Resources

4 Inexpensive Ways to Drive Traffic to your Website

Create More and More Content!

The information on a website is its content. Generally the more useful and interesting content a website has the more successful it will be. This is especially true if a website is constantly adding new content on a regular basis. These can be articles, tutorials, video product reviews, industry news and opinions or whatever.

Your content should be easy to understand and use topic specific words that people will find relevant. To create content, you simply write news and articles about the industry your product is in. This ensures that visitors who read your content are likely to be interested in buying your products.

Perhaps your store focuses on teaching children. Work with your teachers to write articles that show the many benefits of teaching music to youngsters. Maybe you are a banjo expert. Write articles detailing a restoration project from start to finish.

If you feel you're great at creating or selling products but don't feel the same way about your writing skills,   there are hundreds of places where you can get content for free. Usually all that's required is that you place a small bio of the original writer at the bottom of the article or tutorial.

Content is the bread and butter component of what attracts visitors from the search engines. Your second assignment is to create a simple, easy to follow Content Creation Plan. Commit to creating just one new page or enhancement each week and you’ll have a content-rich website in no time at all.

Get More Links

Adding the right type of link to your website is great for traffic and how the search engines view and rank your website. Working with other websites and trading links is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic. However, there are links that can be viewed as detrimental. Before you start on a campaign to add reciprocal links, ask yourself the following questions:

·         Will the link I provide point my readers to a useful, relevant resource?

·         Will I still add the link even if I don’t get one back?

·         Is the page the link is pointing to a relevant, high-quality resource?

The search engines like it when added links point visitors to websites with relative content. This scores higher marks with search engines and proves that you care about the content visitors have access to on your website.

Getting a reciprocal link is crucial to making this work. In some cases it just may not be possible. So before you list a link, make sure you feel that the content is relative and provides some sort of value.

Building your incoming link profile is easier than you might imagine. Strive for good quality, highly relevant links. Sure, this may take some time but the benefits are well worth the extra effort. Always remember to go for quality not quantity.

Do Your Homework on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO stands for search engine optimization. SEO is the practice of improving not only the amount of traffic to your website, but also improving the quality of traffic to your website.

When a dealer optimizes their website for search engines, they will be required to edit the content of the website itself, such as text and images, as well as the HTML of the website. Only very basic knowledge of HTML is required in order to implement SEO on a website, especially if your website has a content management system (control panel), which is now extremely common. This makes it possible for almost anyone at nearly any level of computer literacy, web design knowledge or marketing experience to optimize their own website.

While search engine optimization may seem like a mystery to the average user, it is still relatively easy become an expert in SEO. First, you simply have to understand what the search engines look for, what they want to see and what they view as important. While there are many important things to know and remember about SEO in order to be a successful optimizer, it is not impossible. There is no special "secret language" and you do not need to know any advanced concepts in order to start learning and implementing SEO. It simply takes a basic knowledge of the concepts and specific factors to concentrate on and some potentially abusive tactics to stay away from.

This particular topic could warrant an ongoing monthly column on its own. So, my advice is to turn to the Internet and search for do it yourself SEO articles. While this may seem to be challenging, just remember to take it in small steps. It could yield the highest reward!

Promote Your Website Offline Too!

Promote your website locally, especially through word-of-mouth. Create a buzz.... get people excited about visiting the website! Include your URL within every piece of material that goes out the door.  Put it on your shopping bags, business cards, on hold message, paint it on your building, create in-store signs, place a terminal on your sales floor and more! Run a contest. Use an old guitar that's been hanging on the wall for years and have people enter to win it on your website.

It’s these little things that add up to big traffic results! This is especially true when most people never even begin to explore the promotional possibilities enabled through their websites. 

Use these tips to make your site a hub of activity and you'll see results. Remember, creating traffic just doesn't happen overnight. Websites are not like the music field of dreams. You've heard it before...if you build it, they will come. Not quite. However, if you make it easy for people to find you, and give them reasons to keep coming back, they will!