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Design_your_site_for_traffic_in_2005
| Design your site for traffic in 2005
What better way to start the new year than with more traffic to
your web site. Web traffic is a critical part of your internet
business and it is imperative that you design it to bring you
the most amount of traffic possible.
Designing your site for traffic includes offering good content,
easy navigation and a logical flow. Additionally you must also
build your site to draw traffic from the search engines because
if you can obtain high search engine ranking, you can enjoy free
traffic.
It's important to note, however that good ranking won't do you
much good without a well designed site and a well designed site
can't bring you visitors if no one knows it's there. Both high
ranking and good design need to work together. How do we pull
all this together? Let's take a look.
-A word about Design-
A huge mistake I see many website owners make is that they get
caught up in making their site cute. They love the little
animations, buttons and dramatic backgrounds. What they fail to
consider is that these things are worthless if you don't offer
good content, easy navigation and a logical flow.
First of all don't try to be everything to everyone. Design your
site around a theme, preferably a niche theme. Don't confuse
your readers with links all over the page. Design a logical
flow. Lead your viewers to where you would like them to go.
Leave plenty of white space and keep your pages organized.
Clearly state at the top of your pages what you are about and
what you would like your viewers to do.
Secondly, I don't recommend pop-ups. I find that the majority of
internet users find them annoying. The demand for pop-up
blockers is a good indication that viewers don't want to see
them.
Thirdly, offer good content. Provide information on your site
that will help viewers solve a problem. Offer information that
they might not get elsewhere. Write reviews regarding your
products. Write newsletters and articles and most importantly
offer something of value for free. Give your viewers a reason to
come back. It will also build trust in you.
-Traffic builders-
Good search engine ranking can bring lots of visitors to your
site. It often takes a few months to rank well but the payoff is
lots of qualified traffic. While it's not practical to depend
solely on search engines for traffic it can complement your
other advertising campaigns nicely. Aiming for high search
engine placement is always a plus.
Keep these in mind when developing your site for the search
engines:
- Domain names Choose a domain name that has your site keywords
in it. For example, if you're a site about pet care, try to
include the words "pet care" or words related to pet care in
your domain name if you can.
- keywords Keywords require research and there are several tools
to help you out in this area. Here are my favorites:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
I suggest focusing on only one keyword or keyword phrase per
page of your website. This may not seem like a lot but if your
site has 20 pages you can focus on 20 keywords. Each page should
be considered a landing page for your site. If you have proper
navigation on your pages it will easily allow viewers to see
everything you have to offer.
Include your keyword or keyword phrase at the top of your page
as well as in at least one header phrase. Also work the keywords
into the body of your text as often as you can without sounding
redundant.
Your keywords should be in the Title tag as well as in your
page description tag. Many search engines no longer look at the
keyword tags but I recommend using them and including the plural
forms as well. - Alt Tags Search engines don't index images,
therefore any text on your site that is presented in image
format won't get indexed. To solve this problem, you can enter
the image description in the ALT tag. To be sure that the search
engines recognize all the content on your site, fill in your ALT
tags with your keywords. This will boost your keyword frequency
and help your site achieve better ranking.
- Linking Search engines will rate your site by who is linking
to your site, so it's important to establish quality, related
links. This can be accomplished in a few ways. One way is to
establish reciprocal links with other like sites. When
exchanging links be sure to include your keywords in your site
title.
Review the page you are exchanging links with. Be sure it is a
site that you find easy to navigate and informative. I also
recommend that the site's index page have a Google PR rating of
at least one. This ensures that the site is not being penalized
by Google. If it is a penalized site then you could be penalized
as well for linking to it.
- Include a 'tell a friend' and 'bookmark' script on your site.
This gives viewers an easy way to bookmark you and most of all
return to your site.
- Include a Site Map Site Maps let visitors know what
information you have, how it's organized, where it is located
with respect to other information, and how to get to that
information with the least amount of clicks possible.
Site maps also provide spider food for search engine robots.
This can increase your chances of becoming indexed because a
site map allows the search engines to easily visit every page of
your site.
A site map works best if you include a link to your site map in
the navigation of every page on your site. Finally, don't let
your site become stale. I have found that my search engine
rankings improve when I periodically add new pages to my site
and keep the content new and fresh. Follow these tips and 2005
may be your year for traffic.
About the author:
Elizabeth McGee has spent 20 years in the service and support
industry. She has moved her expertise to the world wide web
helping businesses find trusted tools, enhance customer service,
build confidence and increase sales. You can visit Elizabeth's
sites at: http://www.homenotion.com
http://www.pro-marketing-online.com
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