Optimize My Website - Improving WebSite Traffic

Improving WebSite Traffic

If you take your website seriously you are already aware that traffic is not everything. Search Engine Positioning is enormously useful in directing serious clients to your site. Generic traffic is made up of mostly window shoppers.

Where they may not bring you any direct business, these window shoppers can be useful in improving your search engine ranking. Here are several suggestions worth a look for getting more of these generic visitors.

Email Signature

This is by far the easiest approach. Anybody is more likely to visit your site if there is an easy to find clickable link verses just seeing or hearing the site's name. But more importantly for SEP purposes, a link in all of your emails can also be seen by the search engines. Every email sent out will end up sitting on a different website mail server, and many of these servers are actively spidered by the search engines. You know how much work it is to get another website to place a link pointing to your site. Well, this trick will inform some of the search engine spiders of your site and associate any text in your email with your site's purpose; this is good. In addition; a signature makes your email look more professional.

How do you this? Every email client for every operating system is different, so this might initially prove tricky for some. But this is a common feature and is usually one of the easier customizations to apply to your email program.

In Microsoft Outlook:

In the Tools Menu select Options. Click on the Mail Format Tab. Use the link at the bottom of the box in the heading Signature. Click on the button Signature Picker and create a new signature. I find it easier at this point to attach a text document that contains my signature so that it can be used by all of my email programs.

In Mozilla Thunderbird:

Create a new mail message with just the text you want for the signature. Save this. You will find the saved signature in the Drafts folder. Select this saved email and drag it to the Templates folder. Now, whenever you want to use the signature just open the saved template document and start writing your new email.

One of these two methods is used by every email client program. It may require some experimenting to make work with your particular program or version, but please take the time to implement this feature as it will pay off.

A last thing to keep in mind; for the URL to be clickable your email needs to be compiled in HTML mode, not plain text mode. Most email clients use HTML formatting by default. But, if you notice that your sent email does not format your URL as clickable then you may want to enable this option.

Newsletters

Newsletters, or regular emails, are very important in making sure that your clients remember you. This is often also accomplished in Christmas Card mailings or Special Flyers. However you use this option, always include your site name/URL.

An emailed newsletter also has the advantage of that clickable link.

Advertising

As with the Newsletters and emails, remember to share your site name.

There is a neat trick you can incorporate if you have multiple site names pointing to your main site;

Advertise with one of those extra URLs. By viewing your sites server log you can see what site forwarded how much traffic to your main site. If you used a secondary URL name then you will know exactly how many people were directed to your site by that advertising campaign. If you have multiple names, use a different name for each campaign. This server log feature can be found to the left of your online SEP Report on the awstats link or by typing your URL with /awstats (www.yoursite.com/awstats). Once the page opens select the link on the left titled Referers/Refering Sites.

Conclusion

Whatever your campaign, Do NOT forget to include your site name/URL. If it is clickable, all the better.

Written by Administrator
Wednesday, 01 August 2007
Improving WebSite Traffic If you take your website seriously you are already aware that traffic is not everything. Search Engine Positioning is enormously useful in directing serious clients to your site. Generic traffic is made up of mostly window shoppers. Where they may not bring you any direct business, these window shoppers can be useful in improving your search engine ranking. Here are several suggestions worth a look for getting more of these generic visitors. Email Signature This is by far the easiest approach. Anybody is more likely to visit your site if there is an easy to find clickable link verses just seeing or hearing the site's name. But more importantly for SEP purposes, a link in all of your emails can also be seen by the search engines. Every email sent out will end up sitting on a different website mail server, and many of these servers are actively spidered by the search engines. You know how much work it is to get another website to place a link pointing to your site. Well, this trick will inform some of the search engine spiders of your site and associate any text in your email with your site's purpose; this is good. In addition; a signature makes your email look more professional. How do you this? Every email client for every operating system is different, so this might initially prove tricky for some. But this is a common feature and is usually one of the easier customizations to apply to your email program. In Microsoft Outlook: In the Tools Menu select Options. Click on the Mail Format Tab. Use the link at the bottom of the box in the heading Signature. Click on the button Signature Picker and create a new signature. I find it easier at this point to attach a text document that contains my signature so that it can be used by all of my email programs. In Mozilla Thunderbird: Create a new mail message with just the text you want for the signature. Save this. You will find the saved signature in the Drafts folder. Select this saved email and drag it to the Templates folder. Now, whenever you want to use the signature just open the saved template document and start writing your new email. One of these two methods is used by every email client program. It may require some experimenting to make work with your particular program or version, but please take the time to implement this feature as it will pay off. A last thing to keep in mind; for the URL to be clickable your email needs to be compiled in HTML mode, not plain text mode. Most email clients use HTML formatting by default. But, if you notice that your sent email does not format your URL as clickable then you may want to enable this option. Newsletters Newsletters, or regular emails, are very important in making sure that your clients remember you. This is often also accomplished in Christmas Card mailings or Special Flyers. However you use this option, always include your site name/URL. An emailed newsletter also has the advantage of that clickable link. Advertising As with the Newsletters and emails, remember to share your site name. There is a neat trick you can incorporate if you have multiple site names pointing to your main site; Advertise with one of those extra URLs. By viewing your sites server log you can see what site forwarded how much traffic to your main site. If you used a secondary URL name then you will know exactly how many people were directed to your site by that advertising campaign. If you have multiple names, use a different name for each campaign. This server log feature can be found to the left of your online SEP Report on the awstats link or by typing your URL with /awstats (www.yoursite.com/awstats). Once the page opens select the link on the left titled Referers/Refering Sites. Conclusion Whatever your campaign, Do NOT forget to include your site name/URL. If it is clickable, all the better.