First of all you must research your keywords and pick the
ones most appropriate to your site content. Doing this well
will give you a good chance of getting traffic from the
search engines. Search engines also love updated and fresh
content and this is something else you will have to ensure
you do regularly.

When visitors arrive you now need something to offer them
to keep them happy. Best of all is free reports, or
software, designed to blend in with your overall site
content. Everyone loves something for free and the higher
the quality the better. You can receive an email address in
return and build up a relationship in this way.

You set up your autoresponder to maintain contact and offer
lots more information and advice on a timed basis. Try
using training information and newsletters and ensure that
it is relevant to your overall site content. People are
happy to receive good quality content and will look forward
to your emails.

You will gradually build relationships with your
subscribers. This is really important so take note! You
will come to be known and trusted in the areas you provide
advice and information. Put up surveys and ask them if they
have any questions or problems. Then help them out.

Recommend solutions you have tried and found to be good. Do
not recommend something just to make a quick buck if the
solution is not of a high standard. This is one of the
quickest ways to lose trust and your traffic will dry up
fairly quickly. If people are happy and trust you, they
will also recommend you to their friends and associates.

You know that without your customers, or list, you do not
have a business. So you really need to make sure you look
after your list once you have one. Always try to do
something special for them. Special offers and freebies
only for them is a good way to show your appreciation for
being on your list. Make sure to give them the absolute
best value that you can and do not offer the same outside
of your list.

Remember, forget to update your site on a constant basis
and you have thrown the anchor overboard. Your business
will slowly grind to a halt. Your traffic will dwindle
away. And always remember to keep your visitors when they
arrive. Work hard at providing valuable and useful content
for them. You worked hard enough to get them to come now
ensure you work just as hard to keep them. Sounds simple
and is simple when you enjoy what you do.

Ben O’Rourke is an Online Marketer and Software Developer.
Free eBooks: http://seazzy.com
Free Software: http://seazzy.com/software

Maybe you’re brainstorming a new website: “My website is about me, my services, and my products.”

Maybe you don’t go around saying that explicitly, but it still might your subconscious attitude. Most of us can identify with the joke, “I’m not much, but I’m all I think about.”

Yes, you should think about your services and products – their benefits and limits. Think about yourself – your own limits as an entrepreneur. And if you want people to buy, think about these things in terms of your prospects.

Who are they? What are they expecting? What are they searching for? How do they perceive your products, your niche, your approach? How might you be confusing or disappointing them?

Our pervasive selfishness, also known as bias, is hard to escape- a big blind spot to see around. The best way to get around it is to survey your prospects, and, if you can, watch their behavior around whatever you sell or do or make.

For example, I’ve been planning to write an ebook about public speaking for six months now, but haven’t gotten to it yet. I knew it was further down my priority list, so I put an offer on my most popular public speaking webpages: “Answer this survey and I’ll send you a free copy of this $25 ebook when it comes out!” – I’ve got about 50 responses already. When it comes time to plan the book’s contents, I’ll already know what’s most interesting to my target market.

Likewise, I did a survey when it was time to title my first alternative medicine book- I brainstormed about 100 of them, chose my 10 favorites, and let my online health readers choose their favorite. The one they preferred was the winner by far. It wasn’t even close. It also was NOT the one I liked. See?

Maybe you’re writing copy: “I’m going to describe my offerings in the language most natural to me.”

Sometimes that works. If they’re looking to grab them with a particular flavor, you might use, for example, folksy language or tech-speak. But that doesn’t always work. What if they don’t know your jargon? What if they don’t know your favorite words and concepts?

We get so comfortable with the words, phrases, and metaphors from our business and social circles, we forget not everyone knows them. You can keep your jargon if you define it. Otherwise, translate it into everyday language. Even better, find out what the most popular keyword equivalents are, and use those.

Trust me as an experienced writer and public speaker. Too many times, I’ve been surprised to reap confusion where I swear I had sown clarity. I no longer underestimate how much my audience will misunderstand my meaning. The burden of clarity is upon me, not them.

Maybe you’re building a website: “I’m organizing my website around my ideas about my business.”

That may work out just fine, but if when doesn’t, visitors get confused, don’t find what they’re looking for, and leave without regret. On a website that’s new to them, there are only so many times they’ll click before they’re gone.

What you think about your offerings doesn’t matter if you don’t know what your prospects need, what they care about, and what their problems are…

How do your offerings meet their needs and solve their problems? What words are in their minds when they come looking for solutions? What referral search terms are showing up in your web statistic logs? Are you using those terms in your navigation?

Your prospect may have the problem you solve but not be looking for your kind of solution, or they may not call the solution or the problem by the same names you do. Jargon again. Find out what they call it and how they think about it. Find out what they actually search for, and call it that on your website.

Make a bridge between your prospects’ minds and your own, and they’ll stream across in droves.

First, imagine that you are really keen and excited about learning to drive a car. You read all sorts of books, web sites, blogs and then spend copious amounts of time lurking around forums – learning about the mechanics – and aesthetics of cars and suitable driving methods to get you from a Know-Nothing-Novice to Indy-500-Superstar.

So now you feel like you have acquired the necessary knowledge to be a successful driver. Next you go to a local car dealership – the sort that sells the type of car you believe is suitable for applying your knowledge of driving. Since you are such an expert, you decide to purchase a big grunty V8 – with Slick Tyres, a Stylee Spoiler and Fluffy Dice hanging from the rear view mirror.

You drive the car off the forecourt and, at first, navigate cautiously down the road. You feel great that you have finally started to drive. You stop at the first set of lights and rev the engine a bit. The lights turn green – You floor the accelerator – The wheels spin – The cars slides sideways – There’s noise, smoke and a feeling of great excitement.

Then you ease off the accelerator – The car slows – You can’t wait for the next opportunity to Wheelspin.

After a while, Wheelspins are not so much fun anymore. Your original perspective of good driving skills changes. You modify your car – removing the Fluffy Dice (oh yes – that’s much better) and changing the brand of tyres. Maybe you change the car all together for something like a 4 Wheel Drive vehicle because you would like to have better Traction.

This is a bit like how my experience of Blogging went during the my first few weeks. I’ve been Wheelspinning when I posted a comment on a popular Blog – and again when writing about a current hot topic.

Ooh those heady jumps in my Web Stats were certainly exciting. But I long for the Traction of regular visitors.

I believe you can take a positive from quantifying this experience. You must not kid myself that you will have 500 regular readers by the end of Week 1. Better Blogging is a constant tweaking of many parameters such as Page Design, Blog Content, Search Engine Optimization, Link Building and many other facets of this fascinating past-time.

All the best with gaining and maintaining Traction!

Dominic Foster is a full-time Software/Web Developer and a part-time Blogger. You can visit his Blog at http://www.dominicfoster.com and his trading blog at http://www.traderknowledge.com.

1. Improve the quality of your website,s content. Provide information that can help people in their daily living. Share interesting facts that most people do not know but still can be useful. Be informative and entertaining.

2. People will visit your site more often if they can use with hassles. Have a site map that is easy to understand. 3. Make your website compatible to most softwares and computers in the market. Also consider easy downloadability even with the earlier versions of web browsers, slower internet dial-up connections or limited computer memory.

4. Update your websites information as often as possible. Set a regular schedule in updating your website and improving content.

5. Provide incentives and hold contests. Individuals will visit your website if they get something out of it other than the information your share. Make their visit gratifying by giving a prize.

6. Link with other websites that people usually visit. There are a number of other sites that offer link partnership among which are news.google.com or download.com

7. Use the most advance technology available.

8. Add online games to entice your visitors to comeback to your website.

9. Allow your visitors to shop online for some of the products that you offer. Make the items easy to pay using payment method like credit cards or checking account. Keep in mind that people always want the most convenient way to do things. If they can shop online through your site, they will visit you more often. 10. Make the content of your site customizable. Use an uncomplicated database and link it to your site. Let each guest personalize the content and experience of your website according to their needs or interest. Allow them to familiarize with the site and make it their own.

11. Interact with your guest by using message boards or discussion forums. You can share ideas and listen to guests, comments. This will help you improve your site when needed. Remember to get your visitors, e-mail addresses. Also take note that you need to reply promptly. Waiting to long to reply might cause you to lose needed website traffic.

12. Make it fun by adding jokes or quotations. Simple but proven tips on how to do things easily can attract more guests. Brighten up their day through jokes. It is just like reading a newspaper. There are some people who read the Comic Section more often than paying attention to the headlines.

13. Don,t forget to give out freebies. Give free item to visitors in return for referring other people to your website. 14. Be direct and say it! A simple link that says, ,Bookmark this Site, can help guest to remember and return to you.

15. Use a catchy title for your website and make it easy for search engines to pick-up. Using keywords such as ,guide to,, ,tips, or ,secrets, can make your website more attractive. Take note that people browsing your site are looking for something. Make sure that your site has what they are looking for.

16 Advertise your website using eBook set-up. An eBook or ,electronic book, is a book that you can download and study using an electronic tool such as note pad computer. eBooks are versatile, portable and convenient.

18. Set your eBook to be downloadable by clients for free incentives when they refer your website to 5 or 7 contacts.

19. Generate an index of websites in eBook structure. Record other individuals, websites in the index who approves to promote your site on theirs.

20. Consider sponsoring a competition on your website so that people have the chance to win your products.

22. Boost your website subscribers by offering eBooks to people who subscribe to your e-zine.

23. Offer the incentives to people who sign up for your partner list.

24. Allow your people to write articles for your website and give them incentives. It is a proven strategy to enhance your traffic and sales. Give them topics that suit their interest and provide special incentives for writing an article for your website.

If you’ve been sitting and wondering why the traffic to your website is trickling in to your website ever so slowly then this article is intended to help you add some much needed oomph to your marketing campaign by using a linking strategy.

You may have heard that linking to other websites can benefit your website. Here are the three main reasons:

Traffic . By linking to sites with similar themes to your own you can develop a hub of traffic that will always remain constant. There’s an old saying that “a link lasts for all time” and it’s essentially true. There are short termers, shysters and hucksters that try to tilt the playing field but ultimately they are the biggest losers in the link strategy game.

Once links have been placed they generally remain for years to come, feeding your site with a steady stream of reliable traffic. In fact it often happens that some domains which have been given up by their previous owners have thousands of links still pointing to them after many, many years. It may be a slog in the beginning to set up a linking exchange program but you will be rewarded with quality traffic which lasts well into the future.

Popularity. When search engines look at how highly to rank a site on their search engine results pages (serps) they follow an in house algorithm which determines where your site gets placed in the results page. On page factors such as page titles, headings, Meta tags etc all have a bearing on how your page gets ranked but also important is the “popularity” of your website.

The popularity of your site is determined by the links that point to your site. Not just any old links either. The type and quality of the link is also under scrutiny here and so there is no point rushing off and trying to get as many links as possible, you need to track down quality links to your site to gain the best benefit from a linking campaign.

Partnerships. Growing your business in the wired world has many similar facets to establishing a business in a traditional manner.

You need to cultivate and establish your partnerships with other sites to enable growth. Trying to do everything in an insular manner by relying on one method (for example “pay per click”) is certain to end your hopes of building a successful website prematurely. It’s essential that you seek out like minded businesses and work with them to satisfy your customer.

It’s unlikely that you will have all of the necessary requirements in place to satisfy every customer, so just as in the high street, it makes sense to partner with other businesses that can provide the missing components to the overall solution.

Viewed in this way it makes complete sense to seek links with related sites.

For example. A site that specialises in tailored suits would be in a particularly niche market. Saville row tailors are much in demand these days but who would they partner with online?

Traditional linking strategies would have you seeking out similar tailors, maybe from other parts of the country so that you were not in direct competition.

However, thinking laterally, it makes complete sense that someone doing a search on Google for “tailor” would want to see other tailor related sites so that they could compare services.

So an improved linking strategy would be to provide links to related services. For example, one of the most common reasons for getting a new suit is a wedding. So wedding organisers and marquee companies would be good to approach. High class catering services and wedding limousine companies would be other good avenues to explore.

The strategy should be to link with partners who will actually be able to provide a service to your website visitors rather than just linking to a site because you can. As well as the value of the link in your popularity stakes you will also benefit from the increased traffic that the related links provide.

In the next article I examine some practical methods you can use to gain link popularity and traffic

About The Author

Tony Cooper is the Internet Marketing manager at http://www.keywordmarketing.com Building web sites that achieve tangible and accountable results.

tony@storebuilder.co.uk