Get Traffic to Your Website

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

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 2 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 3 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. 5 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. 7 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) 8 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.
Recommended publications
  • Towards Understanding Modern Web Traffic”
    Towards Understanding Modern Web Traffic Sunghwan Ihm† Vivek S. Pai Department of Computer Science Department of Computer Science Princeton University Princeton University [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT popularity of social networking, file hosting, and video streaming As Web sites move from relatively static displays of simple pages sites [29]. These changes and growth of Web traffic are expected to rich media applications with heavy client-side interaction, the to continue, not only as the Web becomes a de facto front-end for nature of the resulting Web traffic changes as well. Understanding many emerging cloud-based services [47], but also as applications this change is necessary in order to improve response time, evalu- getmigratedtotheWeb[34]. ate caching effectiveness, and design intermediary systems, such as Understanding these changes is important for overall system de- firewalls, security analyzers, and reporting/management systems. sign. For example, analyzing end-user browsing behavior can lead Unfortunately, we have little understanding of the underlying na- to a Web traffic model, which in turn can be used to generate a syn- ture of today’s Web traffic. thetic workload for benchmarking or simulation. In addition, ana- In this paper, we analyze five years (2006-2010) of real Web traf- lyzing the redundancy and effectiveness of caching could shape the fic from a globally-distributed proxy system, which captures the design of Web servers, proxies, and browsers to improve response browsing behavior of over 70,000 daily users from 187 countries. times. In particular, since content-based caching approaches [28, Using this data set, we examine major changes in Web traffic char- 49, 50] are a promising alternative to traditional HTTP object-based acteristics that occurred during this period.
    [Show full text]
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
    SEO 360: The Essentials of Search Engine Optimization By Chris Adams, Director of Online Marketing & Research INTRODUCTION Effective Search Engine Optimization is not a highly technical or complex task, if you get the basics right: Invest in relevant, quality content Follow best practices in optimizing the content Update your site frequently with relevant content Leverage social media and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) efforts Manage the entire process with analytics, refining and improving the process based on results We call it SEO 360⁰; whatever you call it, it is likely to be your lowest-cost, highest-quality site traffic. Strong organic web traffic comes from great, well-optimized content so search engines and travelers can easily find and understand it. This whitepaper focuses on the essential best practices. CONTENTS A. THE IMPORTANCE OF SEARCH ENGINE TRAFFIC B. THE ESSENTIAL SIX BUILDING BLOCKS OF SEO C. WHY SEO 360⁰? D. THE SIX BUILDING BLOCKS OF SEO EXPLAINED E. WHAT'S NEXT? F. THE ESSENTIAL SEO TOOL KIT Figure 1. Strong organic traffic (from search engine referrals) underpins the reach and audience of most travel and tourism websites milespartnership.com | Whitepaper ©2012 Miles Media Group, LLLP Measure & Market: An Online Analytics Framework 2 By Chris Adams, Director of Online Media A. The Importance of Search Engine Traffic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of making your website and its content highly visible to search engines, ranking well in relevant searches, and boosting organic traffic to your Figure 2. Search engine traffic dominates the way in which travelers find destination (and other tourism) web sites.
    [Show full text]
  • A Survey on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
    Int'l Journal of Computing, Communications & Instrumentation Engg. (IJCCIE) Vol. 4, Issue 1 (2017) ISSN 2349-1469 EISSN 2349-1477 A Survey on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Anis ISMAIL and Firas ABDALLAH Abstract— With the growth of Internet in the recent years, search engine such as Google, Bing and Yahoo are becoming more and more important. The role of the search engines is to index billions of web pages and display only the most relevant results for a given search query. When creating the website, many webmasters forget to take into consideration an essential factor, which is making the world aware of their website. Most of times, main focus is set on making the website as user-friendly as possible, stable, fast and secure. In this paper, we present may techniques that are sometimes useless. The aim of these techniques is to verify if the website does not have visitors or simply not found. Fig. 1.Different SEO Techniques [3] Most of the times, SEO is just simply a method of building Keywords—Internet, Google, Bing, Yahoo, search engines, the structure of the website in a way that it will allow search SEO. engines to understand what the website is all about. The majority of the web visitors are driven to websites by search I. INTRODUCTION engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. Despite the fact that Search engine is an application used to help find information social media such as Facebook, Twitter and even Youtube and on the internet. The search engine is usually accessed through a many others can still be the source of visitors to a website, page on a website that allows a user to search the content of search engines remains the primary method of locating and billions of websites on the web by entering a set of keywords into a search textbox [1].
    [Show full text]
  • Google Analytics User Guide
    Page | 1 What is Google Analytics? Google Analytics is a cloud-based analytics tool that measures and reports website traffic. It is the most widely used web analytics service on the Internet. Why should we all use it? Google Analytics helps you analyze visitor traffic and paint a complete picture of your audience and their needs. It gives actionable insights into how visitors find and use your site, and how to keep them coming back. In a nutshell, Google Analytics provides information about: • What kind of traffic does your website generate – number of sessions, users and new users • How your users interact with your website & how engaged they are – pages per session, average time spent on the website, bounce rate, how many people click on a specific link, watch a video, time spent on the webpage • What are the most and least interesting pages – landing and exit pages, most and least visited pages • Who visits your website – user`s geo location (i.e. city, state, country), the language they speak, the browser they are using, the screen resolution of their device • What users do once they are on your website – how long do users stay on the website, which page is causing users to leave most often, how many pages on average users view • When users visit your website – date & time of their visits, you can see how the user found you. • Whether visitors came to your website through a search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.), social networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), a link from another website, or a direct type-in.
    [Show full text]
  • Web Analytics Tools and Benefits for Entrepreneurs
    Web analytics tools and benefits for entrepreneurs LAHTI UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES Degree programme in Business Information Technology Bachelor’s Thesis Autumn 2017 Cao Truong Hoang Phuong Nguyen Thi Huyen Trang Lahti University of Applied Sciences Degree programme in Business Information Technology Cao Truong, Hoang Phuong Nguyen Thi, Huyen Trang: Web analytics tools and benefits for entrepreneurs Bachelor’s Thesis in Business Information Technology, 79 pages Autumn 2017 ABSTRACT Online marketing nowadays is not an unfamiliar phenomenon anymore but entrepreneurs may not utilize it to bring out the best in their business. All business companies have their own website but most of them only use it as an advertisement tools or a news tools. However, web analytics tools are designed to change that and help entrepreneurs gathering useful data from their websites. The purpose of the thesis is to provide understanding about what web analytics tools are and they can use them to enhance their business strategy. The thesis will focus on deductive approach and make a conclusion through qualitative research. Google analytics tools and Woopra analytics tools will be used as a demonstration to how to use web analytics tools and how the analysis process can help making proper adjustment to the business. Keywords: Online marketing, data analysis, web analytics, web analytics tools, Google Analytics, Woopra TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.2 Thesis structure 2 2 RESEARCH METHODS 4 2.1 Objectives 4 2.2 Research approach 4 2.3 Research methodology
    [Show full text]
  • How to Make YOUR Advertising Money on Baidu Truly Work for YOU ?
    2013 How to make YOUR advertising money on Baidu truly work for YOU ? Innovative Technology Solutions from Silicon Valley Bring the Best ROI to You GLOGOU INC. 2068 Walsh Ave, Suite C Santa Clara, CA 95050 Ph.: 508-309-2110 Fax: 978-568-1788 [email protected] English Interface to Baidu Ad Platform http://glogou.com/adbaidu/ Glogou Inc. 2068 Walsh Ave, #C, Santa Clara, CA, 95050 U.S.A. How to make YOUR advertising money on Baidu truly work for YOU ? Dear Potential Customers: You have considered using advertising programs on Baidu. We want to congratulate you! China has one of the world fastest growing economies and the world's 2nd largest market. And Baidu is the dominant search engine in China. By choosing to use advertising programs on Baidu, you have made a wise decision and open your business to the world's most dynamic market. Baidu’s advertising programs are very similar to Google’s Adwords and Adsense, based on Pay-Per- Click(PPC). (Baidu also has banner ads and a few other marketing tools.) By spending some advertising money on Baidu, you will be sure to get some web-traffic from China which is brought to you by Baidu. However, one frustration many foreign businesses have often experienced is that this web-traffic does not always convert to customers or to deals. Often, web visitors from China do not take any action on the customers’ websites and leave the websites quickly. Since Baidu’s ad programs are PPC, not Pay- Per-Action(PPA) or Pay-Per-Transaction(PPT), Baidu will not guarantee that this web-traffic will convert to your customers.
    [Show full text]
  • Google Analytics Education and Skills for the Professional Advertiser
    AN INDUSTRY GUIDE TO Google Analytics Education and Skills For The Professional Advertiser MODULE 5 American Advertising Federation The Unifying Voice of Advertising Google Analytics is a freemium service that records what is happening at a website. CONTENTS Tracking the actions of a website is the essence of Google MODULE 5 Google Analytics Analytics. Google Analytics delivers information on who is visiting a Learning Objectives .....................................................................................1 website, what visitors are doing on that website, and what Key Definitions .......................................................................................... 2-3 actions are carried out at the specific URL. Audience Tracking ................................................................................... 4-5 Information is the essence of informed decision-making. The The A,B,C Cycle .......................................................................................6-16 website traffic activity data of Google Analytics delivers a full Acquisition understanding of customer/visitor journeys. Behavior Focus Google Analytics instruction on four(4) Conversions basic tenets: Strategy: Attribution Model ............................................................17-18 Audience- The people who visit a website Case History ........................................................................................... 19-20 Review ..............................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • 101 Free Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website
    101 FREE WAYS TO DRIVE TRAFFIC TO YOUR WEBSITE The Best Free Ways to Get People to Your Website A free guide by Introduction For many, the internet is the easiest way to communicate with others, efficiently complete tasks and discover new things. We know that you have a lot of great ideas and useful info for web users, so why let all that go to waste by not driving the optimum amount of traffic to your website? The percentage of internet users in the U.S. jumped from roughly 54% in 2003 to over 71% in 2011. That’s a huge opportunity for your website to not only attract traffic, but to also convert that traffic into revenue. Well, you may be saying, that’s all fine and dandy, but how do I drive traffic to my website anyway? Fear not, fellow webmaster. This ebook will help you navigate the autobahn that is online traffic flow. We’ll show you how to not only drive traffic to your website, but also how to maintain that traffic to keep the visitors coming. The best part is, it’s free. Professional advice about how to get more site visitors can be pricey. We know you’ve probably sunk a bit of money into your website already, so this one’s on us. We’ve compiled 101 ideas on how to drive more visitors to your website so that you don’t have to spend hours scouring the internet for snippets of tips here and there. Whether your website sells products, promotes your business or service, or even provides valuable information for searchers, this ebook will help you direct more traffic to your site.
    [Show full text]
  • SEO, Content Marketing, and Technology in EB-5
    SEO, Content Marketing, and Technology in EB-5 hese days, a high-quality, responsive of these changes. Search engine optimizers website is not just an additional way to spend countless hours studying analytics and drive web traffic but the bare minimum comparing search results to learn what SEO Tneeded to stay competitive. Today’s websites techniques work, what has stopped working, need to offer unique and compelling content, and what actions could actually penalize your delivered consistently in an easy-to-read site. format, and they need to stand out from the crowd of other sites doing the same thing. That BASIC SEO: is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Using keywords, adding alt-tags to images, combined with a user-friendly site experience, and including proper headers and footers are can help companies direct the right traffic to all basic optimization techniques. They are all RICHARD KRISTOF their sites, find the right audience for their CEO, Investor Services Company of America good things to do, but technical optimization content, and convert that audience into leads alone will not necessarily be enough to stay and investors. at the top of the search results. Your compet- What is SEO? The short answer: it is a way itors are also working on revising their sites, of building your site’s content to ensure that improving their keywords, and generating when your target audience searches for rele- new content—all things that affect rankings. vant topics on the leading search engines, your Staying on the front page requires staying site shows up in the top results.
    [Show full text]
  • How to Grow Your Web Traffic
    w~ qu,cintu,t kb ook s ® How to grow your web traffic and get noticed on a noisy web. By Jeff Bullas PART 2 OF 3 Table of Contents 3 Introduction 6 Chapter 1 It’s a noisy world 7 Chapter 2 How to earn and drive traffic for free • Organic Social Media • Email Marketing • Search Engine Optimisation • Collaboration 14 Chapter 3 How to accelerate your traffic growth and online attention by paying for it • Google AdWords and Remarketing • Facebook Sponsored Posts • Influencer Marketing 17 Bonus Section How to measure the success of your efforts 18 Conclusion 2 G1) cfuickbooks. Introduction To help you navigate the social web, Intuit and global For small businesses owners like you, digital thought leader Jeff digital channels are one of the most Bullas have teamed up to effective and affordable ways to grow your business in today’s digital world. show you three simple steps to your online success. As a global leader in cloud accounting, Intuit is aware of this power of online solutions to drive In a series of three e-books, we will your prosperity, and is committed show you how to attract business and to supporting your growth. Yet, grow sales with digital tactics, tools from regular conversations with its and technology that can provide consumers, Intuit knows many small a predictable stream of business businesses struggle with utilising prospects, converting to sales online channels. It might be a challenge for you to find the time to market yourself to In our first webinar we prospective consumers or how to covered: adapt and grow your business in the often confusing social web.
    [Show full text]
  • Guide for Increasing Search Engine Optimization
    Guide for Increasing Search Engine Optimization July 2019 Guide for Increasing Search Engine Optimization The Consumer Education Website Guide series aims to help state and territory staff develop effective, accessible, family-friendly consumer education websites. This series is designed to support the efforts of states and territories as they enhance their consumer education websites to help families understand the full range of child care options and resources available to them. These guides share best practices and tips that state and territory staff can use to improve the user experience, make all information clear, and prepare for common accessibility barriers—such as limited English proficiency, limited literacy skills, and disability. They will help to ensure that all families have easy access to accurate, understandable information as child care consumers. Overview This guide introduces search engine optimization (SEO) to Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Administrators and other child care professionals who want to ensure that their state and territory consumer education websites effectively serve their communities. It presents tools and resources you can use to make sure search engines can easily locate content that is relevant to users’ needs; however, no one tool or resource is recommended or endorsed. Your state or territory can decide which options work best with its capacity and budget. The information presented here will help you understand and share the importance of SEO with information technology (IT) professionals and web or digital marketing vendors. It also provides information about best practices and technical approaches that content managers and developers can use to improve consumer education websites.
    [Show full text]
  • The Impact of Search Engine Optimization on Website and Business Performances of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises
    Tomasi and Li Impact of SEO on Performance of SMEs THE IMPACT OF SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION ON WEBSITE AND BUSINESS PERFORMANCES OF SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED ENTERPRISES Stella Tomasi, Towson University, 8000 York Rd., Towson, MD, 21252, [email protected], 410-704-3031 Xiaolin Li, Towson University, 8000 York Rd., Towson, MD, 21252, [email protected], 410-704-3427 ABSTRACT Search engines have become an important channel for increasing SMEs’ global reach as well as competing with larger companies. Therefore, SMEs are enhancing their business visibility through search engine optimization (SEO). With effective SEO techniques, small companies can appear ahead of large, well-known companies on search results. In this study, we use multiple firms as cases to empirically illustrate how SEO initiatives by SMEs impact their’ website performances. The concern of this study has been to gain insight into the use of SEO by SMEs and the factors that enable SMEs to be successful in adopting SEO in business. Keywords: Brand Management, Websites, SEO, Case Studies INTRODUCTION Search engines play an critical role in online search as more than half of all visitors to websites tend to arrive there from a search engine (Introna and Nissenbaum 2000) and 91% of users report that they always or most of the time find the information they are seeking when they use search engines (Purcell et al., 2012). Therefore, optimizing the business website to improve its ranking in the search engine result page (SERP) is crucial for today’s businesses, particularly for SMEs which cannot afford other marketing channels to enhance their business visibility.
    [Show full text]