Posts Tagged ‘Website Traffic’

Just don’t focus on the home page, keywords and titles.

The first step to sales when customers visit your site to see the products they were looking for. Of course, search engine optimization and better rankings can’t keep your customer on your site or make them buy. The customer having visited your site, now ensure that he gets interested in your products or services and stays around. Motivate him to buy the product by providing clear and unambiguous information. Thus if you happen to sell more than one product or service, provide all necessary information about this, may be by keeping the information at a different page. By providing suitable and easily visible links, the customer can navigate to these pages and get the details.

Understanding Your Target Customer

If you design a website you think will attract clients, but you don’t really know who your customers are and what they want to buy, it is unlikely you make much money. Website business is an extension or replacement for a standard storefront. You can send email to your existing clients and ask them to complete a survey or even while they are browsing on your website. Ask them about their choices. Why do they like your products? Do you discount prices or offer coupons? Are your prices consistently lower than others? Is your shipping price cheaper? Do you respond faster to client questions? Are your product descriptions better? Your return policies and guarantees better than your competitor’s? To know your customer you can check credit card records or ask your customer to complete a simple contact form with name, address, age, gender, etc. when they purchase a product.

Does your website give enough contact information?

When you sell from a website, your customer can buy your products 24 hrs a day and also your customers may be from other states that are thousands of miles away. Always provide contact information, preferably on every page of your website, complete with mailing address, telephone number and an email address that reaches you. People may need to contact you about sales, general information or technical problems on your site. Also have your email forwarded to another email address if you do not check your website mailbox often. When customer wants to buy online provide enough options like credit card, PayPal or other online payment service.

Keyword density is an indicator of the number of times the selected keyword appears in the web page. But mind you, keywords shouldn’t be over used, but should be just sufficient enough to appear at important places.

If you repeat your keywords with every other word on every line, then your site will probably be rejected as an artificial site or spam site.

Keyword density is always expressed as a percentage of the total word content on a given web page.

Suppose you have 100 words on your webpage (not including HMTL code used for writing the web page), and you use a certain keyword for five times in the content. The keyword density on that page is achieved by simply dividing the total number of keywords, by the total number of words that appear on your web page. So here it is 5 divided by 100 = .05. Because keyword density is a percentage of the total word count on the page, multiply the above by 100, that is 0.05 x 100 = 5%

The generally accepted standard for keyword density on a website is between 3% and 5%,. This is  believed to be the  most acceptable number to get recognized by the search engines and you should never exceed it.

Remember, that this rule applies to every page on your site. It also applies to not just to one keyword but also a set of keywords that relates to a different product or service. The keyword density should always be between 3% and 5%.

Simple steps to check the density:

• Copy and paste the content from an individual web page into a word-processing software program like Word or Word Perfect.

• Go to the ‘Edit’ menu and click ‘Select All’. Now go to the ‘Tools’ menu and select ‘Word Count’. Write down the total number of words in the page.

• Now select the ‘Find’ function on the ‘Edit’ menu. Go to the ‘Replace’ tab and type in the keyword you want to find. ‘Replace’ that word with the same word, so you don’t change the text.

• When you complete the replace function, the system will provide a count of the words you replaced. That gives the number of times you have used the keyword in that page.

• Using the total word count for the page and the total number of keywords you can now calculate the keyword density.

See You in the Search Engines

Steve
Hosting Impact

Australian Domain Names

There are countless ways of generating traffic to your website, unfortunately, a lot of people fail to capitalise on this, simply because they don’t follow through. They give up after trying 1 thing once. They don’t make a sale so they give it up and say it doesn’t work.

You must test, test and retest your efforts and then compare the results to the previous month. Compare unique visitors form one month to the next. Compare enquiry emails received from 1 month to the next.

The only true way of generating traffic, quality traffic, is by testing and by being proactive.

Run weekly or monthly polls on your website. People love to give their opinions on any number of subjects. So give them the subjects to talk about. If you select topics that have a wide appeal, your website visitors will return and return often. From there, ask them to sign up with your newsletter, so you can them advised of new polls and information.

Consider starting a niche forum, as this has also proven to be an excellent source of traffic. Granted, it is and can be a lot of work to get off the ground, however, if you select your niche area carefully, it doesn’t take long until word of mouth advertising kicks in.

Consider donating to a local Charity and then distribute a press release proudly advertising that fact. Select your Charity carefully, but donate accordingly and be proud of your donation and give the press release to media and business connections. Ask them to become involved and get 3 or 4 business, working together for a particular charity event.

End of the day, always ask your visitors how they found your website. Was it a referral, a keyword, keywords, if so, what were they…but always test and measure your results.

We trust you have found this blog of benefit.

Until Net Time…
Happy Blogging

SEO Steve
Hosting Impact – Australian SEO Services

Quality Free SEO Tools

All online businesses and websites have 2 aims or objectives and they are to make their website stand out from the crowd and secondly, to make sales.  With this in mind, it’s understandable that the majority of our time is directed towards getting ‘traffic’.  Without it, a website has no prospects and thus no sales.

Consider this option though, instead of a constant need and push for additional website traffic, why not utilise the traffic you already have?  For example, you may currently make 1 sale for every 400 unique visitors, however, by refining your web pages,  you could very well make 1 sale for every 200 unique visitors. By refining your current webpages, you have effectively doubled your sales.

You will find below a number of options to consider in refining your current webpages. The secret though, is to test and evaluate, test and evalute. Track your results at all times.

1. A subscription box to your newsletter. By way of thanking them for siging up, give them a free gift or ebook.

2. A window that appears only as the visitor leaves your site. Please remember though that some people detest popups of any kind. Ensure that you have good quality information and content available.

3. Experiment With your current Web Site Design. Add additional images, add new content, add a poll, ask for your visitors comments. Make your website more interactive. Does your website have a clear path to follow or clearly defined “Call to Action”

4. If your website has too much information or clutter, Simplify your page. More choices does not necessarily make it better.  View it from your customers eyes or point of view. You know what you like and don’t like when you when you visit a website, then implement that.

Test and evaluate every aspect of your website and make the best use of your exisitng traffic and by converting 1extra customer from every 200 unique visitors is effectively doubling your sales and increasing your profit.

Have a clearly defined “Call To Action” and get your website visitors to interact with your website, either by way of signing up for your newsletter or making a phone call or sending an email. Anything is better than nothing.

Trust you have found this of benefit and should you require additional information or assistance please do not hesitate to contact us accordingly.

Until Next Time …
Happy Blogging

SEO Steve
Hosting Impact – Small Business Hosting

Creating Your Website Presence

Getting traffic or visitors to your web site is one thing, however, you need to understand how they got there in the first and without analyzing your traffic, you wont be able to improve upon the overall results.

Within your Hosting Control Panel, there should be a Web Stats Programme such as Webalizer. Web Stat Programmes use various terms to describe web site traffic and it’s visitors.  It is important to understand what the terms are and how they relate to your website in particular.

Visits – these are requests made by a specific user to the website during a specific period of time, normally 24 hours.  Users are identified by cookies, username or hostnames/ip addresses.

Hit – this is a request to the server for a file not a page. Your page can be made up of different files, such as graphic files, audio files or javascript files etc, resulting in a number of hits for that page. Each of these requests is called a hit.

Counting hits is not the same as tracking pageviews. It takes multiple hits to view a page. You may at times see website owners sprouting that they receive 1 000 000 hits to their website, so come and advertrise on our site. Hits are not the same as individual users and a site receiving 1 000 000 hits is certainly not receiving 1 000 000 unique visitors.

Pageview / Impressions – this is the number of times a page is accessed completely.

Unique View – A page view by a unique person within a 24 hour period.

Referrer – A page that links to your site. By looking at your referrers will tell you who’s linked to your website or more importantly what page are they linking to. This is of particular value, because you can determine where your search engine traffic is originating.

User Agent – This refers to the software used to access your site.  Sometimes known as a “browser” or “client”, the term user agent can describe a PHP script, a browser like Internet Explorer, or a search engine spider like GoogleBot.

We trust you have found this of benefit and should you require additional information or assistance please do not hesitate to contact us accordingly.

Until Next Time …
Happy Blogging

SEO Steve
Hosting Impact – Australian Small Business Hosting

Australian Website Design Professionals

1. Update the pages on your website frequently. Stagnant sites are dropped by some search engines. More importantly, update with fresh, relevant content.

2. Allow customers to ‘opt in’ to get discounts and special offers. Place a link on your site to invite customers to ‘opt in’ to get a monthly newsletter or valuable coupons.

3. Include a ‘Book Mark, Add this site to your Favorites and a link to your Social Media sites such as Twitter‘.

4. Add a link ‘Recommend this site to a Friend’ so that your website visitors can email your website link, with a prewritten title, “Thought you might be interested in this”, just by clicking on it.

5. Brand your website so that visitors always know they are on your site. Use consistent colors, logos and slogans and always provide a ‘Contact Us’ link on each page. Click on the following links as an example:

Main Website: www.hostingimpact.com

Sub Domain:  http://www.sydney.hostingimpact.com/

Bonus 2 Tips

a. Create a FAQ page which addresses the most commonly asked questions about your Products and Services. 

b. Ensure that each page on your website is optimised correctly and has appropriate titles and keywords so that your customer can find their way back to your site.

We trust you have found this post of benefit and please feel free to contact Hosting Impact for additional information or assistance.

Until Next Time …

Jade - Hosting Impact Support

Happy Blogging

SEO Steve
Hosting Impact – Web Design 

Search Engine Optimisation

Web Hosting

Web Design

Domain Names

Australian Website Design Professionals

There are numerous effective ways to increase website traffic and create good search engine rankings and the ones listed below are not the only tried and tested methods available. If you would like to include some, please email us.

• Create a website with valuable relavant content, products or services.
• Place primary and secondary keywords or keyword phrases within the first half of your web page content and spread them evenly throughout the document.
• Research and use the right keywords/phrases to attract your target customers. Do not stuff keywords within your website, you will be caught. You have been warned.
• Use your keywords in the right fields and references within your web page. Like Title Tags, Meta Tags, Headers, Alt Tags etc.
• Keep your website design simple so that your customers can navigate easily between web pages, locate the information they need and most importantly, your website loads quickly.
• Update and add fresh, new relevant content on a regular basis. 
• Use online tools and utilities to keep track of how your website is doing. Visit and Bookmark www.HostingImpact.com/free_tools.htm for a vast range of FREE WEB TOOLS.
• Monitor your competitors and the top ranked websites to see what they are currently doing.
• Use reports and logs from your web hosting company to see where your traffic is coming from. A great programme is Webalyzer and it provides a wealth of infromation, from search strings to links etc…
• Make your customer visit easy and give them plenty of ways to remember you and return in the form of newsletters, free reports or consultation etc.
• Demonstrate your product knowledge or service expertise by writing and submitting articles for article websites so you are perceived as an expert in your field. Please remember to include your signature adn links in all submitted articles.
• Treat your website as a dynamic, ever changing sales and marketing tool and your customers will too.

Website Traffic is the most essential thing for a website to become a successful internet based business. Aside from ensuring that you have great products and services to sell,  you do need traffic, quality traffic, to be successful. 

If you already have a website and yet think that you’re not getting the traffic that you want to have or should have, then it’s maybe time to review, your current website. 

You should always be on your guard and be ever mindful of your competitors websites and review how they are achieving their results. Is it becasue of traffic and if so, How, Where, Why, When.

Generating traffic or more quality traffic to your website, is not as difficult as you might imagine. However, what may be difficult for some webiste owners, is the fact that they may need to do it themselves or engage the services of a company to assist. It is no longer a case of I have built my website, where are my customers. Does not work that way and I seriously doubt it ever did.

Here are three ways to increase your traffic starting from yesterday.

1) Viral Marketing 

Viral marketing is a cute little buzz word being thrown around at the moment, however, this cute little buzz word effectively allows you to spread the word about your company and product with minimal cost. This is a marketing method that can be used intelligently, whereby you can attach your company’s name, signature, product or link to any available media such as a You Tube, Twitter, Face Book, Linked In or Community Forum etc…. If used correctly, your website will generate additional traffic as your post, input, video or thread is passed from pillar to post. 

2) Correct keywords or keyword phrases for your website

Search engines look for certain keywords that they then display in their results page. So it naturally follows that by having the right keyword and relevant keyword phrase is a high priority for ranking high within the search engines. Case in point: Client wants to be number 1 for the term “Real Estate” however, after much convincing the term “Port Stephens Real Estate” is used, as it is a much better selection ofa keyword, plus, it certainly is not as competitive. End result, the customer is satisifed with the results and they also get a better understanding of why and how relevant keywords work.

3) Write Articles that can lead traffic to your site

Consider submitting articles to websites that contain the similar subjects to yours. For example, you sell car parts, then write press releases and articles about cars and car parts. Include your website description and services at the end of the article. Please remember to include your link. There are a number of Article Submission places that encourage you to write and submit articles on your area of expertise. These articles are then used by other websites on the proviso that the article remains in tact, complete with your link.

End of the day, it comes down to the same rules, if you like and that is that you need to take full responsibility for your website and it’s results or lack of. Don’t have the expertise, that’s ok, contact a company that does, but either way, you still need to do something.

Hosting Impact - Support Desk

Doing something and attempting something is far better than not doing anything and expecting results and or changes.

Until Next Time … 
Happy Blogging

SEO Steve
Hosting Impact – Australian SEO Specialists 

Creating Your Website Presence

There is no doubt whatsoever that a Wordpress blog, hosted on your own domain and web hosting account should be the way that you go when you create your business blog, in our humble opinion.

As you will read throughout this blog, the interactive element of Web 2.0 does present a massive range of new and exciting opportunities for promoting your site or blog. 

But, that being so, you must have a blog site that can take full advantage of those opportunities.

In other words, if you are generating traffic from what we might call Web 2.0 activities, then you must send that traffic to a site that the visitors will feel comfortable with, and will hopefully like enough to add to their bookmarks folder.

If website visitors find your content through a Web 2.0 related resource, and then end up on a dull and somewhat lifeless hosted blog then your credibility and their stay on your website or blog are both going to be extremely short lived!

You must appreciate that you do not only want people to visit your blog or site but you also want them to visit, stay and return often, You need them to interact with your site in some way, with the aim of them returning time after time.

Eventually, of course, you want them to become your customer as well, but they will not do any of these things if they land on a boring, lifeless blog or website the very first time that they visit.

We believe that using Wordpress on your own hosted domain is the simplest and quickest way of getting a superbly interactive blog set up that is fully in-tune with the requirements of all the traffic (both Webs 2.0 and 1.0 ‘styles’) that this blog will teach you to generate.

The Wordpress that you have just installed on your domain name is a superbly flexible system, but it is far from perfect.

There are a 1001 things that Wordprss cannot or does not do ‘straight out of the box’, but what Wordpress does have is immense flexibility and malleability.

So, Wordpress users all over the world have created hundreds of plug-ins and widgets for Wordpress that you can install into the admin area of your blog (usually free) to add a huge amount of additional usability to your blog.

Wordpress has plugged itself into the open source communities’ ability to create any number of widgets or plug-ins that can massively enhance all of your marketing and conversion efforts, and there is simply no other system around with this level of increased functionality.

In other words, everything that you could ever want to change, alter or enhance about your blog site can be done by installing the correct plug-in or widget.

That is not to say that that you would ever use or utilise all of them, because you wouldnt, however, you can certainly use the ones that would benefit your goals or objectives.

In the event that you would like to install Wordpress on your Domain and require assistance, please contact Hosting Impact Blog Installation.

Long Live Open Source.
 
We trust you have enjoyed this update and please feel free to contact us for additional information.

 
Until Next Time…

Happy Blogging

SEO Steve
Hosting Impact – Australian Search Engine Optimization Specialists

Creating Your Website Presence

 Why Is Blogging So Effective?

If there is one single phenomena that could best be said to represent the idea behind Web 2.0, it is blogging.

A blog is simply a website that will usually ‘provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs.’ according to Wikipedia.

Whilst blogs first came into being as online personal diaries, the ones that we are going to concentrate on are those that are used for business.

Blogs have many attractions, the main one being their simplicity. Anyone who has the basic ability to use two fingers on a keyboard can begin to create their own blog,

They can also be updated as often as you like, and many people do update their blogs two or three times a day.

This means that there is a constant stream of fresh new content available on blog sites, which is probaly the main reason that blogs are fast becoming the favorite sites of the major search engines, especially Google, itself the #1 search engine.
 
There is no need to know anything whatsoever about website creation or scripting language to create a blog.

No matter which blogging ‘platform’ (system) you use, it is always a simple question of following a very small handful of simple instructions, and you are good to go.

And, as the Wikipedia definitions suggest, a core function of blog sites is that they invite reader input and feedback in the form of comments.

What a good blog site therefore does is start a ‘conversation’ between the blog site owner and their readership.

It has an inherent ability to begin building a relationship centered around a common area of interest, as expressed in the subject matter of the blog itself.

So, in simple terms, if for example you are an avid mountain climber, and start a blog about your hobby, then the chances are very good that most of the people who visit your pages will be interested in climbing mountains too.

So, all you need to do is create articles that are interesting or controversial enough to prompt your readers to comment and you have generated a discussion or debate about a subject that is close to your heart.

And, the point is that you can create your own blog about any topic under the sun, and publish it for the whole world to read literally within minutes of sitting down in front of your computer.

Our next post will discuss Business Blogs.

We trust you have found this information of assistance and please feel free to contact Hosting Impact for further assistance.

 
Until Next Time…
Happy Blogging

SEO Steve
Hosting Impact – Australian Search Engine Optimization Specialists