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Web Hosting Articles >> Growing Your Traffic Is Hard To Do - Or, Is It? - Part 3Growing Your Traffic Is Hard To Do - Or, Is It? - Part 3Author: KenAdded: November 1, 2005 Views: 1,491 Rating: 10/10 Welcome to the third, and final, article in a series of three that focus on growing more traffic to and targeted audience for your website. Growing Your Traffic Is Hard To Do - Or, Is It? offered an overview, illustrating some marketing strategies. The second in the series, UPDATE AND OPTIMIZE - REQUIRED STAMINA, emphasized the need to maintain the content of your site, as if it were your storefront and/or office/services. This article will focus on links and traffic. If you are a golfer, youve just perked up. Sorry, that is not the kind of "links" to which we e referring. These links are, at their most simple definition, any badges, banners, buttons, icons or text ads, etc. that can be clicked that moves people from one site to another while connected to the WorldWideWeb. The developers/inventors designed the WWW to allow one document to link to and from another document. In this manner, researchers were "connected" to related documents via other computers globally. The "links" were based on the related content. Fast forward to the present - no matter what gizmos or gadgets are in place, designed or developed the more useful and relevant your content the more your site will be linked to other sites. The most useful sites contain quality, rich content on a particular subject, where the provider or editor is an authority. Pretty easy to understand, right? Okay, so - you want to market your product/service via the WWW. You, now, know that its content that causes your sites "connection" to someone elses and someone elses and so on; and that, in turn, attracts attention to your site, once again. As mentioned in UPDATE AND OPTIMIZE - REQUIRED STAMINA, once youve gotten the basic, initial content of your site set, it requires renewing and refreshing to stay current, as the WWW is a "living thing." Hundreds of sites are launched and deleted every day. New information is being added and subtracted from websites, blogs, networking sites, etc. For example, if today, right now, you put in a specific search word youd come up with a specific number of "hits" for that word. One week from today, in all likelihood, the same search word would produce different results. Perhaps not the first several "hits"; but, the ones further "back" will have changed. Why? Because someone deleted their site and someone launched a new site, with slightly difference content and the skewed the results of your two searches, one week apart. That is happening 24/7, 365 - do the numbers. You must make your site "linkable" - i.e. worthy to be linked to. For example, if your site is merely a listing of products/services in your online storefront/office, who would want to link to it? There may be a few links to any related site; but, thats it. If all you have is product/service, you have to make affiliate/associate programs to generate links - paying for them. If, however, you were to develop a database that was searchable the included all aspects of your product/service - i.e. glossary of terms, directory, history, etc.- then your site would become a rich, diverse content-driven "community" that would both sell your merchandise/service and add value and interest. The above is one possibility to increase your "linkability." Increasing your sites link popularity is another option. Link popularity - the number of sites that are linking to your site - is a factor as far as search engine placement is concerned. All things being somewhat equal - the more links to your site, the higher the ranking will be. However, think of that this way - what kind(s) of links do you want to be linked to your site? So, you see, its not merely numbers but numbers + quality of links that will, ultimately, drive relevant hits, which are more likely to generate a specific interest in your site/product(s)/service(s). Joining reciprocal link services is another option. The essential premise of these services is for you to add pages to your site containing links to other sites that are members of that service. Ostensibly, the more members the more link popularity. There are nuances to any "system" - joining a reciprocal link service has some of their own. Many of these services require adding a visible graphic or text link from your home page to the pages that contain the links. Your home page is your storefront. Do you want someone elses graphic link destroying the look and "feel" of your site? A text link is less intrusive. However, how do you think you might feel if someone visited your site clicked on a text link and was brought to one of your competitors (who is, also, a member of that service) at the top of the page? Another variation of this is most of these services have the same pages containing the links to each member - pages that you are required to load to your site are identical to all the other members required pages. Many search engines are increasingly able to detect duplicate pages in different sites. Consequence - either the search engines will ignore the pages or might penalize all the sites for spamming! Many of these sites link all the members to each other, rather than linking only related sites. The potential that lots of unrelated sites will link to your site should be apparent. As previously mentioned, links from unrelated sites are not as valuable as links from related sites. In addition, search engines are evolving to search in terms of themes - overall theme of a site in addition to or in place of just the order/combination of keywords. Having links to completely unrelated sites can lower rankings in search engines - which is exactly the opposite of what you want. We trust that this series has encouraged you, enlightened you and increased your knowledge and understanding of only some of the variables to consider when launching your site ...and what you must do, on a regular basis, once your site is "open for business." Note: This article is copy written. Please do not use without permission. Talk about this article in the webmaster forums! More Promoting and Marketing Articles |
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