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Top 6 ways to increase traffic to your website

by on Aug 23, 2008 (0) Comments

With the recent increase in internet usage and more recently in internet access via mobile devices, online marketing is becoming increasingly important to the success of any business today no matter how small or large.

Online marketing has evolved in recent years. The rise in the popularity of social networking phenomena and the resulting rise of social media websites such as My Space and Facebook provide website owners with new ways to market and promote a business online. Online marketing today is not only restricted to major search engines like Google and Yahoo. Today an effective online marketing strategy is aimed at increasing a websites profile not only on search engines but on a number of online channels that were previously non existent.

Today an online marketing strategy focuses on Search engines, Blogs, Forums, Social Networking websites as well as PR and Article websites.

The following are some of the ways to market your business online and generate traffic to your website.

1) Organic search engine optimisation

Organic search engine optimisation is focused achieving high rank in the non-paid section of search engines such as Google and Yahoo.
This is the most important method that can drive a lot of free traffic to a website and probably the most difficult and time consuming. If you are able to achieve a first page ranking for your website on major search engine such as Google, you may never need to use any other form of paid advertising ever.

2) Pay per click Advertising

Pay per click advertising presents a quick and efficient method to promote your products and services on search engines and increase traffic to your website. Pay per click refers to the paid ads that usually appear on the right or top of search engine results. With Google’s Adwords for example you can have your website appear on the first page within an hour of starting the campaign. As compared with Organic search engine results; pay per click can be expensive as cost is calculated each time a user visits your website. However pay per click is quick to achieve and expenditure can be controlled easily by specifying the maximum monthly or daily budget.

3) Creating your business’ profile on Social websites such as My Space, Face book or You Tube

Many people may consider these websites as purely a way for people to communicate informally and share personal information. However due to the sheer volumes of people who visit these sites make marketing on them a highly effective way to enforce your brand and drive massive traffic to your website. You can create your websites profile on these sites free of cost and make your website visible to millions of people.

Top 10 Search Engine Marketing Strategies Techniques a Web Design Company Should Use

by on Aug 23, 2008 (0) Comments

A Web design company can utilize some basic Search engine marketing techniques to ensure websites designed by them are found easily on search engines. Some may ague that a web design company’s role primarily involves designing a website and a search engine specialist deals with the marketing side of things.

Although Website design and search engine marketing are completely independent fields, there are some simple yet crucial steps a web designer or a web design company should use during the design phase of a website.
A web design company can certainly improve a website’s marketability by making use of some simple techniques while designing a website. Some of the techniques are listed below:

1. Ensure a healthy balance between Graphics and Text: Although visual appeal is important, a web design company should strike a healthy balance between text and graphics. Images should be used where required but a majority of the website should be text based. A website with sufficient text (at least 200 words per page) is recommended for better indexing by search engines.

2. Include important Keywords in Page Title. The page title is one of the most important parts of the page with regards to search engine optimisation. A web designer should use a keyword rich title for each page of a website.

3. Include Keywords in Description and Keyword META Tags. In addition to page title, other hidden Meta tags such as description and keywords play a crucial role in a page being found on search engines. A web designer or Web design company should use the main keywords and key-phrases in these tags.

4. Emphasise you Your Keywords as Headings or Bold Tags . Search engines add more weight to words that appear as either bold or headings on web pages. It is hence important for a web designer to ensure the important keywords appear in as headings or bold text in the content of the web pages.

5. Include main Keywords more than once in the main body text. Also ensure that the most important keywords are present in the first paragraph as search engine place more value to the first few words on a web page.

Readin’, Writin’ and Web 2.0

by on Aug 23, 2008 (0) Comments


The enhanced degree of communication that Web 2.0 utilities enable is changing the corporate world, for good or for ill, as enterprises decide whether to reject or embrace concepts like wikis, blogs, social networks and video-sharing. The trend has touched the academic world in similar ways. Web 2.0 utilities have raised concerns about security in nearly all IT fields, and educational institutions are no exception. “The biggest worries schools have are hackers getting into the Web site,” Steve Yin of Web security appliance firm St. Bernard told TechNewsWorld.

For example, consider the experience of Ken Pappas, vice president of marketing and security strategist for Top Layer Networks. He observed this hacking mentality firsthand when he recently took his son to college to start his freshman year. When they entered the dorm room, his son’s new roommate was working on a computer.

“Obviously being interested in computers, I asked the student what he was working on. The kid replied that he was hacking into the finance office computer so he could mark his tuition account as paid,” Pappas told TechNewsworld.

Using Your Whole Business to Build Links

by on Aug 22, 2008 (0) Comments

In my opinion anyone working in marketing should be reading Seth Godin’s blog. Seth is a new marketing expert and his brainstorms and thoughts regularly give me new ideas. I am in the middle of reading one of his books – Meatball Sundae – its contents won’t surprise anyone who reads Seth’s blog; it’s premise is that mass market products are “meatballs” and the new marketing (in which he includes SEO) are “sundae toppings”. Trying to add sundae toppings to meatballs results in a mess, and organisations need to be built from the ground up with new marketing built in.

We’ll get on in a second to situations where this isn’t exactly true, but the basic premise is certainly tempting:

  • Paypal wasn’t done by an established payment provider – it was a start-up
  • ebay’s marketing looks nothing like Sotheby’s
  • Amazon apparently gets ~30x the traffic that Walmart’s website gets

There are a few situations where I would disagree with the conclusion that you always get a mess when you add new marketing to old businesses – particularly in SEO – understanding the basics of SEO (not even linkbait etc. but just keyword research and basic technical on-page SEO) can be enough to form a valuable sales channel for old-school businesses.

There are “meatball” businesses like Tesco (our largest supermarket in the UK) who have broadly understood SEO (although they have a long way to go in some areas, they are miles ahead of the competition) and who are now popping up as competitors across many many verticals.

Advice for Mobile Marketers, Courtesy of Obama

by on Aug 22, 2008 (0) Comments

Technology pundits have been heralding the “year of mobile” every year for a decade, but this year might really be it. The latest evidence: the tizzy over Barack Obama’s much-anticipated text message announcing his pick for running mate.

The Obama campaign is expected to send out the news sometime before the candidate’s rally on Saturday to everyone who has given it their cell phone numbers. The plan has political junkies and bystanders alike buzzing about the imminent Obama text message in a way that would make brand marketers swoon.

Mobile marketers are studying the Obama campaign’s initiative, which offers lessons for startups hoping to help big brands reach consumers on their cell phones. Advertisers have been slow to market via mobile phones, but that is changing thanks to a rash of mobile marketing startups and increased use of text messaging and mobile Internet.

How to Use SEO to Increase Website Traffic

by on Aug 22, 2008 (0) Comments

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is great for attracting the right visitors to your website. However, without keeping new arrivals either entertained, informed or satisfied, it won’t really matter how visitors found you if they have the impulse to click the back button before your content overwhelms their curiosity.

It is a simple fact that all traffic is not created equal and it is the synergy between the searcher and the searched that determines if you get the thumbs up (in reference to user engagement) or fail to impress your target audience as they slip away (often times never to return again).

There is a remedy however, which involves developing topical relevance with fresh content and cross-linking it with other useful pages (much like Wikipedia). As each page gains a foothold in search engines, this reciprocates back to the homepage and the homepage then redistributes even more relevance throughout the rest of the site. The more pages that appear for a given topic, the stronger relevance score your website has for that topic.

#1 Staying On Topic

Continuity is important for establishing the theme of your site – Aside from inbound links from other sites, design and usability, reputation is important. Based on its reputation (such as referrals from other sites, RSS subscribers, editorial links from trusted sources or word or mouth) each page has the potential to set off a chain reaction and virally spark interest to funnel traffic to your pages.

If your website or blog is not focused however, you will be sending conflicting signals to search engines, who if left to their own demise could devalue intentional areas of interest.

By staying on topic and maintaining a regular posting schedule, your website will benefit as this behavior is one method to fast-track website authority (which is the ultimate SEO goal).

#2 Create Compelling Click-Worthy Headlines

Does your headline make you want to click and read more? - To increase click thru rates in search engines use an appropriate headline – Your page can rank or tank based on this vital piece of information. Not only is your headline your first line of offense in acquiring an “exact match” position in the SERPs (search engine result pages), it also is your ticket to grabbing and maintaining the readers attention right from the start (which will determine the effectiveness of the content that follows).

Why a social Digg is a waste of time

by on Aug 22, 2008 (0) Comments

I joined Digg about three years ago. Before that, I used it only for it’s intended purpose: a way to find good Web links. I figured someone was generating those links, but I didn’t want to know who they were.

Once, I interviewed the founder of Digg on the roof of their building. My buddy took the pictures, and they turned out okay. They had really amazing black tea there, too. Wow. I knew the site was special back then, and it still is.

I have to say, Digg’s growth has been phenomenal and hats off to the guys and gals who built the interface. I love how you can click the Digg link and it magically says Dugg. It’s cool how, when you add a friend, they just get added without a lot of fanfare. Pre-friend to new friend! Some of the links are really amazing, too.

But, in the silicon jungle, where the definition of friend has now eroded into obsolescence, I just can’t bring myself to invite people from my Gmail contacts list again. I have gone through the steps six times now, but my hand has frozen as it hovered over the small Friend link with the plus sign next to people that I can’t say I know personally, have ever met, or would even like if I did meet them.