Internet Marketing Series: Generating Traffic
In an earlier post, we discussed about improving your website effectiveness. Once you get set-up and over that part, you are ready to move forward. The next stage is generating traffic to your website. It is the keystone to achieving success in your business.
A great website won’t do you any good, unless you have a decent amount of traffic flow. hence, in this post, we will discuss about generating more traffic to your website. We have already some related posts on the topics. But this post will focus on it from a marketing point-of-view, and will include some points not already discussed. It is such a vast topic that entire books have been dedicated to it. But we have put together a few keys steps you need to take in order for your traffic to start flowing.
Remember! The more effort you put in at this stage, the better the chances of your business’ online success
Setting up Analytics
The first thing you need to do is set up analytics for your website. You need a way to track down and monitor your traffic statistics. This may make all the difference. We recommend using Google Analytics.
to set u Google Analytics, go to Google Analytics Homepage and sign up with your Google account. It’s free, easy to set-up and use, and provides complete statistics for your website from unique visitors, to Pay-Per-Click ad success, and more. All you need to do is, click on the sign-up button. You will then give a code snippet that you will have to insert anywhere on your website. This will then help Google Analyse your web traffic.
With Google Analytics, you will be able to tell what your traffic sources are, what are the incoming search terms, what keywords were used etc. This data is crucial, as it will tell you what is working out, and what isn’t. This will help you as you move forward with specific marketing campaigns and tactics.
Search Engine Optimization
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a huge topic in itself . It basically is the process of getting your website recognized on major search engines. With adequate SEO, you page will show up on someone’s search results when they perform a search on a search engine. There are two major areas where you can optimize your website/blog for better search engine ranking; keywords, and Inbound linking.
Keywords
First of all, make a list of all the important keywords associated with your business. Try to think from the customers’ point-of-view. Think about what they are most likely to type into search engines. For example, if you offer website hosting, your customers might find you by searching for “cheap web hosting” etc.
Google has a very powerful tool that will help you in this process, known as Google Keyword Tool. It is an excellent tool that tells you how many searches are performed on a particular keyword, and how much competition do you from other sites etc. It also suggests more keywords related to the ones you entered.
Once you have decided upon the necessary keywords, the next step is to use them. The best places for keywords are your titles (within the <title> tags) which appear at the top of your page window, headings, sub-headings, and the content close to the top (introductory paragraph etc). You should keep your content and articles keyword-rich. Also, Search Engines like to see fresh things, so keep your content up-dated, and write articles frequently.
Inbound linking
Inbound links (backlinks) increase the credibility of your website. They help search engines to easily find, rank, and include your website in search lists. The ranking and quality depend upon the quality of backlinks. The more popular the websites linking to you, the better! Not only will you get more visitors from the linking site, it will also increase your search engine rank, hence getting you more targeted traffic.
You should start off with putting links in places you are active online, like blogs, social networks, forums etc. That way, your posts are likely to get exposure and hence more traffic.
Another tip you should keep in mind is, you try to use keywords in anchor texts. Anchor text is a text which is linking to a URL. For example, Google is the anchor text in Google. You see? You should use keywords as anchor texts when linking to your website from another platform.
Paid Advertising
If you are willing to spend some money to promote your website, then you must consider this. Paid advertising is a great way to increase website traffic. There are two major services that you can use to di this; Google Adwords, and Facebook ads.
Google Adwords
Google Adwords is the largest, simplest, and most proficient service of its kind. Basically, you have to bid on keywords most related to your business. Once you win a slot, you pay Google a certain amount for each time someone clicks on your ad. Your ad will then be displayed for the set number of clicks. For example, if you paid $10, and set $1 per click, then Google will display your ad for 10 clicks, and after that, your ad will be removed.
Google Adwords will help you track your clicks and tell you when ads need to be renewed. You can also use Google Ad Planner to research a specific site to see what type of audience is visiting them. You can also choose a target audience and see what type of websites they are visiting. This data will help you decide where your ads will bring the most advantages.
Facebook Ads
Facebook advertising is second only to Google in terms of number of visitors. To start, you of course need a Facebook account. Start by clicking on the “Create an ad” button. After that, you will be guided through simple steps to design your ad. You can add in image and text, and you also have to provide your website URL. Once done, you will be asked to select a target demographic (what sort of people you want to target). You will also need to choose a budget and the time for which the ad will run.
Note that Google AdWords and Facebook Ads work in different ways. While Google Adwords targets keywords, Facebook Ads focuses on targeting audience. Hence, the “cheap website hosting” ad will display to any person on Facebook with “website owner” or something similar anywhere on their profile.
