Marketing your Website

How to increase traffic to your website

Search Engines

This is the most commonly used method of finding a business on the Internet. It is the modern day equivalent of looking up the “Yellow Pages” to find a business – Unless someone has a specific reason to visit your website (via word of mouth, business card or one of the other methods outlined below) then most people will find a website via search engines.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

This is the means by which you can improve the volume and quality of traffic to your web site from search engines using “natural” or “organic” search results. Typically, the higher your site’s ranking (i.e, the nearer your website is to the top of the search results list), the more visitors you will receive from a search engine. (Google, Bing, Yahoo etc)

Which search engine?

The short answer to this is Google and Bing. (Yahoo is the other main player however they use Bing) Google accounts for the vast majority of searches in the UK however Bing and Yahoo currently account for over 1/3 of searches in the US and are regularly increasing market share in the UK. Websites which only focus on Google visitors could be missing potential business opportunities.

Pay Per Click  (Also known as PPC)

is an Internet advertising method used by search engines and other directory/content providers in which advertisers are charged only when their ad is clicked. On search engines, you would typically bid for a keyword phrases relevant to your target market and geography.

E-mail Marketing

This is a form of direct marketing that uses e-mail as a means of communicating commercial messages to your audience. Typically you would send out an e-mail marketing campaign which contains your marketing message that contains links back to specific areas within your website.

Affiliate Marketing

An affiliate is a business that promotes your websites products. Typically your business would reward an affiliate for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts.

Blog Marketing

This is Internet marketing via web Blogs. This usually takes the form of a Blog featuring regular informative and interesting posts, usually based around a single topic. Organisations often use Blogs to communicate with customers and inform them about features of their products or services.

Article Marketing

This type of marketing involves businesses writing short articles related to their respective expertise or industry. These articles are distributed and published on relevant magazine and information websites. Articles should contain information about the author, references and contact information to your website. Well-written content articles are an effective means of increasing business’ credibility within your target market and can also attract new clients.

Social Media

There are a number of ways in which you can market your business through Social media. Of the most popular methods one is to send a post to your social contacts with links to your website embedded in the text and images in the article. Another is to enable your website visitors to share or express a “Like” for content on your website through a social network like facebook or twitter.

Banner Advertising

This type of online advertising involves embedding an advert into a third parties web page which in turn links to one of your web pages. It is intended to attract traffic to your website by the visitor clicking on the advert to find out more information.

Each of the above methods has its advantages and challenges and these are explained in other articles by the author. Click here to request more information on any of the above.

At the end of the day all of the above methods need to have a single purpose in mind which is to attract more customers to your website.

Article Written by John Hunter