11 Ways to Get More Traffic to

Your Website
Your website took time to design, develop and implement. But the next challenge is getting quality traffic
to your site. It’s the challenge every online entity struggles with. You shouldn’t have to pay for every set
of eyeballs, either. You need people who are actively seeking what you have to offer.

There are a number of ways to maximize your online visibility, but here’s a list of the best and most
effective tools you’ll want to include in your efforts.

1. Keyword Analysis

Start with a thorough Keyword Analysis to identify the most effective phrases and keywords that searchers
are using to find your service or product. Google Analytics is a free service that will help you kick off the
process. If you want to do a more in-depth investigation, you may want to invest in one of the premium
services or applications, like SEO Moz or Web CEO.You should also revisit your keyword analysis every
3-6 months in case you are missing any opportunities with trending keywords.

2. Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools

Be sure you have Google Analytics tracking enabled, or some other robust traffic analysis tool
likeSmarterStats Analytics Engine, which is included with all Applied Innovations hosting plans. This
will let you review vital statistics for your site, including unique page views, referral sites and peak traffic
times. Another free utility is Google Webmaster Toolswhich will allows you to submit an XML sitemap
for your site, as well as identify any fundamental problems, such as crawl errors and malware.

3. Other Free Analysis Tools

Check out a previous newsletter article from Applied Innovations listing some of the best Free Online
Analytic Tools. You can really improve the performance and visibility of your site by digging into the
intelligence provided by these tools.

4. Onsite Search Engine Optimization

In order to optimize your site for visibility by the search engines, run down this checklist for each page:

o Minimum of 250 words of keyword-rich content on every page.

o Unique H1 headers for each page.
o Write keyword-rich 60-character Title Tags for every page.
 o Each page needs unique Meta Descriptions (200 characters maximum) and may also include a list
of Meta Keywords. To see how these are formatted, view the source code for any optimized
website and search for “meta.” Example:
<meta name="description" content="Description." />
<meta name="keywords" content="keyword 1, keyword 2,..., keyword 5" />
o ALT tags for every image.
o Anchor text links from page to page.
o Keywords and keyword phrases are bolded.

If you want a more detailed explanation and discussion on these items, check out the Meta element article
on Wikipedia. Or check out Google’s Webmaster Tools Help for all the best practices for Meta content.

5. Pay Per Click Advertising

For as little as pennies per click, you can actively target users interested in your product or service using
PPC ads on Google, Facebook, Bing or other search engines and social media networks. The trick is
dialing into a “sweet spot” where you are paying as little as possible for the best targeted traffic. You don’t
need a huge budget to test this approach, but it will take some care and feeding to learn the system and
experiment with different strategies.

6. Directories and Listings

There are literally hundreds of directories that provide local businesses and website owners the opportunity
to claim their listings. Start by going to Get Listed. This site allows you to claim your listings on the top 6
sites:

o Google Places: www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter

o Bing Local: https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx
o Yahoo Local: http://listings.local.yahoo.com/
o Yelp: https://biz.yelp.com/signup
o Best of the Web Local: http://local.botw.org/helpcenter/jumpstartproduct.aspx
o Hotfrog: http://www.hotfrog.com/AddYourBusiness.aspx

Next, see if it makes sense for your business to claim your presence on these other directories. Sign up for
as many as your time allows for.

o Superpages: http://www.supermedia.com/spportal/quickbpflow.do
o Citysearch: https://selfenroll.citysearch.com
o InsiderPages: http://www.insiderpages.com/advertiser/find_business
o Localeze: http://webapp.localeze.com/extranet/createaccount.aspx
o Local.com: https://advertise.local.com/
o Yellowpages: http://listing.yellowpages.com
o infoUSA: http://dbupdate.infousa.com/dbupdate/startupdate

7. Blogging
Start a blog and post articles consistently, averaging 250-500 words in length. Use keywords, link back to
relevant pages on your website, and invite comments. If you don’t like to write, pay someone to blog for
you.

8. Social Media

Develop a basic social media strategy that you can realistically maintain. First and foremost, set up a
business page on Facebook and create a business Twitter account. If you use LinkedIn, set up a company
profile there. You may also want to create a YouTube channel. Just be sure you are clear about your
objectives and maintain an active presence on each of these primary networks.

Here are some basic guidelines for your Primary Social Media Networks:

o Establish a voice and be consistent across all channels.

o Actively seek to engage customers.
o Create unique, compelling content. Don’t be purely self-promotional or solicitous. Establish a
personality for your brand.
o Identify your goals. Do you want to reach new customers? Increase sales? Capture leads? Recruit
new employees?
o Find your audience on each platform. Invite your customers and contacts to connect. And then
reach out beyond your own circle to begin increasing your sphere of influence.
o Set guidelines for regular tasks. Create an interconnecting web of posts that refer to your Blog and
any other regular activity occurring on your website.

9. Secondary Social Network Profiles

Take a look at the Wikipedia article listing the major active Social Networks. Depending on your business,
your target audience and your industry, identify the sites that would be appropriate to target. Some may be
very highly targeted and you should add them to your Primary Network efforts. Others may be less
targeted, but at the very least, you want to claim your brand name on as many of them as you have the time
and patience for. Set up basic profiles for your company with the keyword-rich descriptions, contact
information and a link to your website. Be careful to document your username, password and associated
email for each account so you can update them in the future.

10. Press Releases

Promote and distribute news and announcements at every opportunity. Product launches, staff changes,
new service offerings, signing new customers, community outreach efforts, awards, milestones and
anniversaries… everything that is important to you or your customers can be spun into a Press
Release. PRWeb offers several distribution packages at prices starting at $80. They also offer detailed
guidelines on how to write and optimize your release. We also wrote an article in a previous newsletter
titled Press Releases: Dos and Don’ts.

11. QR Codes/Microsoft Tags

QR codes and Microsoft Tags are beginning to gain popularity and provide an easy conduit to your website
from a smart phone. The novelty factor alone may be appealing to some target audiences. You can use QR
codes or Microsoft Tags in print materials, on building signage, even business cards. For a thorough
explanation of QR codes, check out the Wikipedia article. Search for QR Code Generator on any engine
and you’ll find a plethora of free options to create your own. For information on Microsoft Tags and to
create your own, please visit:http://tag.microsoft.com/home.aspx

Tracking Site Visitors: What

Analytics Can Tell You
How do you know if your website is attracting and keeping potential customers? How do you measure the
effectiveness of your online marketing efforts? It is critical to regularly review the analytics that provide
information about how much traffic your site is receiving, how customers behave once they’re on your
site, how quickly they leave (or bounce from) your site and other important information that will help you
improve and fine tune both your site and your marketing strategies.

Google Analytics is one of the most popular web analytics programs, and is free for websites that generate
10 million or fewer hits per month. With an easy-to-use interface, several customizable reporting features
and a robust set of performance metrics, Google Analytics provides valuable insight about the
effectiveness of your website.

With Google Analytics, you can view:

Content Analytics: Discover which parts of your site are performing well, which pages are most popular
and which might need some improvement.

Social Analytics: Find out how successful your social media programs are and see how users interact with
the sharing features on your site. You can also see how visitors engage with your content across social
platforms.

Conversion Analytics: Discover how many customers your site is receiving, how much you’re selling and
how visitors are engaging with your website.

Mobile Analytics: See how your mobile marketing efforts are impacting your business and view the
performance of your mobile apps.

Advertising Analytics: If you use paid search (Google AdWords), you can find out how well your mobile,
social and search and display ads are working.

You can easily customize your metrics to view:

 o Visits
o % New Visits
o Avg. Visit Duration
o Bounce Rate
o Pages/Visit
o Pageviews
o Unique Visitors

You can compare any two of the above metrics, and can select to view the data by specific date ranges, or
by pre-defined time frames (hourly, day, week, or month). Google Analytics also provides information
about your visitors’: demographics (language, country/territory and city); system (browser, operating
system and service provider); and mobile information (operating system, service provider and screen
resolution) if they used their phone to find you.

The options are endless with this amazing, free tool from the undisputed king of search. Need help
navigating Google Analytics for the first time? Read the Google Analytics Set Up Checklist and begin
improving your website and online marketing efforts today.

Having trouble keeping customers on your site? Studies have shown that a slow-loading website greatly
increases the possibility that a visitor will leave your site, abandon a shopping cart and other undesirable
behaviors that negatively affect the overall success of your business. Get quality web hosting services you
can rely on from Applied Innovations. From dedicated hosting tocloud hosting, Applied Innovations
provides a comprehensive offering of the latest hosting solutions and we’ll be happy to conduct a
performance review with you to ensure your site is at it’s highest performance!

5 Surefire Tips to Have a Great

Website
Online work and businesses are very common nowadays. People have seen and found many new
opportunities to generate income using the internet. Some have even made online businesses their main
source of income while others use it as their part time business or job. In order to make your online
business successful, you need to have a well-developed website. Not only is a great website necessary to
make a great customer experience but it is also necessary to attract new customers; people are more likely
to shop from a well-designed website as opposed to something that looks like it was created by a 5th grader.
In addition, this is also where you can say what you can do for your clients. In other words, all the
information you want relayed to your customers can be seen in your website. Here are some great tips that
you can use to have that truly effective website for your business.

1. Keep in mind that appearance of the website is important to attract visitors and possible clients.
However, it is no good for your website to be designed by the greatest professional out there if no one will
see it. For this reason, it is important to register your site with major search engines. Although eventually
the primary search engine bots or spiders should crawl your site and index it, it will be a lot faster if you
personally tell Google, Yahoo, and Bing that your site is up and running.

Give it a few weeks and then check to see that your site has been indexed. I find that the best way to
perform this is to download and install the Google toolbar, visit your page, and select theCached Snaphost
of Page option in the PageRank menu. Once you see your page left click on “text only version” to see how
the spiders see your site. The more text you see displayed on the cached text only version the better.

2. Install Google Webmaster tools and Google Analytics. Both of these services give you website feedback
and errors. Furthermore, Google Webmaster tools allows you to submit a sitemap of your website letting
Google know where all the pages for yours site may be found.
3. Keep in mind that content that you put in your website can attract visitors to your site. So, keep the
content interesting, informative and more importantly, original. Do not copy the content or articles from
other sites. This will be unhealthy for the online business industry. And besides, some people may have
already read the article and will not be attracted to do business with you.

4. It is important to use the Google keyword tool. This tool is part of Google AdWords (not to worry, no
AdWords account is actually needed to use the tool). The keyword tool allows any user to see what other
people are searching for in Google and how popular the search is.
5. If you are choosing a new domain always include the keywords that your site is targeting. This will be
easier for visitors to know what your business is all about. Instead of letting others know what your
business name is, let them know what you are really offering through the keywords that you use in your
site. It is more important to get possible clients than to let others know your business name. In addition,
this is also Search Engine Friendly and should help you rank better for the keywords you are targeting.

BONUS: Here is a bonus tip for local business; use tools like Google Places, Yahoo! Local and Bing
Local. These will help you reach a wider range of possible clients by easily getting on the 1 st page of
search engine results for local searches. More and more people are turning to the internet to find local
business vs. the Yellow Pages.

SEO and other online skills are needed to make a business prosper through the website that you create for
your online business. Do not just focus on the products or the services that you are offering. Also do an
effort to make your business website as efficient and interesting as possible for you to generate the income
that you want from it.