So you have a website, but what do you do now? Online, the most significant key to success is getting website traffic. 
The more visitors you have, the better your sales, online connections and profits. SEO is a major key to all of this. You know what your niche is and you know your keywords, and regularly conduct keyword research to stay on top of what’s popular (that is an absolute must!). Based on the groundwork you have already laid, here are five quick and easy tips to get website traffic fast!
Tip #1 Make sure you’re actually tagging your keywords (something so many people don’t pay attention to or don’t work with their web people to do this for them!).
Do you spend a lot of time optimizing your content and then neglect to tag content keywords on your webpage? Tags are where search engines look and if there are no Tags, you have no real SEO and they’ll pass right by your web pages. (If you’re using WordPress for your website, the All in One SEO plug in makes all of this so easy, if you’re using something else, all the more vital for you to understand the following.) Here’s a quick run down on Tags.
There are a number types of Tags including:
* Title Tags. Title Tags are quite possibly the most important place to place your keywords. Your Title Tag is where you place your primary keyword or keyword phrase. The sentence will describe your business in less than 90 characters.
A Title Tag is a bit “techie.” A Title Tag is a piece of HTML code that describes a specific web page’s content via keyword queries that a person types into a search engine. In SEO, Title Tags tell what is in the content of a specific web page. Creating an appropriate Title Tag is one of the most important things you can do to achieve high ranking SEO. (Told you it was “techie”…)
Want to see your Title Tag? A little more “tech” stuff here…The Title Tag is found in the source code of a web page or at the top of your browser window. The easy way to see the Title Tag is to right click on your web page, click on “View Source” in the pop up box and you will see <title> in the window that opens. Your Title Tag follows the word <title>. Of course you can always ask someone to show you too. Sometimes that’s just easier.
The cool thing here is that you can have different Title Tags for different pages. So this means you can spread your keywords over your various pages. The main thing is having a strong Title Tag for each page which will increase your visibility on all the search engines and improve your SEO.
* Header Tags. Header Tags are next in order of importance to search engines and SEO. They’re ranked in order of importance and look like this – <h1>Primary and/or Secondary keywords here</h1>
The “1” designates this header as the most important header on the page.
* Meta Tags. Meta tags provide the small descriptive text found underneath the Title Tag on the search engine results page. Like Title Tags these should be kept brief, informative and up to date.
* Alt Tags. Alt Tags are used to provide a text description of a graphic. Each graphic on your site should have a description and an alt tag.
Tip #2 Add content to your site regularly.
Content is essential for traffic and a top search engine ranking. Content is what search engine spiders look for and index – without it there’s nothing to index or rank. Give visitors and search engines a reason to visit and index your site. Make a commitment to provide regular, optimized content and your traffic will soar.
Tip #3 Obtain valuable and relevant incoming links.
The more websites which link to your webpages the more valuable search engines perceive you to be, though not all links are created equal. Search engines give more leverage to links from sites which are popular and credible and from sites which are relevant to your website topic.
There are different types of links.
– A direct link looks like a basic website address, for example, www.yourwebsite.com
– A text link occurs when the webpage address is embedded in the text. Readers simply click on the link and are redirected to a new website page.
– If the link is to an internal web page, for example an article published on a website, rather than the home page, it is called a “deep link.”
You can encourage linking to your website by:
* Adding content to your site.
* Submitting to article directories.
* Publishing press releases.
* Blogging and participating in social networking forums, chat rooms and social networking sites.
Tip #4 Be Social!
It’s called “Social Media” for a reason. Now more than ever before, internet marketing is about building a community. Whether you offer a forum on your website or you participate in social networking sites, social networking is a valuable traffic generating tactic. Sites like Facebook and Twitter can be powerful tools for generating links and traffic to your site – create a profile and then post comments, links to your site and ideas which generate conversation.
Get involved – many chat rooms and forums are industry specific, find those which cater to your industry, and begin participating. Speak to and connect with a highly targeted audience.
Tip #5 Advertise for more exposure and traffic (if that is something you can budget for).
Advertising, when handled strategically, can be used to promote your website, content and products or services. PPC advertising is often the tool of choice because you control your website advertising budget on a daily basis and have the tools to test and track your website advertising efforts. Once you’ve honed your PPC ads the return on investment can be phenomenal in terms of traffic and purchases.
For maximum results, create a website traffic and SEO strategy. Outline your plan and your goals and then take the necessary action. Take advantage of these five website traffic and search engine tips to boost your business.
So often we assume that our web people are taking care of this for us. They might be, but are they in tune with all that you want to be said about your business?
It’s so important for you to spend some time learning about Tags, content, links and what it takes to have a powerful online presence. By learning this you will have more control of your website and drive more traffic to it. For a long time I didn’t understand all of this, left it in the hands of others, but once I took the time to question and learn, everything with my online presence changed for the better and website traffic went through the roof!