Six Tips For Attracting Traffic To Your Website

Though there's a certain attraction in owning "the best little Website no one's ever heard of," it isn't the best way to promote your business or sell your product. But don't think for a minute that all you have to do is submit your URL to the search engines and suddenly the floodgates will open, with zillions of surfers pouring into your domain. Sure, search engines are important, but you can't rely on them alone. Think about it: How many tens of thousands of companies are vying to move up in those search results? Search engines are indeed a major component, but you must approach them knowingly and eventually go beyond them to ensure traffic to your site.

Review these six tips (one of which is dedicated to those essential search engines), and you'll honor the hard work you put into creating your Website by making sure people visit and appreciate your fine work, products, and services.

Chances are your Website meets a very specific need. In many cases, there are e-mail lists that already exist to service this segment. Subscribe to them! Contribute valuable content when you speak up. Plant your Web address, along with a reason for visiting, in your "sig file." Don't go overboard though; sig files should only be about four or five lines long.

Step One: E-Mail, The Paul Revere Of Online Announcements

You can also go one step further and advertise on a list. This is one of the best-kept secrets of online advertising. Ads are cheap, and there are no production costs since you create them in plain text. How do you advertise on these lists? After you sign up and read the FAQ, you'll know if the list accepts advertisements. Usually .edu and .org lists don't accept ads; not all .com lists do either. Rates are usually very cheap since the list owner probably has no formal sales plan to sell the ads. Ask for a rate card. See if others are advertising. If they are, it may be a barter situation. You may be able to play the barter game with ad exposures for the list on your site. If you don't find a list that serves your particular niche, think seriously about starting one before someone else does (see related links for suggested lists).

Step Two: Get Repeat Visitors

It seems a shame so many people go to the trouble and expense of erecting sites and dragging people to them, only to eventually let their visitors get away, never to be seen again. Offer your visitors a reason to give you their e-mail addresses. The reason can be as simple as providing an easy way for them to be notified when the site is updated. If they really like you, they'll sign up. If they don't, they won't, which means you've got some thinking to do.

Be sure to place a text field (where visitors can submit their e-mail addresses) on every single page of your website. After all, you've come into websites through the side door from a search engine that gave you a second-layer page ahead of the home page, right? The same thing will happen with your visitors. Make sure visitors see the opportunity to subscribe to your reminder service in the top portion of any page they land on. Remember, a lot of people don't scroll. Why? Who cares? Maybe they don't know how. Or perhaps they're just antsy and click on the first button they see.

Finally, always remember to assure subscribers that their e-mail addresses will not be sold. Subscribership increases when you let visitors know their e-mail addresses are safe with you. If you're planning on asking for more than just an e-mail address, you have to make it obvious to the reader that whatever you're providing is deserving of forking over more information. You don't want too many to leave indignantly. Even though my newsletter, 'Web Digest For Marketers' enjoys a good reputation, about 20 percent of people who start filling out my subscription form don't finish. Why? I ask for five fields of information -- their name, company, title, e-mail address, and where they heard of WDFM.

Step Three: Use An Online Announcement Service

NetPost is the best and most expensive announcement service because the owner, Eric Ward, posts every single press release manually. He sends them to his hundreds of contacts, each with a personal message. He won't send a press release to an inappropriate journalist, editor, or news outlet because it would impugn his reputation. If you can't afford NetPost, try an online press release service like The NewsRoom. For less than $200, you can send your press release to hundreds of news outlets and "What's New" sites in a matter of minutes. I suggest you couple this distribution with an offline PR service to hit traditional outlets as well (see step five). Many online outlets aren't reached by traditional services and vice versa.

Step Four: Seeding The Search Engines

The truth is that one could fill a book with what you should and shouldn't do when submitting your site for the search engines, but you don't have time for that. Instead, here are some quick tips:

*If you don't wish to concentrate on search engines, simply go to Submit It and you can submit your site to all the major ones (and lots of less major ones) in one swell foop. However, be aware that this is a cookie-cutter approach. One submission must be basic enough to fit within the guidelines of all the search engines. You're not able to take full advantage of the differences each has to offer. One engine may allow 75-word descriptions, but you'll have supplied only 25 words to Submit It.

*Search engines often have automated scripts -- called bots -- that visit your site and index a good piece of what they find there. Make sure your Meta and Alt tags are filled out with the words that visitors are apt to search for. However, just because Meta and Alt tags aren't readily seen, that doesn't mean you can put 5,000 keywords in there. These bots are getting pretty savvy about seeing those patterns and deleting what some call "reverse spammers" from the index altogether. In short, don't go there!

*You may want to employ a service called PositionAgent, which will show where you're coming up in the various search engines. My advice to you, as mentioned earlier, is not to focus solely on the search engines. Practice due diligence, but don't get obsessed. If you really want to come out at the top of the search-engine results, you can always buy the banner at the top of that page.

Step Five: Offline Promotion Is Important

Nothing validates an online venue like an offline mention. Have you ever tried to take a quote from a website and put it in your clips file? It isn't easy. Being seen in print means that a publisher or advertiser thinks the effort worthwhile enough to pay the extra freight of paper, print, and distribution.

Send out a press release over PR Newswire or Business Wire. But don't make the mistake of buying the entire country for $600. Most likely, you don't need that; rather, you should buy your local metro market for between $90 and $140. Both services will then give you two or three industry circuits over which your press release will go out. I typically choose advertising/marketing, financial, publishing, or hi-tech/Internet. If you send the press release out over PR Newswire, it will also travel over the PointCast Network, which has a cumulative audience of more than 1 million viewers.

Advertising In Traditional Media

If you've got the funds to advertise, go for it. If you're buying your own advertising, it might be worthwhile to start an in-house agency. Then you can take advantage of the 15 percent discount media outlets typically offer advertisers.

Make sure everything is denominated in cost per thousand. You need a common denominator to judge which advertising will serve you best. Before negotiating, look at the publication carefully. See what kind of advertisers it currently has. Are any like you? Maybe you know some of the advertisers well enough to call them and see how effective their ads are. Here again, make sure your ad gives people a clear-cut reason why they should visit your site.

One last note -- don't blow your entire budget in one blast. After all, you're going to want to have some buckshot left over for later in the year when you have some major event, promotion, or attraction set up to draw them in.