How can you get more visitors and increased traffic to your website? Below are some common marketing strategies used to promote your site. Many of these strategies are included in our basic site promotion package.

Search Engine Optimization | Linking | Traditional Marketing | Email

Search Engine Strategies

The most important strategy is to rank high for your preferred keyword phrases on the main search engines in regular searches (as opposed to paid ads).

Search engines send robot "spiders" to index the content on your web page, so it is important to have your pages optimized for easy and appropriate indexing of each pages content.

A search engine will use information contained in your web page to add it to its index. Users who visit search engines will enter search words or combination's of words (search phrases) to find web pages having content they want to find.

The Internet contains millions of web pages and getting traffic to your site requires that your site be at or near the top of the list of pages found in a search.

In order to optimize your web pages to achieve high search engine positioning, it is necessary to understand a few vital facts.

Use of Keywords

Keywords and keyword phrases should occur often and near the beginning of the TITLE tag, the DESCRIPTION and KEYWORDS meta tags and the body of your web pages. The more frequent the keywords appear and the nearer they appear to the beginning of the tags and pages, the greater the chance of achieving high search engine positioning.

The tags that are most important for page optimization are (in the following order):

The TITLE tag

Example: <TITLE>Plumbing Supplies Company</TITLE>

This is the most important tag on your web page. It should begin with the most important search phrase users will enter to find your site. It is more important than the content and it is more important than the description or keywords meta tags. Users searching for “plumbing supplies” will stand a greater chance of finding your site using the above title than if it were:

<TITLE>Plumbing Supply Company</TITLE>

The DESCRIPTION meta tag

Example: <META NAME=”description” CONTENT=”Plumbing supplies for home and industry.”>

Use a plain English sentence of no more than 40 words for your description. Again, the description should begin with the most important keywords. Search engines will use the contents of this tag to display results of a search. If there is no description meta tag then the search engine will attempt to build one from the content at the top of the body of the page. Words like “BackNextProductsSupport” wont mean anything to users reading search results. Also do not use a list of keywords as a description. Search engines will see this as an attempt to achieve a high ranking and will probably penalize you and your site may appear much lower on the list as a result.

The KEYWORDS meta tag

Example: <META NAME=”keywords” CONTENT=”plumbing supplies, plumbers supplies, plumbers pipes, valves, pipe wrenches”>

Although the keywords meta tag is important, most search engines will derive keywords from the actual content of web pages. Nevertheless, you should include the keywords meta tag in all pages you want indexed. Do not “spam” the search engines by repeating keywords. If you do you will most likely be penalized with a lower ranking or even banned altogether. Additionally, only use keywords that appear in the actual content of the page. If the search engines detect that you are trying to score a high ranking by using keywords that have nothing to do with the content of the page then you risk being penalized or banned.

ALT tags for images

Example: <IMG SRC=”logo.gif” WIDTH=”200” HEIGHT=”50” ALT=”Plumbing Supplies Logo”>

Although having a lesser importance than the above tags the <ALT> tag should also be used to achieve sufficient keyword density.

Make Sure Your Keywords Are in the First Paragraph of Your Body Text . Search engines expect that your first paragraph will contain the important keywords for the document -- where most people write an introduction to the content of the page. You don't want to just artificially stuff keywords here, however. More is not better. Google might expect a keyword density in the entire body text area of maybe 1.5% to 2% for a word that should rank high, so don't overdo it. Other places you might consider including keywords would be in ALT tags and perhaps COMMENT tags.

The Home Page is The Most Important Page. If a user searches for “plumbing supplies” make sure that the phrase “plumbing supplies” appears on the home page. Search engines will list in order of importance all the sites having content related to the search phrase entered by the user. If the phrase “plumbing supplies” appears in one of the pages of your site, then the search engines will place a greater importance on your site and it will stand a much greater chance of getting a higher ranking if the phrase also appears on the home page.

The goal of the webmaster is to discover the best keywords to use in your content and meta tags. Try to figure out the search words and phrases users would enter to find your site.

Don't Use an Image for the Body of Your Page. Since search engines use the actual content (words) of your page as a basis for indexing, never use an image as the main content of your page. Doing so will reduce your chances of high search engine positioning.

Use Search Phrases. Using the above tags as a guide, a user may type “plumbing supplies” in a search engine. This is a search phrase because it is more than one word. Most users use search phrases or keyword combination's, not single words.

Do Not Use Hidden Text. Never attempt to hide text to achieve greater keyword density by making it the same color as the background or use any similar “trick” to fool the search engines. Doing so only risks your site being banned from the search engines. Always be up front and straightforward in your web page design. Never attempt to hide anything from the search engines. These tricks usually backfire.

Include Your Keywords in Header Tags H1, H2, H3 . Search engines consider words that appear in the page headline and sub heads to be important to the page, so make sure your desired keywords and phrases appear in one or two header tags. Don't expect the search engine to parse your Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) to figure out which are the headlines -- it won't. Instead, use keywords in the H1, H2, and H3 tags to provide clues to the search engine.

Use Keywords in Hyperlinks . Search engines are looking for clues to the focus of your page. When they see words hyperlinked in your body text, they consider these potentially important so hyperlink your important keywords . To emphasize it even more, the web page you are linking to could have a page name with the keyword or key phrase, such as blue-widget.htm -- another clue for the search engine.

Make Your Navigation System Search Engine Friendly . Some webmasters use frames, but frames can cause serious problems with search engines. Even if search engines can find your content pages, they could be missing the key navigation to help visitors get to the rest of your site. JavaScript and Flash navigation menus that appear when you hover are great for humans, but search engines don't read JavaScript and Flash. Supplement them with regular HTML links at the bottom of the page, ensuring that a chain of hyperlinks exists that take a search engine spider from your home page to every page in your site. A site map with links to all your pages can help, too. Be aware that some content management systems and e-commerce catalogs produce dynamic, made-on-the-fly web pages. You can sometimes recognize them by question marks in the URLs followed by long strings of numbers or letters. Overworked search engines sometimes stop at the question mark and refuse to go farther. If you find the search engines aren't indexing your interior pages, you might consider URL rewriting, a site map, Yahoo Search Submit Express (formerly SiteMatch), and targeted content pages. 

Develop Several Pages Focused on Particular Keywords . SEO specialists don't recommend using external doorway or gateway pages any more, since nearly duplicate webpages might get you penalized. Rather, develop several web pages on your site, each of which is focused on a different keyword or keyphrase. For example, instead of listing all your services on a single web page, try developing a separate web page for each. These pages will rank higher for their keywords since they contain targeted rather than general content.

Submit Your Webpage URL most used to search engines to Search Engines . Next, submit your page to the important Web search engines that robotically index the Web. Look for a link on the search engine for "Add Your URL." In the US, the are: Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL Search, and AskJeeves. Some of these feed search content to the other main search engines and portal sites. For Europe and other areas you'll want to submit to regional search engines. It's a waste of money to pay someone to submit your site to hundreds of search engines. Avoid registering with FFA (Free For All pages) and other link farms. They don't work well, bring you lots of spam e-mails, and could cause you to be penalized by the search engines. We'll talk about submitting to directories under "Linking Strategies" below. If your page is already indexed by a search engine, don't re-submit it unless you've made significant changes; the search engine spider will come back and revisit it soon anyway. Your hosting account with IDEVWEB HOSTING includes a free search engine submitter located in the vdeck control panel.

Fine-tune with search engine positioning . Occasionally fine-tune your focused content pages, and perhaps your home page, by making minor adjustments to help them rank high. Use a search engine ranking tool to determine where your site is placed among several search engines at a time. Popular tools for getting ideas about which keywords to use are Keyword Suggest - Google and KeyWord Suggest - Overture.
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Linking Strategies

Links to your site from other sites bring additional traffic. But since Google and other major search engines consider the number of incoming links to your website ("link popularity" and "PageRank") as an important factor in ranking, more links will help you rank higher in the search engines, too. All links, however, are not created equal. Links from popular information hubs will help your site rank higher than those from low traffic sites.

Submit Your Site to Key Directories , since a link from a directory will help your ranking -- and get you traffic. Be sure to list your site in the free Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org) , overseen by human editors. This hierarchical directory provides content feeds to all the major search engines. Plus it provides a link to your site from an information hub that Google deems important. 

Yahoo! Directory is another important directory to be listed in, though their search results recently haven't been featuring their own directory as prominently. Real humans will read (and too often, pare down) your 200-character sentence, so be very careful and follow their instructions (http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/) . Hint: Use somewhat less than the maximum number of characters allowable, so you don't have wordy text that will tempt the Yahoo! editor to begin chopping. Business sites require a $299 annual recurring fee for Yahoo! Express to have your site considered for inclusion within seven business days (http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/busexpress.html) . Other directories to consider might be About.com and Business.com . Here is a directory of Directories that may be helpful http://www.directoryarchives.com

Submit Your Site to Industry Sites and Specialized Directories. You may find some directories focused on particular industries, such as education or finance. Be sure to register with these. You probably belong to various trade associations that feature member sites. Ask for a link. Even if you have to pay something for a link, it may bring you the kind of targeted traffic from an info hub that you need. Beware of directories that solicit you for "upgraded listings." Unless a directory is widely used in your field, your premium ad won't help -- but the link itself will help boost your PageRank and hence your search engine ranking. Marginal directories come and go very quickly, making it hard to keep up. Don't try to be exhaustive. Here is a directory of Directories that may be helpful http://www.directoryarchives.com

12. Request Reciprocal Links . Find complementary websites and request a reciprocal link to your site (especially to your free service, if you offer one). Develop an out-of-the way page where you put links to other sites -- so you don't send people out the back door as fast as you bring them in the front door. Your best results will be from sites that get a similar amount of traffic to your site. High-traffic site webmasters are too busy to answer your requests for a link and don't have anything to gain. Look for smaller sites that may have linking pages.  We offer setting up a easy to manage link directory when you sign up for our basic site promotion package which also includes many of the suggestions made on this page.

Write Articles for Others to Use in their Newsletters . You can increase your visibility when you write articles in your area of expertise and distribute them to editors as free content for their e-mail newsletters or their websites. Just ask that a link to your website and a one-line description of what you offer be included with the article. This is an effective "viral" approach that can produce hundreds of links to your site over time.

Issue News Releases . Find newsworthy events (such as launching your free service), and send news releases to print and Web periodicals in your industry. The links to your site in online news databases may remain for years and have some clout with link popularity. However, opening or redesigning a website is seldom newsworthy these days.

Traditional Strategies

Traditional strategies can also be very effective.

Include Your URL on Stationery, Cards, and Literature. This is a no-brainer that is sometimes overlooked. Make sure that all reprints of cards, stationery, brochures, and literature contain your company's URL. And see that your printer gets the URL syntax correct. In print include only www.domain.com.

Promote using traditional media. Don't discontinue print advertising that you've found effective. But be sure to include your URL in any display or classified ads you purchase in trade journals, newspapers, yellow pages, etc. View your website as an information adjunct to the ad. Use a two-step approach: (1) capture readers' attention with the ad, (2) then refer them to a URL where they can obtain more information and perhaps place an order. Look carefully at small display or classified ads in the back of narrowly-targeted magazines or trade periodicals. Sometimes these ads are more targeted, more effective, and less expensive than online advertising. Consider other traditional media to drive people to your site, such as direct mail, classifieds, post cards, etc. TV can be used to promote websites, especially in a local market.

Develop a Free Service . It's boring to invite people, "Come to our site and learn about our business." It's quite another to say "Use the free mortgage calculator available exclusively on our site." It's expensive in time and energy to develop free resources, but it is very rewarding in increased traffic to your site. Make sure that your free service is closely related to what you are selling so the visitors you attract will be good prospects for your business. Give visitors multiple opportunities and links to cross over to the sales part of your site.

E-Mail Strategies

Don't neglect e-mail as an important way to bring people to your website but don't spam. That is, don't send bulk unsolicited e-mails without permission to people with whom you have no relationship.

Install a "Signature" in your E-Mail Program to help potential customers get in touch with you. Most e-mail programs such as AOL, Netscape, and Outlook allow you to designate a "signature" to appear at the end of each message you send. Limit it to 6 to 8 lines: Company name, address, phone number, URL, e-mail address, and a one-phrase description of your unique business offering.

Publish an E-Mail Newsletter. While it's a big commitment in time, publishing a monthly e-mail newsletter ("ezine") is one of the very best ways to keep in touch with your prospects, generate trust, develop brand awareness, and build future business. It also helps you collect e-mail addresses from those who visit your site but aren't yet ready to make a purchase. Ask for an e-mail address and first name so you can personalize the newsletter. You can distribute your newsletter using listservers such as Constant Contact.

If you're just getting started you can use a free advertising-supported newsletter from Yahoo! Groups (www.yahoogroups.com) .