Website Ideas and Tips

Our clients often ask us for website ideas and tips - things that they can do to make their website more user-friendly or to increase their rankings in the search engines. We will be posting some free ideas here in this section - things that you can do yourself and things that you might want to ask for help with. As always, we're here if you need help. Just ask.

Here's our first set of website ideas and tips! (more below)

Increasing Website Traffic

As a website owner, your goal is to have a steady stream of targeted traffic flowing into your site. The best way to ensure you get targeted traffic is to build plenty of keyword driven content. That is, do some research to see how people are searching for your products and services, then write your content pages around those keywords.

Sitesell's Brainstorm It tool allows you research keywords that are in demand and also gives you a supply number- the number of competitive sites using that keyword and a "profitability" number, which is the ratio of supply vs. demand. This is a really super tool, but if you arent a SiteSell customer, you can get a demand number from Wordtracker.com. If you want to read more about "Brainstorming" keywords, check out SiteSell's free Action Guide on Day 3.

Once you know the keywords or phrases your potential customers are using to find you, write a page on your site about each keyword/phrase. You can never have too much content, so once you have your main site built, keep your site fresh by adding new content on a regular basis.

Here are three more effective website ideas & tips to drive traffic to your site.

Blogs are a great way website idea to increase traffic to your site. You can add a feed burner to your blog which will enable your readers to stay up to date with new posts that you add. The posts can be delivered right to their email or homepage. As you add posts to your blog, point out new articles and other content that you have recently added to your site. The more you talk about your site, the more interest you will generate. SiteSell makes "site blogging" automated. Everytime you add a page to your site or edit a page, their system will automatically add a post to your blog for you with a link to your new page. It couldn't be more simple.

If you add a link to someone else's blog on your site, ask them to add a reciprocal link to your site. Remember to focus on your target market and what they would find interesting. If your site's focus is on making homemade organic baby food, trading links with a blog that is focused on bulldogs won't add targeted traffic to your site. However, trading links with blogs devoted to organic food will have a better chance at increasing your traffic.
You can also increase the amount of traffic that comes to your site with article marketing. It may sound complicated, but it is quite easy. You simply write articles related to your business or website's topic and distribute them to article reprint directories. There are many directories out there, and you can distribute them to as many directories as you want.

By adding these articles to reprint directories, you are giving permission for other people to publish these articles on their sties for free. When other website owners publish the articles you have written, they will include a "bio box" at the end of the article. You choose what the bio box says and can include links to your site. If you don't like writing, you can hire a ghostwriter to write the articles for you.
Having a newsletter is another great way to drive traffic to your site. Include an opt-in form on your website, a link to the opt-in page in the signature line in the forums you belong to, the signature line in your email, and don't forget to add the link to your blog. The more people that see your opt-in page, the more subscribers you will get. By sending your newsletter to your mailing list on a regular basis, you will stay in your readers' minds. Include excerpts from new articles and other information that you have recently added and to your web pages, including links that point to the full text on your site.