Quality Website Traffic - A Few Tips

Many people reading this article will already have read that the two elements key to search engine optimisation are content and links. In this article I am going to outline some of the activity we undertake for our clients to build good content and links and also outline a few other ideas that we have used successfully to build quality website traffic to both our own and our clients websites.

First of all let me define what I mean by quality website traffic. By quality website traffic I mean traffic that has arrived on a website intentionally and with an interest in the content and the goods or services the website owner provides.

The first element in good search engine optimisation is content. Content should above all else be relevant, interesting, unique and concise. The start point for producing good content is to select your keywords, these are words or phrases that you believe people or business looking for products or services like yours would type into the search engines. It is better to select around 8-10 keywords and focus your efforts on each for at least one specific page of your website.

A couple of tips in selecting them, put yourself in the position of your target market, if you were them what would you type in to find your type of products or services. Try to select keywords which will be commonly used but which don’t have too many other businesses focusing on them. The best way to test this is to run some searches and see who else amongst your competition is focusing on each keyword.

The website should have clear and concise copy, don’t be too ‘wordy’ online as people won’t give you long to make your point. Focus each page on one key topic, select the keyword for that key topic and use it as your page title and meta title and use it 2-3 times in body copy. If relevant finish the page with a call to action.

The search engines like websites with regular content updates so try to make your website a ‘living thing’ with new ideas and updates as often as possible. The best way to do that is with a word press blogs where you can post you latest news, views, product or service launches, client wins and ideas, etc. If you want more control over all the content on your website, easy to use Content Management Systems now exist. Also include some useful free content that relates to your market and will be of interest to visitors.

There are several techniques we’ve used to build links for both our own and our clients websites.

You can submit your website to numerous free directories, try to focus on ones that have a good Google Page Ranking and are specific to your industry. Also take a least one paid listing with a high page ranking directory for example, yahoo.com or botw.com. You should also submit your website to the appropriate section of the open directory.

Online press releases are an excellent means of obtaining one way links to your website. I usually use PRWeb for distribution. Make sure that you have a real story, something that will interest your target market so that online publishers will want to use your press release and people will want to read it. The story could be a new service or product, new data or information, a new idea you have, etc.

One of my favourite ways of building links is to write articles like this one and submit them to the article directories. I usually use ezine, isnare and buzzle amongst others, isnare also offers an article distribution service at small cost. For each article on each directory you will get at least one link back to your website, check the publishers regulations to see how many you are allowed and what format you should include them in (text or html).

Two way links are of doubtful value with Google now, I would suggest that you only exchange links with websites with good Google Page Rank that are very specific to the content of your own website.

Of course maybe the best way to build links to your website is to have great content that people want to link to.

Social media is big news at the moment and I have found some websites are excellent for driving quality traffic to a website. The two main websites I use are Linkedin and Facebook. First of all join the website and set up your profile, then surf through plenty of groups and join the ones you believe will have members who may be interested in the content of your website. Then post links or discussions to articles or information on your website that will be of interest to people in those groups.