Bring Traffic To Your Website Class

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NOTE: This is a work in progress started 7/17/12. Please check back for updates.


Optimize your website for traffic

The Bottom Line

Creating compelling and original content is the best and least expensive way of getting people to your site.


Keywords

Keywords: A collection of words and short phrases that are used strategically to garner traffic from search engines.

  • Research what people look for concerning your business
  • Think from the customer's perspective!!! What would the average person type into Google if they were looking for a business like yours. Type that in and see what comes up. Look at the content and tags of the first few sites.
  • Ask family and friends what words and phrases they would use if they were looking for a product like yours.
  • Target keywords to fit your business. What product do you most want to push? Are you selling locally, nationally or globally?

Google keyword tool (adwords keyword tool) – possibly using misspelled words, gauging competition and effectiveness vs. price

Inserting keywords into contents

  • Use keyword-heavy writing. Keyword density.
    • In this scenario, you are trying to compete locally and you find your customers are looking for quality, low-priced computers of specific brands.
      • ComputerManufacturer, Inc. makes computers to fit your needs. Come shop at our store-room.
      • ComputerManufacturer, Inc., located in Portland, Oregon, makes high-quality, affordable computers such as Brand A, Brand B and Brand C. Come shop for deals and discounts at our show-room which is located at 1234 SE 10th St, Portland, OR 97201(with embedded map or link that opens in a new window)

Black hat vs. white hat tactics - http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html

  • Don't use font colors too similar to the background.
  • Don't keyword stuff.

Font size

  • Words and phrases with larger header tags and in bold are weighed more by search engines.
  • Header tags H1 Header --------> H6 Header are most important --------> least important
    • Don't waste your header tags on text that does not define the structure of a page
    • Use them sparingly


Domain name

Make it easy to remember/spell.

Use your keyword research in considering names.

The keywords in domain names are considered heavily by search engines.

If Computermanufacturer, Inc. has a local store, they should consider variations on portlandcomputer(s).com/org/etc. If they also do repairs they might consider using names like computerrepairs.com, portlandcomputerrepairs, etc.

Multiple names leading to one site - Computermanufacturerinc.com/biz/org, portlandcomputer.com, portlandbranda.com, etc

Possible Domain Registrars:


Meta tags and title

These have been deprecated in most search engines as far as ranking is concerned, but are useful for search engine results display.

Title

Description

Title and Description as It relates to search engine search results

  • Title shows up as the clickable header in search results.
  • Description shows up as the wording under that.
  • While they don't affect rankings, title and description could lead someone to click on your site as opposed to another on the search engine results page.

Keywords

  • This used to be critical, but is now something that should be avoided

Robots

  • The robots tag is used to let search engines whether you want to be indexed (appear on search results) or have them follow your links
  • The tag to use for public pages on your website is <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="INDEX, FOLLOW">
  • Also use the robots tag to hide sensitive data or information that is not useful to SEO or the general public

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2067564/How-To-Use-HTML-Meta-Tags

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_element

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=79812

http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_meta.asp


Content is king (or queen)

Other's content that your are licensed to use

Original Content

  • Make your content interesting and unique. Your goal is to make people want to come to your site to read your writing or use it on their website.
  • Making your content available to other websites

With all content, update regularly and be consistent. If someone comes back to the same content over and over they may stop visiting all together.

Get people to interact with you (end with a question)

  • Enabling feedback forms, live chat, emails
  • Prizes and contests
  • Enable reviews
  • Enabling interaction make a customer feels safe, gives them a sense of importance and makes for customer relationships

Leaky vs. leak-proof websites

  • The goal is to make people stay on your site.
  • Use target="_blank" to get links to open in a new page, keeping them on your page.
  • Never link to manufacturers or competitors.

Reference other websites (and link to them) to get their attention

  • Make sure the sites don't link to competitors or manufacturers

Link back to your own posts

  • Use your website and social media in your email signature, on forum signatures, in blog posts, etc

Write content on other websites (guest blog, etc.) Make it easy for people to subscribe (via email or RSS) - Feedburner


Site Mechanics

Use mostly text for navigation. Search engines cannot read the text in images unless alt or title tags are present. They may not be able to read the text in javascript menus such as tree menus. The text and menu hierarchy can not be read from Flash.

Create or enable a mobile site

Create an XML sitemap for Google Webmaster Tools

Create an HTML sitemap for your users

  • This could be added as an include at the bottom of pages or a page unto itself

Create custom 404 pages with HTML menu hierarchy or suggested pages

  • A 404 page is an error page that appears when the page searched for is not found

Create user-friendly URLs.

  • ie. wiki.freegeek.org/index.php/Bring_Traffic_To_Your_Website_Class instead of wiki.freegeek.org/index.php/classes/102.php

Create short, descriptive anchor tags

  • Anchor tags link to other internal or external pages
  • The HTML For free classes, <a href="www.freegeek.org/index.php">please visit the Free Geek website</a>. will show up as For free classes, please visit the Free Geek website. (where the bold is a clickable link)
  • Use descriptive tags that pertain to the linked material
    • Use something like the above instead of For free classes, click here.
  • Style your links to make them obvious

Image tags

  • Use the alt tag with images in case they don't display correctly
  • Use the title tag to to create a text pop-up
  • Be descriptive with both. While search engines can't read text in an image, they can read these
  • Use descriptive image filenames - ie. computer_class.jpg instead of image1.jpg


Site analytics

Using logs: Logs are collections of data from your server, host, ecommerce platform system, google analytics, internatl search function and more. The point of site analytics is to amend your website according to traffic and needs determined from that data.

What can be determined:

  • Physical location
    • Useful in geolocating marketing efforts, translating website and choosing keywords
  • Referring site
    • What page people were on when they clicked a link to you
    • Will tell you what sites or search engines are referring you, what articles or reviews might have been linked back to you, people who are hotlinking images, etc
  • Search terms
    • What terms were used on various search engines to find your site
  • Operating Systems, browser, screen size, etc

Facebook Insights - http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=120881494659811

Google Analytics - http://www.google.com/analytics/


Find online venues to bring in traffic

Should be related to your topic

Forums

  • Lurk Moar - Shadow for a while to get a feel for the culture. Study their nettiquette.
  • Don't want to "spam" these forums. Write something because it is relevant and interesting.

Links you create back to your website in your signature, etc should include your key search terms

Effectively promote your website without spamming/over-sharing


Using social media

Encourage people to share.

Use each venue specifically with as much unique content as possible.

Take the social media class for an in-depth exploration of this topic

http://namechk.com/


Google-Fu

Google Keywords Tool

Google Analytics

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Places

Google Alerts

  • http://www.google.com/alerts
  • Put in your company name, CEO/owner name(s), type of business + location (shoe store portland), competitors names, brands, etc

Google DoubleClick Ad Planner

Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide

A 3rd party listing of Google services

Offline/non-website methods

Put your website on ALL 'old media' advertising (billboards, TV, newspaper, etc)

Make sure at least your website URL and main email are on your business card

Put up flyers in related businesses/businesses of friends

Put all your information (name, phone, address, email, website and social media) on receipts, invoices, letterheads and posters.


Other resources

http://searchengineland.com/

http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291

http://mashable.com/

http://seo.alltop.com/

http://browsershots.org

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