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50+ Ways to Drive Traffic to your Website or
blog and Keep them coming back for more
In 1998, promoting your business web site was a very easy process. You
placed 3 lines of code called "meta tags" on the top of your home page and
submitted the page to free search engines or directories. Fast forward to the
present.
Web site promotion has become a time consuming project and a new position
in the web design industry, Search Engine Consultants, has been created. Use
the list below to find ways that your business web site will be found by your
ideal client, is user friendly and is visited often.
This list is presented in no particular order.
1. Get people involved and excited. So what better way to get people to
visit than to make them want to visit.
2. Become active. Social networking and getting others involved is a great to
initial exposure of your website. Find other talented people in your niche to
chat with, share information, and help out.
Valuable social sites:
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Digg
• StumbleUpon
• Technorati
• Twitter
• Reddit
3. Submit Articles. Submitting your articles to various article submission sites
is another great way to reach a wider audience. These include:
ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com
4. Giveaways and Competitions. Who doesn’t enjoy winning FREE stuff?
Host a competition or giveaway free stuff for commenting or subscribing.
5. Use your sources. Linking to other peoples blogs and articles is another
great way to gain exposure. Ask other blog founders of similar interest and
popularity if you could add then to your blog roll in exchange for a link back to
your own blog or website.
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6. Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Improving your search engine
ranking by making your blog search engine friendly with SEO tricks and tips. If
you are using WordPress, make certain to install the All in One SEO Pack
plugin.
7. Comment On Other Blogs. Not only will this leave a link back to your site
(if you leave your website URL in the form field), but also gives you the
opportunity to shed some insight on other posts, thus making you valuable and
informative.
8. Add A Link To All Your Marketing Material. Start by adding your blogs
URL to your business cards, email signature, Ads, presentations, banners,
signpost.
9. Write Guest Posts. Writing for other blogs of similar interest and
readership is a great way to reach out to a wider, new audience. Try writing to
your best ability when doing guest posts — you want to impress!
10. Host Guest Writers. Allowing other’s to write the occasional blog post is
a great way to provide other insight and a new, fresh perspective on topics in
your niche.
11. Link To Other Articles. Not only is this valuable to your readers, but it’s
a great way for other blogs to notice you — and we all appreciate a good
trackback.
12. Put A Face To Your Blog. Blogs are typically personal so why not make
them more personal? Add a photo of yourself somewhere on your blog. It
makes the visitor feel more welcome and invited to interact.
13. Write Interesting & Valuable Content. While this one seems to be a
no-brainer, when writing or coming up with an idea for a post ask yourself
“Would I want to read this?”
Write short, concise articles. Readers LOVE lists! Don’t ramble and appeal
to the masses. Also, don’t just preach. Instead, help people. Share your
knowledge, expertise and experiences.
14. Post Regularly
Three things are extremely important when first starting your blog.
Write as often as you can so that your readers do visit your blog or subscribe.
If you are only posting once a month, give them something to look forward to.
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15. Yahoo Answers – Posting Questions and providing answers to questions.
This is a very popular service that will drive traffic to your blog or website.
16. Join Interest Groups – On Yahoo Groups, Google Groups, MSN Groups.
17. Write a Press Release submit to PRWeb.com. When your business
web site is launched, updated, or you write a free e-book. This informs the
media, your friends, community etc.
18. Write something controversial on your blog. Make use of holidays like
April fools day. Read here about 2011 april fools day stories.
19. Insert Keywords in your Image File names & properly tag your
blog entries. Give images that you upload on your website real meaningful
names. Don't be tempted to leave the name of the photo as m45638.jpg
20. Email/Newsletters – Repeat Traffic. With a subscribe link on your
website, whenever new products are released or holiday discounts annouced,
the people on your list will be the first to know.
21. Monthly Contests. More website visitors will be enticed to participate and
they will encourage others to do same.
22. Social bookmarking using SocialMarker.com or similar.
23. Giving away Website Award Banners
24. Joint Ventures with other site owners especially the big websites in your
niche.
25. Giving away articles, audio and video FREE especially to other site
owners. Create Tutorials on your site and offer them as text & images,
Podcasts, video tutorials, seminars, webinars.
26. Organic SEO (Good Titles, Description, Headers, Quality Content), Blog
RSS Feeds, links to social networking websites all clearly displayed on top of
your pages.
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a. TITLE tags: Title tags should be 60 or so characters and include some
keywords in your niche.
b. Header tags are numbered from 1 to 7: some search engines recognize
Header tags. So make sure you use these tags for each of the titles on your
page.
c. Keyword Meta tags: Add no more than 15 to 20 keywords to keep the
search engines from flagging your site for keyword spamming. Prioritize your
words. The best way to submit to search engines is to submit to each search
engine individually.
d. Use keywords in the text area of each page. They are especially important
at the beginning of sentences and higher up on the page.
27. Submit your site's information to search engines. Below are four
ways to submit your Web site to search engines:
a. 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)!
b. Open a free e-mail address to use when you do "anything" for free on the
World Wide Web. Two good search engine submission services are Submit It!,
and Scrub The Web.
28. Creating Videos and Uploading to Sites, Youtube, Revver, metacafe,
vimeo etc.
29. Linking your Videos to Other High Traffic Videos on YouTube. Write a
short friendly email to the owner of the high traffic video you would like to link
to and propose a monthly contribution towards him for pasting your link on his
video page.
30. Write a Book, Publish on LULU
31. Forum Posting & forum Signatures. Offer solutions to problems that
people post in forums. When you gain authority for very helpful answers,
people would take you as an expert. Your forum signatures should include a
link to your website.
32. Create your own forum. Make a forum to offer support, announce
product launches, holiday discounts, vacancies & promote your products.
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33. Utilize Craigs List Free Classified Ads & Also Kijiji Free Classified
Ads
34. Use web 2.0 websites to promote your website. These include:
creating squidoo lense, tumblr, hubpages, wordpress.
35. Create a Freebies Section on your site
36. Buy Ads on Sites especially high traffic newspaper websites.
37. Join Business related Associations and groups, both online and
offline.
38. Create Small Product then Create Affiliate Program For it. With an
affiliate scheme, offer affiliates to keep more of the money – for instance 70%.
That way, many will scramble to reach more of their subscribers.
39. Write Testimonials for products provided by related sites
40. Build a strong, solid business foundation. Design a business plan,
marketing plan, ideal client profile and 30-second elevator speech.
41. Be consistent and “brand” your company. Use the same colors, logo,
motto, etc. everywhere on your business web site!
42. Ask your web master to name each of your pages using a keyword
that describes your business. If your business is selling art & crafts,
possible keywords include: original african crafts, cheap african crafts
43. Offer added values on your business web site that make sense to
your business and ideal client. This can include affiliate programs, books,
accessories stores and recommended links to web sites.
44. If you have pages on your business website that you update
monthly (like an articles page or recommended links page) say so on the
page.
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45. Design some quizzes or surveys. Statistics show that visitors love
quizzes and assessment tools.
46. Find easy and secure ways for your clients to pay you. A shopping
cart and a secure way to accept checks and/or credit cards work very well. Use
Paypal and Moneybookers.com are popular payment gateways.
47. Check your business web site's links regularly to make sure they all
work. Use a free link checker such as Xenu's Link Sleuth.
48. Teach classes or speak to groups about subjects relating to your
products.
49. “Permission Market” by gathering, in writing, the e-mail addresses of
students, or an audience as part of your evaluation forms. Create index cards
so that you can invite your friends, networking partners or associates to join
your list. Keep any papers involved in this process.
50. Promote your web address in your signature for e-mails (change it
regularly to highlight something new you're promoting).
51. Network locally to bring people to your site.
If you liked this ebook, please consider donating to keep ICT4d
Experiences going - $5 will take us a long way!
To Donate: Send Money via Moneybookers email: kjohnah@gmail.com Or on
the ICT4d Experiences blog
For inquiries and any further info, please send an email to:
kjohnah@gmail.com
To your success,
John Kibuuka
www.ruralict.com
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