Simple Money Secrets

by Norm Brooks

The old adage “if you build it they will come” is not true for websites. If you want a steady stream of visitors to your website you will need to attract them. The best way to do so is to have your website appear in the top of search engine listings for keywords related to your site. But getting your website ranked high is not a quick process, and although with the right techniques it is achievable it takes work and knowledge of proper search engine optimization (SEO).

The most effective way to increase online traffic to your website is to use good SEO practices, but many new website owners focus more on developing and building their website than making it search engine friendly. What many also fail to realize is that it takes a while to get to the top of search results even if they do utilize proper SEO. With some patience and the right techniques, however, you can increase online traffic and get your website ranked high.

Content is king, especially when it comes to SEO. If you want to increase online traffic the first thing you should do is add quality relevant content to your website that contains keywords related to your site. Get some good articles, blog posts, or other information that is useful to visitors. Search engines love content; it adds value to you website and will help you to increase your search engine rank.

Your website’s HTML is another place you can use keywords to increase online traffic. Even though they are not as important as they once were you should still use Meta tags and title tags on your website. Put descriptive keywords in the Meta tags that are unique to each individual webpage. You should also use a few keywords in the title tags of each page that describe what the page is about.

Each page of your website should be centered on a keyword theme. The search engines are very big on relevancy, so you don’t want your site to be a hodgepodge of information on every page. Organize the content of each page around your keyword theme for that page.

You can also distribute the URL of your website around the web by leaving useful comments in blogs and forums, publishing articles in directories that include your URL, and exchanging links with other related sites. These methods will also help to increase online traffic and having many incoming links will also help to boost you search engine ranking.

Here’s to your very great success!

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by Norm Brooks

Analyzing your web traffic statistics is a great tool for a number of different reasons. However, before you can make full use of this tool, you need to know how to interpret the data.

Most web hosting companies will provide basic web traffic information on your cpanel. However, this data can be overwhelming if you don’t understand how to apply it to your website. Start by examining the most basic data – the average number of visitors to your site on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

The aim is to use the web traffic statistics to figure out how well or how poorly your site is working for your visitors. One way to determine this is to find out how long (on average) your visitors spend on your site. If the time spent is short, that’s a good indication that there’s a problem. The challenge is to figure out what that problem is.

It could be that the keywords you’re using are directing the wrong type of visitors to your website, or that your graphics are confusing or intimidating, causing the visitor to exit rapidly. Start making changes while still monitoring the time spent on your site by visitors to gauge how effective your changes are.

Additionally, web traffic stats can help you determine effective and ineffective areas of your website. If you have a page that you believe is important, but visitors are exiting it rapidly, that page needs attention. You might consider making the link to this page more noticeable and enticing, or you could improve the look of the page or the access to the necessary information on this page easier.

If, on the other hand, you notice that visitors are spending a lot of time on pages that you think are less important, you might consider moving some of your sales copy and marketing focus to that particular page.

As you can see, these statistics will reveal vital information about the effectiveness of individual pages, and your visitor habits and motivation. This is valuable information to any successful Internet marketing campaign.

Your website will undoubtedly have an exit page, such as a final order page or contact form. You can expect your visitor to exit this page rapidly. However, not every visitor to your site is going to find exactly what he or she is looking for, so statistics may show you a number of different pages that people are exiting from. This is normal unless you notice an exit trend on a particular page that is not intended as an exit page.

In the case that a significant percentage of visitors are exiting your website on a page not designed for that purpose, you need to closely examine that particular page to find out why. Once you pinpoint potential weaknesses on this page, making minor modifications in the content or graphics may have a significant impact on moving visitors through your site instead of exiting on the wrong page.

After you have analyzed your visitor statistics, it’s time to turn to your keywords and phrases. Look for particular keywords that are directing a specific type of visitor to your site. The more targeted the visitor - that is visitors that find what they’re looking for on your site, or even better, fill out your contact form or make a purchase – the more valuable that keyword or phrase is.

However, if you find a large number of visitors are being misdirected to your site by a particular keyword or phrase, that keyword or phrase needs to be adjusted or eliminated. These visitors are looking for something different than what you have to offer.

Keywords are crucial to bringing quality visitors to your site who are ready to do business with you. Analyzing the keywords your visitors are using to find your site will give you vital information on your visitor’s needs and motivations.

Finally, if you notice that users are finding your website by typing in your name or your company name, break open the champagne! It means you have achieved a significant level of brand recognition, and this is a sure sign of growing success.

One last thought. There is a common misconception about “hits” and how it relates to quality traffic to your site. Hits are just the number of information requests received by the server. A hit can simply equate to one piece of graphics on a page. In other words, if your homepage has 15 graphics or images on it, the server records this as 15 hits, when in reality we are talking about a single visitor checking out a single page on your site. You get an idea of how overblown the concept of hits can be, and as you can see, hits are not useful in analyzing your website traffic.

The more visitors that come to your website, the more accurate your interpretation will become. The greater the traffic is to your website, the more precise your analysis will be of overall trends in visitor behavior. The smaller the number of visitors, the more a few anomalous visitors can distort the analysis.

Here’s to your very great success!

Lookng for some internet marketing business opportunities? Check out these videos!

by Norm Brooks

Setting up a website is usually the first step of an Internet marketing campaign, and the success or failure of your site depends greatly on how specifically you have defined your website goals. If you don’t know what you want your site to accomplish, it will likely fail to accomplish anything. Without specific goals to guide you in developing and monitoring your website, all it will be is an online announcement that you’re in business.

If your site is to be a call for some form of action, whether it’s visitors filling out a form for follow-up contacts, or purchasing a product, there are steps you can take to ensure that your website is functioning at peak efficiency. One of the first indicators of how well your site is doing is finding out the number of visitors you’re getting in a given period of time. A good baseline measurement is a month in which you haven’t been doing any promotional activities.

However, just because hoards of visitors have passed through your cyber gates doesn’t mean your site is successful. You want those visitors to actually do something there. It’s equally important to monitor the number of visitors to your site who made a purchase or fill out your form. This figure is called the site conversion rate, and it is an essential element of the efficacy of your website.

To find the site conversion rate, take the number of visitors per month and figure out the percentage of them that actually performed the action your site is set up for. For example, if you had 2,000 hits to your site, but only 25 of them purchased your product, your site conversion rate equals 1.25%. To get this figure, take your number of visitors who made a purchase and divide that figure by the number of visitors. Then multiply that result by one hundred (25 / 2000 X 100 = 1.25%).

If your website is set-up to get visitors to fill out a form, make sure to then figure out what the difference is between your site conversion rate and your sales conversion rate. This is because not everyone who fills out your form will actually become your customer. However, whether your site is set up to sell a service or product, or to get the visitor to fill out a form, the site conversion rate will monitor the success of your website — especially when you make changes to the site.

You may find that you need to implement some additional marketing strategies if traffic to your site is extremely low. There are several effective methods to improve the flow of traffic to your website; one in particular is SEO (search engine optimization). This strategy is targeted at increasing your position in search engine results so that consumers can find your pages faster and easier. You can either research the steps needed to take to improve your search engine rankings, or employ a search engine optimization company to do the work for you. In either case, after you have improved your search engine positions, keep on top of it by regular monitoring and adjusting of your efforts to maintain high positions.

Another factor to examine is how easy it is for your visitors to accomplish the action the site is set up for. For example, if your goal is for the visitor to fill out a form, is this form easily accessible, or does the visitor have to go through four levels to get to it? If it’s too difficult to get to, your visitor may just throw in the towel and move on to another site. Make sure your buttons are highly visible, and take your visitors directly to your form or order page.

Finally, have a professional evaluate the copy on your website. The goal is, of course, to get your visitor to take action. Website copy must be specifically geared to that goal and not just a cut and paste job from a brochure. The right copy can make the difference between profit and loss in your online campaign.

Here’s to your very great success!

Lookng for some internet marketing business opportunities? You need to check out these videos!

This is a great blog post I picked up from Rosalind Gardner. If your a wordpress bloger, this is a great free plugin you’ll want to download from wordpress.

Written by Rosalind Gardner
October 26, 2008

Having found 36 broken links on my blog — Broken Link Checker has just become my new favorite Wordpress plugin. It also checks for missing images and will notify you through your blog’s dashboard (and the Manage -> Broken Links panel) if any are found.

Here’s a list of Broken Link Checker’s features:

* Checks your posts (and pages) in the background.
* Detects links that don’t work and missing images.
* Notifies you on the Dashboard if any are found.
* Makes broken links display differently in posts (optional).
* Link checking intervals can be configured, the default is set to 72 hours.
* New/modified posts are checked ASAP.
* You can unlink or edit broken links in the *Manage -> Broken Links* tab.

There are several ways to manage each broken link notification. “Details” shows more info about why the link is considered “broken”. You can “Edit Post” or “Discard” to remove the message about a broken link, but not the link itself (so it will show up again later unless you fix it). Using “Unlink” removes the link from the post. If references to missing images are found, they will be listed along with the links, with “[image]” in place of link text.

Very cool plugin — don’t know why I didn’t look for it sooner. You can download Broken Link Checker right now though for free from Wordpress.