their CPanel Website Control Panel. If you sell products on your website, you should have a changing Specials section, as well as the ability to manage your site's front page. Adding/pruning products, brands or categories should also be done regularly. Allow for comments and feedback, as well as the ability to promote your articles through social bookmarking services, such as Digg, del.icio.us or Technorati. What you say should be relevant, informative and interesting. How do you decide what to write about? The best source of inspiration is your customer base/site audience. Simply listen to the questions they ask. It can be something you have heard often or a new question you have heard recently. Add a brief answer/article about it to your website. Then tell your visitors/customers about it. Another source is from your site data. Look at your site logs and see what keywords people are using (or not using, but should) to find your website. If you have site search on your site, look at the logs to see what people are looking for once they reach your website. Write a few relevant articles with liberal use of these keywords or phrases. Or write a few articles with the keywords you want people to use to associate with your website.
Don’t forget to promote your content. Put it in your
company newsletter. Mention it on the phone to your customers, suppliers and
prospects. Send out an Email. Include a link on your site for your RSS feed. 2) Build a community of your users Developing an online community makes it easy for your company to provide cost-effective customer service. It also allows for users to help each other, as well as provide a channel of constant feedback from the people that matter the most to your organization, the users. Add a forum to your site with a tool like phpBB. It's a free script written in PHP and uses the MySQL database to store all the entries online. Total Hosting Customers can instantly install phpBB via their CPanel Control Panel . Once installed, follow the instructions on how to make a few sections and categories and then put a few lead-off questions or posts to the forum. These can either be popular opinion-oriented questions or specific, frequently asked questions about your products or services. Promote your forum to your customers and your site visitors. Put a prominent link in your site navigation. If you have the ability, you can even display links to the latest posts in your forum to generate interest. Your website is your most cost-effective means to service your customers. The answers are not only an immediate solution to a customer’s issue, it’s also left behind for posterity, so it can be found by another customer or prospect. It’s the easiest way to generate custom content to grow your website. Think beyond just having an online brochure for a website. Look at your competition. What community functionality do their websites have? Do you need to catch up or would this put you ahead of them?
3) Join a community of your users For all the reasons listed above, and more, there are plenty of sites that have their own user forum. If you sell someone else’s product, and that manufacturer has a user forum, join it to offer free “advice” about the product or show your knowledge by answering customer questions, even if (or especially if) they didn’t buy the product from you. Some sites that have forums are independent projects that are either ad-driven commercial sites or just fans of a specific application for which the product is used. They exist to share their love of a subject, sometimes as part of a larger site. Join as many relevant user forums as you wish. Then start answering the questions. Build a reputation as someone with knowledge about a subject. Make sure you have good signature that includes your URL. How do you find these forums? · Check the sites of all the manufacturer’s whose products/services you sell · Fire-up your search engine of choice and start searching for the products or applications for products and see what pops up. Very often the keywords you are searching with have been posted in a forum somewhere. Look at the search results for any hints in the URL to speed up your research. · Visit the sites of any trade/special interest publications · Check your site logs for referrals to your website from sites other than search engines Hopefully you will find these basic tips and hints useful. What works best for you? Let us know.
|
Like it? Share it!
