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Web Moves Blog

Web Moves News and Information

15
Jul
2003

29 Ways to Drive Traffic to your Website and keep them

1. Build a solid business foundation. Design a business plan, marketing plan, ideal client profile, and a site map for your web site.

2. Be consistent. Brand your company.

3. Make your website trustable. This article will show you 10 ways. www.coachmaria.com/trustableweb.html

4. Create policies the build trust: customer service, code of ethics and newsletter privacy policy.

5. If you have pages on your site that you update monthly (like an articles page or recommended links page) say so on the page.

6. Find easy and secure ways for your clients to pay you. A shopping cart with paypal and a secure merchant account works very well.

7. Network locally to bring people to your site.

8. Check your links regularly to make sure they all work. Use a free link checker such as http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

9. Place your website address on all your printed literature — business cards, brochures, newsletters, letterhead, email signature, ads – everything!!

10. Offer added values that make sense to your business and ideal client. This can include affiliate programs, books, and recommended links to websites.

11. Use your web address in your signature for emails (change it regularly to highlight something new you’re promoting).

12. Add a “Recommend This Site” on your site. If someone visits your site and knows someone else who may appreciate it, this feature will email the page’s link to a recipient.

13. Provide monthly chats or bulletin boards (forums) to build a relationships and community.

14. Instead of a link to subscribe to your ezine, offer a subscription box on your most viewed web site pages.

15. Teach classes or speak to groups about subjects relating to your products.

16. Permission market by gathering the email addresses of students or the audience as part of your evaluation form.

17. Add a favorites script such as “add this page to your favorites list” to some pages.

18. Conduct periodic contests and announce the winners on your site.

19. Offer a free ebook on your site. This could be two pages of information that would be helpful to your visitors and that contains your business information, too. Recommend that this ebook be forwarded to others for their personal use.

20. On large websites, create a “What’s New Page” or even better, ask your webdesigner to design a “Site Map” for your visitors.

21. Write articles, post them to your site, and submit them to article banks.

22. Design some quizzes. Statistics show that visitors love quizzes and assessment tools.

23. Participate in online forums as an expert. You get to “quietly” promote your business in your 3 or 4 line signature.

24. Join a few web rings. Some sites to visit are: www.webring.com/rw and www.bravenet.com. Find a site that your ideal client will visit and it allows you to put your web site there for free do it! Just remember to link it to your domain name site.

25. Search engines look for certain things so it is crucial to make sure your site is “search-engine friendly”.

~ TITLE tags: Title tags should be 60 or so characters and have some keywords in them.

~ Header tags are numbered from 1 to 7: Header 1 tags are recognized by some search engines. So make sure you use this tag.

~ Keyword meta tags: It is best to try to keep it to 15 to 20 words to avoid being considered SPAM by the searching engines. Prioritize your words. The best way to submit to search engines is to submit to each engine individually.

~ Use keywords in the text area of each page. They are especially important in the beginning of sentences, higher up on the page.

26. It is recommended that you submit to search engines individually (this is also the way I do it and it works great, but is time consuming)! Visit www.coachmaria.com/website.html However, since some people prefer to use a free service to submit, I recommend that they open a free e-mail address to use when you do “anything” for free on the world wide web.

Three search engine submission services are www.registerit.com, www.submitit.com and www.scrubtheweb.com.

Paid submission programs can be purchased through companies such as: www.se-optimizer.com, www.webpositiongold.com, www.positionagent.com

27. Visit these search engine information sites: www.searchengineguide.com and www.searchenginewatch.com

28. Want to know more about Internet Marketing? Visit this excellent Internet Marketing Index at www.internetmarketingindex.com

29. If this list seems overwhelming, visit your favorite search engine and start interviewing experienced Search Engine Optimizer and Consultants!

Author Bio:
Maria Marsala is an internationally known Business & Life Coach-Consultant. She has blended her career as a Wall Street trader and manager, community activist, and experience as a consultant with training from Coach U to create Maria’s Place for Holistic Evolution. Subscribe to “Helping You and Your Business Grow”, a free weekly ezine at www.coachmaria.com