Attracting People to Your Website

You are open for business – your office is ready, and your website is working. Now you need to attract some traffic to your site. You’ve studied your audience and understand your niche, so you know what they want. Now how do you get their attention?

Well, there are three ways.

First of all, send an e-mail to everyone on your e-mail list. Tell them about all the cool stuff you have, all the special deals and new products. If you are not collecting the e-mail addresses of your visitors, START NOW! This is one of the most important ways you have to contact your customers, so don’t neglect it.

Use an e-mail capture box on your homepage to collect your visitor’s name and e-mail address. Amazon can generate huge sums of money with Internet business by sending sequential e-mails, advertising their product. You can do the same, with auto responder systems that make it simple.

You can also attract visitors by paying for them. The next time you search on Google, pay attention to the small ads on the right side of the page. Those are Google AdWords. You can advertise your site on Google, selecting keywords based on your Internet niche. You only pay when someone clicks on that ad, which whisks them to your webpage. It only costs pennies per click, and you can set your own budget and search terms.

The third, and most effective, way to get lots of traffic is through search engines. If you have good information on your particular topic, search engines like Google, MSN, Yahoo, and Ask Jeeves will direct a flood of traffic to your site. This “organic” search engine traffic is free.

Search engines help you find information. You type in “keywords” based on your preferred topic. Web spiders then seek out the information you request. Of course, search engines often return thousands or even millions of potential websites. Websites that rank most highly are at the top of the list. Customers are most likely to visit those popular websites, so it is important to rank your site as highly as possible.

When you aim to increase your ranking, you need to consider two factors: the stuff you see on your web page (your on-page optimization), and the things that aren’t on your webpage (your off-page optimization).

There are three ways to get better search engine ranks through on-page optimization:

1.Go to your HTML editor, and click on page properties. You will see space for a title. This is not the title that people see on your webpage; rather, this “title tag” is read by web spiders seeking information. Insert your keyword or search term in this area, along with other relevant keywords. Once this is complete, that title will appear in the blue bar at the top of your browser.

2.Now that we have fixed your title tag, it’s time to add a title to your webpage. Add your keywords near the top of the page, then use your HTML editor to choose an H1 or H2 tag. This will help those web spiders find the information.

3.Use your keyword throughout the text. Use your keyword once or twice in the first paragraph. Add a keyword to the second paragraph, and perhaps at the end. Use the word count feature on MS Word, and see how many times you’ve repeated the same keyword – if more than four to five percent of your text is keywords, you may be penalized by the search engines.

Those three simple steps will help you get more attention from the search engines. Come back next week, when we discuss off-page optimization strategies to build your business.

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© Stephen Beck, 2008
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Stephen Beck teaches 7 simple steps to starting a home business. For a free CD explaining those steps, visit Work at Home right now.