Traffic Acquisition

internet marketing photoTraffic acquisition and search engine optimization (SEO) strategies are a major consideration when evaluating an eCommerce website. The truth of SEO is that it’s best addressed before implementation.  However, even sites that are already deployed can attract more customers and recognize revenue benefits by implementing a well-structured SEO plan.  Following are a few tips for growing your website’s traffic:

Research

The best time to begin growing your traffic is before you even create your website.  First, you will want to hire an SEO firm to help you research the right keywords.  By targeting keywords where you can actually begin competing with other businesses in a relatively short period of time (usually a few months), you are giving your business’s website the best chance for success.  Target the wrong keywords, and you’ll find yourself being dominated by competitors or simply not being found by the right audience.

Make sure your URL contains some of your targeted keywords

Google places much weight on the URL of a website when determining its search engine rankings.  If you sell marketing services and your business’s name is the Smith Group, make your URL is something like “smithmarketingservices.com,” but not “smithgroup.com.”  It’s not the end of the world to not have your keywords in your URL, but it certainly helps a ton.

Engage in SEO strategies

Hiring the services of a successful SEO firm such as Devenia will help you stay ahead of the competition.  Make sure your meta keywords and description tags are completed, use a keyword density of 3.5% or less, use an H1 header and place your keywords in it, update robots.txt, update your sitemap, and make sure you have regularly updated content on your website.  Of course there’s much more to SEO than this, but these are some of the basic things to look out for.

Make sure your site has a clean and professional design

Nobody wants to go to a website that’s ugly or makes things hard to find.  If there’s broken links or grammatical errors, fix them right away and be sure to apologize to your audience if they were large mistakes!  “Professional” just means your site is organized, has a neutral color scheme, and otherwise makes a good impression on your visitors.  Remember, repeat business accounts for 80% of your business, so be sure to make a good first impression!

Create a forum

Forums can consume a significant amount of time, however, once established they can create a significant amount of repeat traffic, and loyal visitors will spread the word to others who might be interested.  In a forum, you can answer people’s questions, make special offers for loyal customers, or offer paid memberships with special benefits to select users.

Use other people’s forums

When posting on other people’s forums, you can typically place a link in your signature.  If you appear to be particularly knowledgeable and are able to answer people’s questions in a way that is meaningful to them, people will be interested in going to your site to see what products, services, or other helpful knowledge you can offer.

Directories

Many directories exist for every niche website imaginable.  These directories allow you to post your link for free, giving you a free back-link, and raising your site’s visibility in the eyes of Google.  They’ll also provide a small amount of traffic.

Article marketing

Writing articles and distributing them in the various free article directories is another way of getting free back-links and traffic.  People get a chance to see your knowledge and if you write authoritatively, they’ll be even more convinced to see the rest of what you have to offer at your website.

Social media

Using the social media is a boom-or-bust strategy, although with the services of Devenia, the effectiveness of social media can be increased.  Although rare, it is possible to dramatically increase your website’s traffic in the matter of just a few minutes or hours.

No matter what traffic strategies you may pursue, be sure to have the help of an experienced firm like Devenia, so that your business can achieve maximum success!

Last Updated on March 16, 2015 by Bjorn Solstad

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