What better way to start
new year than with more traffic to your web site. Web traffic is a critical part of your internet business and it is imperative that you design it to bring you most amount of traffic possible.Designing your site for traffic includes offering good content, easy navigation and a logical flow. Additionally you must also build your site to draw traffic from search engines because if you can obtain high search engine ranking, you can enjoy free traffic.
It's important to note, however that good ranking won't do you much good without a well designed site and a well designed site can't bring you visitors if no one knows it's there. Both high ranking and good design need to work together. How do we pull all this together? Let's take a look.
-A word about Design-
A huge mistake I see many website owners make is that they get caught up in making their site cute. They love little animations, buttons and dramatic backgrounds. What they fail to consider is that these things are worthless if you don't offer good content, easy navigation and a logical flow.
First of all don't try to be everything to everyone. Design your site around a theme, preferably a niche theme. Don't confuse your readers with links all over page. Design a logical flow. Lead your viewers to where you would like them to go. Leave plenty of white space and keep your pages organized. Clearly state at top of your pages what you are about and what you would like your viewers to do.
Secondly, I don't recommend pop-ups. I find that majority of internet users find them annoying. The demand for pop-up blockers is a good indication that viewers don't want to see them.
Thirdly, offer good content. Provide information on your site that will help viewers solve a problem. Offer information that they might not get elsewhere. Write reviews regarding your products. Write newsletters and articles and most importantly offer something of value for free. Give your viewers a reason to come back. It will also build trust in you.
-Traffic builders-
Good search engine ranking can bring lots of visitors to your site. It often takes a few months to rank well but payoff is lots of qualified traffic. While it's not practical to depend solely on search engines for traffic it can complement your other advertising campaigns nicely. Aiming for high search engine placement is always a plus.
Keep these in mind when developing your site for search engines:
- Domain names Choose a domain name that has your site keywords in it. For example, if you're a site about pet care, try to include words "pet care" or words related to pet care in your domain name if you can.
- keywords Keywords require research and there are several tools to help you out in this area. Here are my favorites:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
