Get Traffic to Your Website

How to

GET TRAFFIC TO YOUR WEBSITE

By Yusuf Chowdhury

210- 316- 3123

www.OnlineBusinessOwners.Org Table of Contents

Introduction 4 ------Chapter 1 Building an Effective Website 6 Know Your Target Audience 6 Build Easy Navigation 9 Responsive Web Design 10 Call to Action Button 11 Minimum of 5 Pages 15 Social Media Icons 15 Integrate Email Marketing 16 Capture Leads 17 Implementing On-Site SEO 19 Google Analytics Installation 21 Adding website to Google Master Tool 23

Chapter 2 Invest in Building an Email List Personalize Email 24 Add Signature 25 Giving Something Away 26 Catchy Title 27 Mobile Friendly 28

Chapter 3 Generate and Focus on Target Market Start Blogging 30 Write a compelling content 30 Optimize content for SEO 31 Share in social networking sites 31 Make blog available on Kindle 31 Submit your blog posts 32

Guest Blogging 32 Use Link Round Ups 33 Press Releases 34 Local SEO Citations 36 EBook Syndication 40 Podcasting 41 Joining and Engaging in Forums 44 Infographics 45 Content Syndication 46 Outsourcing 47

INTRODUCTION

Gone are the days of traditional going to stores or when the messages people got about products or services come directly from you and consisted only of what you wanted them to know. This era is full blasted with digital media which is greatly pervasive that customers have access to information anytime and anyplace in the world. That is just how it happens in digital reality.

At a time when the speed of digital change is so fast that standing still means falling further behind, it is definitely essential that business owners know what exactly to do in order to succeed in the digital future.

Generally, in digital marketing, you can do what you want and deliver the message to consumers that way you want them to receive it. It serves as an ever-growing source of entertainment, news, shopping, and social interactions. Thus, with billions of people subscribing to it every day, your products and services will be happily exposed to the world and is open for anything that media, friends, relatives, and consumer will say about on it. In the long run, they will choose to trust brands that are trustworthy, companies that actually know them, and staff that personally communicate with them, and accommodates their needs and their preferences.

Related to the statement above, it is concluded that websites are highly significant for business. However, it will not be that easy. There are lots of problems that would come in your way and one great example is website traffic. Website traffic basically reflects the success of your company. Research says that lack of the latter is the number one challenge new/small business owners face. It is, obviously because no traffic means no sales. Without traffic, it means you are performing less in your marketing strategy and also, you can't test the key components of your sales process. And if you roll out a large traffic campaign before you've tested your site to make sure it converts maximum visitors into

4 buyers, you risk losing sales and looking unprofessional to potential business partners and affiliates.

Traffic is the lifeblood of any website or blog and this book will serve as an important starting point for you to understand the basics of driving more traffic to your newly built, success-driven websites.

A bit of advice: Don’t just read the book. Act on it every day. Goals will just remain a five- letter word until you work on it with persistence and discipline, until goals become success.

CHAPTER 1 BUILDING AN EFFECTIVE WEBSITE ------

The digital world has been playing on a great level lately when it comes to the fields of big and small businesses. One of the many obvious reasons for this would be the powerful websites that let business owners efficiently and effectively share information to their targeted customers, future partners and prospects; bring the brand’s name to the world; and in return, let them qualify sales and leads.

However, building an effective website is not just about cropping a few images, aesthetically collage it to some platform that would look soothing to your eyes, then sticking it to the internet right away. It is not also about what clients usually request: flashing bright colors to get people’s attention and biggest font sizes/ overdone textures or gradients to convey some message to the world. It doesn’t work that way.

Here are the best of the best tips that would help you in creating and designing your website in the most effective way.

Know Your Target Audience

“One of the biggest mistakes that budding personal branders make is trying to appeal to everyone. Think about the game of darts: You have to aim in order to hit the board. (If you let your darts go without aiming them, you probably won’t be very popular.) If you hit the board, you score. And if your aim is very good and you hit the bull’s eye, even better!” - Susan Chritton, Personal Branding For Dummies

Targeting a market or audience usually talks about the special characteristics that your potential customers might have in order to advertise and best serve these people. The

6 characteristics include the criteria of age (categorization of kids, adults, or elders), gender, buying habits, language, culture, the user’s web ability, and a lot more. Thus, the first step: Market Segmentation.

Market segmentation involves grouping your various customers into segments that have common needs or will respond similarly to a marketing action. (NSW Small Business, 2014) Some different ways you can segment your market include the following;

 Demographics: which focuses on the characteristics of the customer. For example age, gender, income bracket, education, job and cultural background.

 Psychographics: which refers to the customer group's lifestyle. For example, their social class, lifestyle, personality, opinions, and attitudes.

 Behaviour which is based on customer behaviour. For example, online shoppers, shopping centre customers, brand preference and prior purchases

 Geographical location such as continent, country, state, province, city or rural that the customer group resides. (NSW Small Business, 2014)

The second step to be done would be the actual targeting of your segmented market. Basically, no one can afford to target everyone, especially in the current state of the economy. That's like firing 10 bullets in random directions instead of aiming just one dead centre of the mark: expensive and dangerous. As a matter of fact, small businesses can compete with the big ones by focusing on a niche market.

Targeting your defined/ chosen market means digging more on them. Focused market research will lead you to concentrate on understanding the needs and wants of the particular market intimately.

However, this doesn't mean that there will be an exclusion of people that do not fit to the criteria as customers.

There are some entrepreneurs that resist defining a target customer base because they think it would limit the business. It has always been a common misconception. Basically, defining a target market is just a wonderful strategy that would help business owners save money, and time in the most effective way possible.

Here are some few tips in refining a company’s target audience and making brand implementation more effective, especially in designing an effective website.

Tip #1: CREATE A CUSTOMER PROFILE

One must search comprehensive descriptions together of their target market. Think about what your customers would think when they consider buying a specific product or availing a service. Create personas or detailed and vivid images of your potential buyers. You can go as far as getting random photos of your target market for you to be able to picture it in the clearest way. Put all the characteristics and their buying decisions.

Tip #2: DIG DEEPER

Business owners often make mistake when they define their customer base too broadly, making it very difficult to engage in effective marketing efforts. One must go into extreme detail. Talk about the daily tasks the person does at their job. Talk about they do on the weekends with their family and friends. The more details you can include the easier it will be for you to target this person as you implement your personal brand strategy. (Quick Sprout, LLC)

Get inside their head and figure out their motivations. This is important because, as we said earlier, when you know what this person’s motivations are, you can help them achieve their goals as a way to achieve your own goals (you get what you give). (Quick Sprout, LLC)

Tip #3: CREATE A GAME PLAN FOR YOUR WEBSITE

Once your customer’s motivation to buying is figured out, it is now time to formulate a game plan for your website design. You consider all the characteristics that appeal to the defined target market and coordinate it all in a good website design.

Incorporate all theories of design yet we do not forget the fact that the website is not solely for your own desire and satisfaction. Many times people get caught up with themselves and what they want to happen to their website designs; however it has nothing to do with what business owners want, and has everything to do with what your defined target audience wants and needs.

The ultimate goal in this website design game plan is to get the people to move. Your designs must cater to their desires and satisfaction. Basically, it is about putting yourself in their shoes, even if it is totally unrelated to your products and services. When you have a real understanding of the target market’s psychographics (how they think, feel, etc.), you can get them to do anything.

All in all, design your visuals that it must speak to your target market and it must get them to move.

Build Easy Navigation

“When I was ready to check out, I looked expectantly at the top of the page for a shopping cart or basket icon. No such luck. I hunted the page for a link to something familiar: check out, your account, or complete your order. No go. I had no clue how to navigate to the page

9 that would let me place my order. After combing the site for another 10 minutes, I finally learned that Garden.com's term for shopping cart is wheelbarrow and that there is in fact a wheelbarrow text link on each page.”

Above is one of the many examples customers deal when it comes to website navigation problems. Other websites commit mistakes such as: different types of navigation on the same site, a link to the current page on the current page (home page link on home page), poorly worded links, guessing games, and no links back to the home page and confusing links to the home page. Too much complexities may lead your business to nowhere.

The primary aim for effective navigation is get your visitors to stay in your site and also for visitors to easily find what they are looking for easily and quickly.

Thus, website navigation must be easy and consistent.

Make your links easy to understand and to the point. Customers would need to know where they will go on clicking on a particular link, so make sure your links are understandable. If not, nobody is going to click on your links, which will defeat the purpose of designing a good navigation system and an effective website.

Responsive Web Design

Almost every new client these days wants a mobile version of their website. It’s practically essential after all: one design for the BlackBerry, another for the iPhone, the iPad, netbook, Kindle — and all screen resolutions must be compatible, too.

Responsive Web design is the approach that suggests that design and development should respond to the user’s behaviour and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation. The practice consists of a mix of flexible grids and layouts, images and an

10 intelligent use of CSS media queries. As the user switches from their laptop to iPad, the website should automatically switch to accommodate for resolution, image size and scripting abilities. In other words, the website should have the technology to automatically respond to the user’s preferences. This would eliminate the need for a different design and development phase for each new gadget on the market.

The use of mobile devices to surf the web is growing at an astronomical pace, but unfortunately much of the web isn't optimized for those mobile devices. Mobile devices are often constrained by display size and require a different approach to how content is laid out on screen.

Responsive web design, originally defined by Ethan Marcotte in A List Apart responds to the needs of the users and the devices they’re using. The layout changes based on the size and capabilities of the device. For example, on a phone, users would see content shown in a single column view; a tablet might show the same content in two columns.

Add clear Call to Action button

The Call to Action button is considered the gatekeeper of your website pages. It is a key design element of a website. It is an instruction to your audience to move, and explore the every corner of your business. Those little tiny buggers must be clicked, then voila, your passive viewers might turn into active customers ready to know more about your business, willing to download documents, and ready to fill up the contact form. These active customers might lead to become your loyal customers clicking these buttons when they are ready to add a product to their cart, book a reservation, or sign up for promotions, and many more.

Your Call to Action buttons are vital elements of your website’s conversion strategy. Thus, it is crucial that business owners/ marketer don’t make silly mistakes that could seriously lead to hurting your business and your conversion rate. Users are investing their time, energy and sometimes providing you with personal information. You have to make it worthwhile. The solution is to make these buttons perfectly clear. How does one do that? Clarity often comes by using the four elements: color, size, clickability, and content.

Color

Color is one of the most powerful visual cues to consider in a CTA button. There is not really a best color for a specific platform, at least, what can be done is that the website designer must make sure that there is a high contrast of the colors used so that the buttons would stand out effectively on the page.

The designer must also take in mind that these colors must compliment to the website’s whole design or theme. In addition, color is more than just a visual property. Colors can evoke different emotions in people, resulting in different reactions.

We tip on not using the color grey because for most of the times, it usually is associated with ‘disabled’ meaning. Red is considered to be the best color for a call-to-action button due to its intense and energetic nature. It doesn’t only draw people’s attention, but also whets their appetite for giving a try to the advertised products. This hue is an ideal option for sale signs, as it can push individuals for making a spontaneous purchase without hesitation. (Campbell, 2006).

To manipulate visitors of your website in a calm manner, you won’t find a better color than green to design your CTA buttons. When they cast a glance at them, they won’t feel any pressure from your side. Quite the contrary, people will feel optimistic about your offerings

12 and believe that they’ve arrived at a decision to make use of them on their own, without your hints. (Campbell, 2006)

Be reminded also of the ‘color blinded’ users who might visit your site. But still, in conclusion, whatever color is applied, it is critical to ensure that user notices all the call to action buttons.

Size

As to visual hierarchy, size plays a big role in it. In designing CTA buttons, visual weight must be emphasized to make sure that your customers know what items are important. There would be no perfect dimension of a button but business owners/ web designers must make sure that is neither too small nor too large.

Too small CTA buttons won’t be noticed while too large will make the user think that it is not clickable. Emphasizing the button does not talk only about increasing the click target size, but making it easier to use and yes, the value of sales/conversion.

Another thing to consider when designing the CTA’s size are the various devices the site will be viewed on, as well as various interaction types. A CTA that you consider big when you designed it for a desktop experience may look quite small when viewed on a smartphone, and a CTA that was designed to be clicked on with a mouse may not work so well when a user is trying to press it with their thumb. (Niekamp, 2004)

Clickability

We have discussed color and size already, and these two greatly contributes to the clickability of your website’s CTA buttons. Clickability of CTA refers as to how the chances of your customers go through your buttons by recognizing immediately the elements that can be clicked. Buttons are easier to click when we know they’re clickable.

How does one make it look clickable at a user’s one glance? Aside from the size, color, and its proper placement, a button can be known it is clickable by using a gradient or small shadow to give clickable affordance to your elements.

Research says that a flat button design can strip away a clickable look. Also, there are a lot of different visual states that can increase a button’s clickability. All that is needed to be done would be consistent experiments and the will to never stop until the goal has been reached.

Content

CTA buttons are essential for websites, yet the words inside these buttons are its most important feature. The contents on CTA buttons is a good way of communicating to customers, gently saying “ You must go to our second page and explore our website more”, “I think this shoe is good for you to buy”, or “Maybe your friends would like to know us. You will be a good help”.

Conversing to your audience through the Call to Action buttons should not be overlooked by details because your words can promote engagement and clarity of intent. It persuades your customer to take the next step and make the purchase.

For tips, the words in the button should be short and into the point. Examples are “Add to Cart”, “Subscribe Now”, and “Become a member”. Such give clear points to users on what will happen next. Research also says that some of the most effective words in a CTA are the most simple. As with any of your website content, planning for CTA button’s content is essential in building a marketing success.

Minimum of 5 pages

“Basically, users’ habits on the Web aren’t that different from customers’ habits in a store. Visitors glance at each new page, scan some of the text, and click on the first link that catches their interest or vaguely resembles the thing they’re looking for”. (Friedman, 2008) There is no ideal number of pages for a website, but given with the reasons above, it is better for a website to contain sections that do not go below 5 pages. It is good to believe that if there are more pages, there are more chances of putting incredible design and contents that would heighten up the business’ credibility. Your website will be content rich and it gives more benefit to you as a seller and to your customers, as curious and meticulous buyers.

Add Social Media Icons

Social media consists of a lot of online platforms under its vast umbrella. All of these platforms can be classified by their ability to facilitate certain social functions such as identity, conversation, sharing, presence, relationships, reputations, and groups. (Boundless, 2015)

Adding social media profile icons in your website is a very simple job that can offer an effective, fast-loading method of giving benefits to your website. Aside from sending a message to your visitors that you are active and you care about the social presence of your business, it also directly expands your contact network and social reach. People can ask questions easily to your social media sites and vice versa, you answer pretty quickly too. Customers would appreciate you for it.

Below are some examples:

Facebook “Like” Button: Almost everybody on Earth has a Facebook account. It is the common social media account that reaches almost everyone. When a customer ‘likes’ and

‘shares’ your content on Facebook, it will be displayed on their account and be seen by other set of possible market.

The “Tweet” Button: This button is important because Twitter users usually look for good contents to share to the public. Also, tweeters are very active in discussion over simple and big matters.

The LinkedIn “Share” Button: This button usually caters to clients who are professional or corporate clients, and it is better to have this button around to create brand awareness and to be visible to higher classified markets.

Integrate Email Marketing

“Email is powerful – it’s the most ROI-efficient digital marketing channel because it’s cost effective. It’s opt-in, so, in theory, the content is desired, and you know exactly whom you’re talking to, what they want, and when they want it. It’s your best retention medium as well, and is a great closer. “(Mike Corak in “Integrated content marketing and the customer experience“)

For one fact, email is not dead. Better yet, it becomes alive when it is integrated. How does one do that? According to Nielsen, email is one of the most effective methods for mobilizing contacts. (Kusinitz, 2014)

Email integration is the process of combining the traditional email marketing with the rest of your marketing schemes. It can be done in two ways: Manual and Automated.

‘Manual’ is quicker to set up, however, the most used strategy today would be ‘Automated’ wherein business owners invest in softwares that in time would give them more benefits

16 over the long term. Also, the team will be saved with more time, productivity, and communication levels.

As a matter of fact, email service providers are adding more features to enable marketers to take advantage of all this data to make their email marketing more customer-oriented, and personalized. They have come up with ways to make it effective, in terms with preferences, intent, behaviour, history and often real-time interactions on other channels of customers.

In general, email integration has a main purpose of presenting a unified front to customers and leads. But more specific benefits can be acquired by merely optimizing the business’ email marketing efforts.

Aside from the increased and updated communication, a better pipeline management will also be in your good hands. By choosing a program with good features, social media and other marketing campaigns can be integrated, thus giving more chance for productivity and a clearer marketing pipelines and forecasts of what is about to happen.

Also, you can now forget the ‘traditional paper works and storing everything in an old cabinet’. In email integration, there is a detailed track of history and storage management. Extended networks of email communications on a contact level will happen and tracking can be done efficiently, thus pulling a history of communication easier than ever.

Capture Leads

Generally, it is a good point that the content of a website is written in an interesting manner, thus increasing traffic and gaining a lot of customer interactions. However, it is a great situation if the data is captured when it comes in. These captured leads will be your sales, and tangible results will be at your hands.

Capturing leads can be done by strategically placing web forms or contact forms that ask visitors to place their names and contact information every time they visit your website. In return, this is an excellent way to produce new leads and obtain the access/ permission and the data needed to contact them.

You can find a few great lead capture techniques in the list below.

 Karl Staib www.dominoconnection.com

 Kim Roach www.buzzblogger.com

 Amy Porterfield www.amyporterfield.com

 Pat Flynn www.smartpassiveincome.com

 Brendon Burchard www.brendonburchard.com

 Michael Hyatt www.michaelhyatt.com

 Virool www.virool.com

Must Implement On-Site SEO

SEO simply stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It is a practice manipulating aspects of a web site or implement certain techniques to improve your rankings in search engines as high as possible. The higher the rank in Search Engine Result pages, the more traffic your site would likely to get.

Basically, it is a very important aspect in any business website. It makes it easy for users and search robots to understand given that SEO aids these search engines in figuring out what the pages/ each page is all about.

There are two types of SEO: On Site, and Off Site.

Off-site refers to the things/techniques you directly do OFF the page to put you in higher rank. It talks about article submission, blog marketing, and social networking. The On-Site SEO, on the other hand, refers to the things one directly does ON the site to claim a higher rank in search engines. Basic examples are page titles, Meta tags, and descriptions.

The following are some of the easiest things to be done, especially by small business owners, when they want to start SEO with the right foot.

 Title Page

The title tag on pages of your website tells search engines what the page is about. Research has proven that a good title tag should have 70 characters or less (including spaces), should include both product-related keyword and company’s brand name. It appeals more when it is both intriguing and informative at the same time.

This tag is placed between the tags near the top of the HTML code for the page.

 Meta descriptions

Meta description is one important thing that digital marketers constantly neglect, but as a matter of fact, this could be one of the last hopes on search engine results pages (SERPs): in attracting possible customers and inviting a good website traffic.

A Meta description is the snippet of information found below the link the search result in an internet browser. Its role is to describe the contents of the page to the searcher. The goal is to make brief page summaries, convincing and persuading the searcher to click through and words used should be no more than 150-160 characters.

While the two above are the most important SEO elements, they are not the only ones. Some are internal links, header tags, image names and ALT tags, and other more.

Google Analytics Installation

What is Google analytics? Generally, it is a free Google product that can be installed to collect a lot of varied visitor data from the website. This product makes web developer understand how customers use their website and in effect, an essential step for improving campaigns for online marketing.

Considered as one of the most powerful tools for monitoring traffic, Google Analytics must be installed to websites especially to small scale business owners. If they want to expand and grow their business on the World Wide Web, Google analytics will be a must. Below are the important data this program can give:

 How many people visited your website?

 How did your visitors found your website?

 How long were they there?/ Time

 What are the date ranges every time they visit?

 What were the keywords typed by visitors to get to the website?

 What were the web browsers used by your visitors?

 What are the other pages that are more popular than the website?

With all these data in your hand, re-evaluating your strategies will become more efficient, letting you master the traffic game, thus making the business’ goals a lot more attainable.

Examples of Keyword Research Tools

Adding website to Google Master Tool

Another free product from Google, yet considered as one of the most important tools to any web developers or webmasters: Google Webmaster Tool. Basically, regardless of how large or small a business may be, it is important to track the website’s performance in order to see how well it is doing. Thus, this tool that provides a multi-faceted approach to check a website’s standing on the internet.

Its main purpose is to characterize and diagnose technical- related issues in any website. It is very useful toolset that allows you to communicate with Google and adjust many aspects of how Google sees your site. After joining and verifying your membership into the Google webmaster tool application, you can immediately make use of the advantages Google Webmaster tools can offer, making your website search-engine friendly in no time. Services include the following:

Search Queries: Long lists of good keywords you are usually unaware of, users typed that when they came through your website that you are usually unaware of.

Sitemaps: You can see your site’s sitemaps found by Google and the number of URLs affiliated with them. Thus, you can always create/ submit a new sitemap for Google if your site is not the one you expected to be, check it consistently and optimize it time by time.

Links: In this section, you can see where your internal and external links come from, as well as the pages they are linking to. Also, if there are links that you think are harmful, you can block them from your site.

Generally, Google webmaster tools are a great help in fixing stuff that has been always overlooked in maintaining and developing a website. It is good to know that there is a cheap way of making sure that the site’s overall performance will be taken care of.

CHAPTER II INVEST IN BUILDING AN EMAIL LIST ------

Email List Building Strategies

Personalize Email

Research says that generally email personalization can greatly heat up the performance of anybody’s business’ email marketing, if and only if done in a right way. If not, then it would turn out very creepy for your customers that would eventually lead to loss of potential buyers and potential sales.

As a matter of fact, in the year of 2013, U.S Digital shoppers were asked about email personalization. The results were the following:

 81%, based on their own preferences and shopping behaviours, thinks that personalized emails make them ‘at least somewhat more likely to make additional purchases’.

 82% would be ‘at least somewhat willing to receive more emails from stores whenever they get personalized emails based on their shopping habits’.

 69% said that ‘they would be willing to share personal information about themselves if companies would use that information to send email messages that were more relevant to them. (Harris Interactive, 2013)

Basically, you can personalize your mailings through the following: greeting your recipients by their first name, inserting their company name in the body of the mail, including any other information stored about your contacts’ demography and behaviour.

The data collected that can make the act of personalization effective can be classified into two: demographic and behavioural.

The demographic data (Name, Age, Gender, Birthdays) would be the top essentials because it can be used in the subject line or content of the email. Make sure to know the limits to avoid being creepy knowing that you know a lot about them, hence make sure that those data are written in an excellent way.

Also, rule of thumb, do not ask for more than five fields of information on your sign-up page. It may tire or scare the searcher away in just one glance. However, if you really need to ask for more, at least divide it into multiple pages, with the most important inquiries first.

Add Your Signature

An email signature is a text inserted at the bottom of every sent message containing alternative contact details, pertinent job title, and company names. These signatures help the recipient get in touch with you through the details entailed in it. It may be short and concise, and just the equivalent of a printed business card, it is very much important same as with the other elements on your mail.

So what makes a good email signature?

A full-featured professional email signature meets the following requirements:

 displays your brand identity (logo) in a clear, reliable, fashion

 is consistent across all of the employees of your firm

 contains all key contact information in an easy-to-read format

 includes confidentiality statements as needed

Some helpful tips include:

 Don’t put any personal information such as Home number/ address, Twitter, or Skype Details.

 Don’t include your full set of skills and achievements.

 Don’t put any of your picture or image as signature.

 Don’t use bullets/checklist/ numberings

 Don’t use Times New Roman and Comic Sans for your font.

 Don’t put signatures on top of your email.

 Don’t put some random quotes.

You may want to re-think some strategies about this often-overlooked element and brace yourselves for some changes in your business just because you have left a very lasting impression through the signature.

Give Something Away

As they say, ‘free content builds good will, and people love to share free stuff with their friends and followers on social media’. Others may have a negative say on giving something away, however it has been proven that a marketing strategy like this grows your audiences and improves any business.

SO why is this important? What advantages can it give to your business?

At the top of all, giving away free stuff can build your network. It can be through the situations that your blog giveaways starts getting shared and can get the attention of others. Second situation would be the great idea that you mention others in the e-book and they start sharing it.

Also, giving away free products and services proves your audience that you are trustworthy and an expert in the field, showing the readers some proof they need before trusting you enough to buy what you’re selling.

What are some good and effective products to give away? There are a lot you can choose from. It could be something that is fun or it can be a thing that promotes education. Oftentimes, it can be something that can give the business a reputation.

It can be products that they will subscribe on getting monthly or it can be still the same products given away through raffles or any games. You can give away monthly design pack and anything that is relevant and connected to your business and beneficial to its success. In other coin, you can provide training services or resources.

Catchy Title

The title is the first section on an email everybody can read. The catchiness of the title is very essential because it dictates the fate of your mail at one glance: trash bin or the other. The title must be true and interesting and not false and misleading just to manipulate the reader to look at it.

Lots of techniques can be done used in order to come up with a good title: direct, teaser, quantifying, and urgent.

Direct: Most common title for the mail. It is clear and doesn’t require high levels of creativity. Few examples are the following:

‘To Do List Hacks’ ‘Payment Confirmation’ ‘Welcome to Amazon!’

‘Idlewild Camp – Important Travel Information’ ‘Escrow Protection is Live on Odesk’

Teaser: Provides playful tactics that would entice your audience to click or read the email. It is risky to do yet it is always worth the try depending on your brand’s personality. Few examples are the following:

‘How was this possible?’ ‘You could be the next star!’ ‘I know you will love this’

Quantifying: Includes numbers to let your audience quantify the value they’ll get from reading the mail.

‘5 ways to flatten your abs’ ’10 things to do to be ultra-rich’ ‘15 ways to increase web traffic’

Urgent: Uses time limitations or sense of urgency to push the reader to open the mail. Mostly used for promotional purposes.

‘Buy now! Three products left! ‘Sale! 75%off!!! ‘Buy one! Take three! Limited offer!

Mobile Friendly

Research shows that more than 50 percent of email users check and read their emails through their mobile devices. So if you want to excel your business in the digital world, you must make sure that your websites and emails are mobile friendly.

What makes email attributes mobile-friendly?

Top of the list, it can be fixed-witch but remains mobile-optimized. Next important thing is that its font sizes must not change dependent on screen size and is large enough to be readable on small screens. Third, it can/ should retain a multi- column layout and allowing readers to tap and zoom into each individual block of content. In addition, it must use large buttons for calls to action.

CHAPTER III GENERATE AND FOCUS ON TARGET MARKET ------

Start Blogging

Blogging is very essential to your website and your business since it is like a new indexed page that your potential customer might look at whenever they Google in the internet. Having multiple blogs about subjects related to your website will heighten the chance that one of these people will follow a link directed to your beautifully created site. Thus, increases the traffic you ultimately desired. Blogging should not be in the less priorities section given that it is a cue to Google and other search engines that your website is active and people should be checking in frequently.

Write compelling content

 Create strong headlines; and engaging and thought provoking content.

 Write beautiful and informational stories that people would love.

 Add photos and videos in your write-ups to help you illustrate your point.

 Make your stories short and enticing to read.

Optimize your content for SEO

 When it comes to keyword optimization, keep it simple.

 Indicate page titles by using title tags.

 Use brief, but descriptive titles.

 Accurately summarize the page’s content.

 Be consistent with domain

 Survey your audience well and their search habits.

Share in social networking sites

 Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. will allow more open dialogue along your followers and increase web traffic.

 Consistently share new and enticing posts every day.

Make your blog available on Kindle.

 Kindle is an easy on-the-go-way to read your favourite blogs

 The more methods distribution for your content, the better. Submit unique blog posts on external blog websites.

 Operating a blog on a third-party platform, it is quicker to link current blog from your store. Shopify can support a link to WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger: few of the most popular blog forms.

 “No matter how great a website you build, you can never be all things to all people, nor contain all the relevant information & value a user might be seeking on your given topic.”

 It makes a site more valuable, scalable resource.

Submit your blog posts.

Here are few of some great websites that are worthy submitting your posts for.

 http://www.alltop.com

 https://plus.google.com/communities

 http://www.linkedin.com/directory/groups

 http://www.quora.com

 https://medium.com

 http://www.business2community.com

 http://www.ontoplist.com

 http://globeofblogs.com

 http://www.bloggingfusion.com

 http://www.blogflux.com

 http://www.blogarama.com

GUEST BLOGGING ------What is guest blogging? It is simply a method to increase blog traffic done through writing and publishing an article on someone else’s website or blog. However, before someone starts writing these articles, the best first thing to do is to know your main goals behind this activity.

There are a lot of goals you can coordinate with guest blogging, and few are the following:

1. To position yourself as an expert and a known name/brand in the industry 2. To increase exposure to social media and search engines 3. To develop solid relationships and build contact with the other bloggers. 4. To further boost brand and reputation 5. To build backlinks to your website.

Either one of these or you take them all, guest blogging is one essential part of increasing web traffic that web developers must not overlook.

USE LINK ROUND-UPS ------

Link round ups are blog posts that feature other people’s blog or websites through a list of links with descriptive texts recommending readers to open up these links and articles. The list is usually no more than 10 and are usually themed around a particular topic.

Link round ups are usually presented through different formats: Bullet or Numbers, Using proper quotes and citations, or Leading with the article or resource title.

So how does one do link round-ups? Go to Google and type in the following search queries:

“Daily Link Roundup” “Weekly Link Roundup”

“Monday Link Roundup” “Friday Link Roundup” “Link Roundup”

If you want to find blogs that are specifically related to your market, then you can add a modifier. Something like:

“Weekly Link Roundup” +marketing “Weekly Link Roundup” +moms “Weekly Link Roundup”+parenting

You can also search in http://blogsearch.google.com

PRESS RELEASES ------

Press release is a newsworthy event or a report of an event or an official statement issued to newspapers announcing something or giving information on a particular matter. This is directed to the social media. Its purpose is to get the news in front of as many people as possible.

For a long time now, this public relation strategy has been an effective way to get a message out to the people through the help of media. Through this, you build links, you refine your messaging, and help journalists check the exact information.

For press releases to be effective and not be a joke, there are some formats or guidelines that must be followed religiously.

 Releases must be kept brief yet informational. It must be around 300 to 500 words.

 Releases must be written clearly, addressing who, what, where, why, and when in the first two paragraphs.

 Organization or the individual sending the release must be identified. Name and daytime phone number (with area code) of someone who can be contacted must be included; if questions will be asked.

 Date must be included and information whether the material is for immediate use or for release at a later date.

What are press releases for?

 NEW PRODUCTS

 NEW SERVICES

 NEW FEATURES AND BENEFITS

 NEW BLOGS AND WEBSITES

 PROVIDE SOLUTIONS

 PRODUCT ENHANCEMENT

 WEBSITE ENHANCEMENT

 NEW CONTENT

 AWARD AND ANNOUNCEMENT

 UPCOMING EVENTS

 CONTENTS

 PROMOTIONS

 And much more.

LOCAL SEO CITATIONS ------

According to research, it says that building citations for your physical location regardless of your industry is the cornerstone of local SEO. It will help you get in front of the eyes of your consumers in this most ready state of purchase.

Citation is any mention of your business or your business name to other web pages. These don’t need to be linked in order to be credited. And it comes in various forms:

 Company/ Business name, by itself.  Company name, and phone number.  Company name, phone number, and address  Company name, phone number, address, and link

Basically, small business owners don’t want to convert the billions of monthly unique researches all over the world, for the act of slicing the date recovered will not be efficient and effective for a local and small businesses.

Thus, in citing SEO, one must take into big considerations the local scope. So what are these people searching ‘locally’ for? Here are some few searches/task that may apply to your small business. And if some of these applies, you may want to pay attention on it and get your business to a safe place by having these local SEO covered when consumers are doing their researches.

 Searching for a phone number  Searching for address or location  Discovering special offers  Finding a business of researcher’s desired product  Giving driving directions/ traffic information

 Finding out hours of operation  Reading ratings/reviews

Research has also stated that citations are important to validate that a business is part of a community.

In order to increase more traffic to your websites, blog must be advertised/ posted as much as possible. You can submit articles to the following:

about.com Naturalnews.com mercola.com mashable.com

Also, you can submit to web directories:

Google.com Yahoo.com Bing.com DMOZ.org

EBOOK SYNDICATION ------`How does one generate traffic with eBook syndication? Basically, eBook syndication is the act of re-using your contents by combining all your articles into an eBook to generate leads and sales. You submit it to all top directories letting you gain audience and obtain a higher traffic. It repurposes your content and enables you to work in a new perspective. Also, a tip to create an eBook is to simply create a list document.

To turn current content into PDF eBook for free, one can use the following programs:

 youconvertit.com

 openoffice.org

 docs.google.com

 doc2pdf.net There is a need to have an eBook cover, and one can create his/her own cover under his own style and preferences through this program:

 Fiverr.com  Newly created websites can be submitted to the following eBook directories to bring more traffic:

 free-ebooks.net  getfreeebooks.com  e-library.net  ebookdirectory.com  sharewareebooks.com  ebookee.org

Also, use PLR eBooks and white papers:  theplrstore.com

PODCASTING ------Podcasting is a portable and convenient on demand technology today which can deliver and produce content to subscribers and searchers. This includes subscribable and downloadable audio, video, PDF, and ePub files and it creates a more personal environment since the contents are communicated directed to the subscribers. It builds ongoing relationships between the business owner and subscribers that is very essential in reaching the goal of increasing web traffic.

 https://www.apple.com/itunes

 http://www.podfeed.net

 http://www.stitcher.com/

 https://www.blubrry.com

 http://www.learnoutloud.com

 http://www.audio-podcast.fm

 http://castroller.com

 http://www.digitalpodcast.com

 https://www.podomatic.com

 http://www.blogtalkradio.com

Also, there are some ‘Audio Submission Websites’:

 http://soundcloud.com

 http://hark.com

 http://yourlisten.com

 http://audioboo.fm

 http://www.chirbit.com

Document Sharing Websites:

 http://www.calameo.com/

 http://www.yudu.com/

 http://www.scribd.com/

 https://www.docstoc.com/

 http://issuu.com/

PowerPoint Sharing Websites:

 http://www.slideshare.net/

 http://www.slideboom.com/

 http://www.authorstream.com/

 http://prezi.com/

 http://empressr.com/

 http://brainshark.com/

 http://slideserve.com/

 http://powershow.com/

 https://speakerdeck.com/

Video Websites

 https://youtube.com/

 https://vimeo.com/

 http://ustream.tv/

 http://wonderhowto.com/

 http://metacafe.com

 http://blip.tv/

 http://teachertube.com/

 http://dailymotion.com/

 http://www.veoh.com/

 http://sutree.com/

 http://www.oneload.com/

Social Networking Sites

 https://www.facebook.com

 https://twitter.com

 https://www.youtube.com/

 http://www.pinterest.com/

 https://www.linkedin.com/

 https://plus.google.com/

 http://www.stumbleupon.com/

 http://digg.com/

 http://www.reddit.com

 https://secure.delicious.com

 http://knowem.com

Online Advertising Websites - http://www.google.com/adwords -https://www.facebook.com/advertising - https://ads.twitter.com - https://www.linkedin.com/ads/ - https://ads.pinterest.com/ - https://www.stumbleupon.com/pd - http://www.outbrain.com/

JOIN AND ENGAGE IN FORUMS ------

Joining and engaging in forums are proven to be effective in increasing traffic if and only if implemented the right way. Choosing the forum of your niche will always be a first step to make your goals successful. Also, forums builds and strengthens relationship with others. Thus, one must be helpful to others and active in commenting in posts. Do not insult others, properly voice out opinions, and don’t hesitate to publicize your social media accounts, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google plus and allow them to add you and also send friend request to them.

To find forums on your niche: keyword phrase + forum

Find forums on the following websites: http://boardreader.com/ http://omgili.com/

INFOGRAPHICS ------People love figures, facts, and statistics; and as they say the human brains processes visual data 60,000 times faster than text. So how does one deliver complex information in a simple-image based format? The best answer would be Infographics.

It is a strategy in content marketing that comprises of design, writing and analysis for a data. An infographic is a successful tool in increasing traffics ‘if’ it is compelling and attractive, easily scanned and viewed, and topics are trending, evergreen, and controversial.

In addition, the capacity for infographics to be shared is very big thus one must add an embed code for others to repost it and make it known to social media and into the world. Directly adding social media accounts to infographics is encouraged for you to do.

Infographics Submission Website http://www.infographicsarchive.com/submit-infographics/ http://submitinfographics.com/ http://infographicsite.com/submit-infographic/ http://visual.ly http://reddit.com/r/infographics/ http://www.nerdgraph.com/submit-infographic/ http://www.infographiclove.com

CONTENT SYNDICATION ------

To understand the underlying benefits of content syndication, it is always better to know the basics of it, specifically the meaning and its functions.

What is content syndication? Basically, it a very easy strategy wherein one’s blog piece or content is published unto a different site where people can give comments or share it to the digital and real world. One must carefully consider that sharing such content must be linked back or credited back to the original source and not to be taken as his/her own.

The kind of exposure that you get from content syndication will ultimately lead you into earning visibility on other platforms, expose you to other new brand of audience, establish you as an expert in your niche, and in total, increases your website’s traffic. Basically, there are many and various websites that can cater or actually focus on syndicated contents. These places are usually the best bay steps to start. If you are looking for more places to syndicate your content, here are links you can look up to:

 buzzblogger.com/500-places-to-syndicate-your-content

 briankeithmay.com/100-sites-to-submit-guest-posts

OUTSOURCING ------

Outsourcing basically means hiring visual assistants from your country or other parts of the world to let them do simple yet time-consuming duties, and making you spend your other times on more important aspects of the business. If you are short on time, outsourcing is a good command in business leading your team to work hard and be efficient and effective in meeting goals, promoting traffic, and increasing profit while you are doing the same but in a different environment.

With this marketing process, you can focus on making your product or service different from others in your industry, and you can quickly stop worrying about things like doing your own traffic generation.