So what do you need to know to increase your share of traffic from the search engines? (And your sales along with it.)
Simple... You need to learn the secrets that marketers have been using for years to drive traffic to their site. Believe it or not, it’s not hard. In fact, the only thing that makes it a secret is that, like most secrets, you have to expend some time and effort to learn them! Or, have someone teach you them, which is exactly what I'm going to do here.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
There are millions of web sites out on the net. No one could even begin to know all of them, or what they contain. How, then, does anyone ever find what they’re looking for?
The answer to that is search engines.
Google, Yahoo!, MSN. Search engines with an extensive index of sites are going to be the primary tools people use when they first log onto the web. Even the newest internet user knows to head to the search engines to try to find what they're looking for.
Getting the search engines to send traffic your way should be your first stop on your quest to get traffic to your site, blog or web store.
Every time someone does a search on a search engine they’re going to get thousands, maybe even millions of results, though only the first few hundred or so will actually be made available to them. That means that simply ensuring your site is listed in a search engine index isn’t enough to guarantee that the search engine is going to help you to increase your traffic. Your prospects aren’t going to look through hundreds of pages of results until they “happen” to stumble across website. If they don’t find what they’re looking for on the first couple of pages of search results then they'll either try a different search engine or give up entirely.
That means that if you’re going to take advantage of the power of the search engines you’re going to need to make sure your site is in those first few pages. In order to do that you’re going to have to make your site as useful as possible. Why useful? Because when someone goes to a search engine looking for information on a particular topic they type what is known as a keyword into the query box (search box). The search engine then goes looking for sites that seem to have a lot in common with that keyword.
Search engines want to be as accurate as possible when directing people to websites because if they start sending people to aimless sites that have absolutely nothing related to what they’re looking for, it isn’t going to be long before that search engine is out of business. Google spends a huge amount of time, resources and money improving their search results accuracy.
Most search engines use what's known as a web crawler. The web crawler “crawls” through each site, inspecting the contents of every page before assigning it a classification. The web crawler’s determination is going to be one of the primary factors to decide a site’s positioning on a search engine's results page. What the crawler looks for and indexes are:
1) Keyword frequency. The number of times a word appears in the pages of a site is a pretty good indicator of how the site is related to it. If you're listening to someone speak with half an ear and you hear the word “manicure” every five to ten seconds you can make a pretty educated guess that they’re talking about getting (or giving) a manicure. If a word appears over and over again in a site the crawler assumes the two are related, and it will classify them accordingly. However, you can't just fill every page with a bunch of keywords. Search engines are getting increasingly smarter (well, their algorithms are anyway) and they also look at the context of the keyword.
For example: You can't just write, "this article is about keywords, and how to use keywords, and keywords are good, and using keywords will help you. Add keywords to your page and the keyword will get indexed..."
This is akin to keyword spamming and it may not get your site banned from the major search engines, but it definitely won't get it listed in the top results. You need to use the keywords naturally.
2) Titles and the first few lines of each page. Because a web spider (a.k.a. crawler) can’t read it pays special attention to the words which appear in the title and first few lines of each individual page, assuming that the title and introduction will be set up to tell the reader right off the bat what the subject matter is about. (The Internet is a great tool for leaching away your creativity, since a site built for a company selling molassas with the title, “Catching Bugs the Easy Way” probably isn’t going to be listed in the “Food Department.”
How To Capitalize On SEO
In order to drive traffic to your website you’re going to need to learn how to capitalize on the process of search engine optimization. You’re going to need to optimize your site in order to earn one of those coveted spots at the top of the search engine listings, and you’re going to need to learn how to angle the optimization process to ensure that the crawlers index your site as being relevant to information your visitors want to know.
In order to capitalize on the SEO process you’re going to need to do three things:
1. Choose the proper keywords. The keywords you choose to optimize your site around are going to be the key factor in the success or failure of your optimization efforts, so it’s important that you choose carefully. We’ll get into the process of choosing keywords in more depth in the next section.
2. Orient your site appropriately. The keywords on your home/main page are going to help determine the keywords your site is classified under, but they’re not the only factor to be considered. The webcrawler is going to crawl through all of the pages on your site, not just your homepage, so it’s important that all of the pages on your site be optimized. And ensure that all links on your site are working as well. Any bad links will reduce your chances of a top listing.
3. Become a fountain of useful information. Provide your visitors with useful information through the use of SEO articles. This will catch and keep your visitors’ attention and cement your spot in your current niche. A major player in the success or failure of your business is the usefulness of your site. If visitors come to your site and find only the information they need (and nothing else) they’re not very likely to come back. On the other hand, if your site is a never ending source of information on all topics related to your niche people will come to your site looking for one piece of information and stay to read more. They’ll come back, they’ll refer their friends to you, and the next thing you know your traffic will have increased exponentially.
Choosing Your Keywords
The first step in properly optimizing your site is to choose the proper keywords. The keywords you choose are going to be a map to your front doorstep for all of those eager little internet browsers out there trying to find their way around the immensely vast universe of information.
Obviously, you’re going to need to choose keywords that are going to appeal to your target market, or they’re just going to keep wandering around out in cyberspace without the first clue that you have exactly what they’re looking for!
The process of choosing keywords is a simple one. Take a second to ask yourself the following questions (try to keep your answers to only one or two words -that’s harder than you might think. ;-)
1) What does my product do?
2) What is my product?
3) What do I want from my product?
4) What does my customer want from my product?
Once you’ve answered these questions, sit down and brainstorm a list of words that are related to your product. This is just like the Freudian word association test you take in a psychiatrist’s office. It's also a proven technique for stimulating creativity. So don't think, just answer. Don’t discard words you think are unrelated to your product, or that you feel your customers wouldn’t use when trying to find you -yet. Your list may appear completely off the wall, like some of the words in the list below; however, you'll be amazed by what you'll use when the time comes to put them into play.
Word Association Example:
Brainstorming Product: Fast Growing Bamboo
Faster, stronger, taller, bigger, rounder, giant, skyscraper, trees, bushes, roots, pots, pans, plants, pork, trees, huts, swings, swine, rats, rice, paddies, bamboo, leafier, greener, lucky.
Not all of the words that were brainstormed above are going to be entered into a search query box, but for now they belong. Even after you’ve gone through and selected your prime keywords, keep this list. This will be a tremendous asset when the time comes for you to pick and choose the topics of your SEO articles; after all, if you made the association chances are that someone, somewhere, is going to do the same!
Once you’ve got your master list, go through and pick and choose which ones you want to use to build your site or your page. This is a great time to stick to the KISS method (Keep It Simple Stupid). Not to insult your consumer market, but most of them approach a search on the net with the basic mentality of a seventh grader; what basic words or phrases will get me to where I want to be?
Try to keep your keywords obvious; in the example above the inclusion of the word “bamboo” would have been mandatory, as well as faster, stronger and taller. This is a good place to start. Bear in mind that there are no absolutes or guarantees in the marketing business. The words you choose to start off with might do absolutely nothing for your traffic generation efforts. You may need to throw them out and start all over again! If you continue to apply these basic rules to the selection of your keywords, however, you're guaranteed to find the right combination sooner or later that’s going to exponentially increase your number of website hits.
Well, that's today's traffic generation suggestion. I hope you found it helpful.
Until tomorrow,
Terry
