Effective Ways To Increase Web Traffic To A Website
Seo or Search Engine Optimization is the process or tweaking that a website undergoes so it can rank high in the search result pages. When you build a website, your primary goal is to have as much traffic to your pages as possible. For this purpose, the search engines, like Google or Yahoo are your first bet. They kind of cater the information that users are looking for. Search engines are a free source of traffic and they can tremendously help you gain exposure on the World Wide Web if you know how they work. Your main goal of optimizing your website is to increase the amount of web traffic to your website. Apart from some minor differences, major search engines basically operate the same way in indexing web pages. This means that you don't have to optimize your site for every engine separately.
Effective Search engine optimization can actually be broken into two types that go side by side; On-page optimization and off-page optimization.
On-page Optimization
This means exactly waht it says, meaning anyting that you do on every single page in order to achieve good rankings in the search engine result pages. It's a process that you cannot do without simply because of the benefis it can get you beside SE rankings; It will improve your pages readability and the user's experience. Here are the major things that you should look at when doing on-page optimization:
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The title tag is by far one of the most important element in your page. You have to know that web "spiders" crawl web pages from top to bottom. Hence, your title tag should come right after the opening "head" tag. Besides, it has to include your most targeted keywords or phrases on that particular page. Always start building your page by giving it a title because we tend to forget to do that, otherwise you are going to end up with "Untitled Document" as your title. Give your title a name that is relevant to the content of the page.
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The Description Meta tag shared its position of importance at some point among search engines but, nowadays, it's not looked at the same way. In fact, the search engines don't consider it as important. Now, this doesn't mean that you should neglect it completely. Search engines algorithm keep changing all the time and you never know whether one day search engine companies will rethink the way they look at this tag. In the desciption meta tag you write a small summary about the page (around 155 characters) where you insert your main and secondary targeted keywords as you did with the title. This description is actually what shows under your site url in the search result pages. However, if you submit your site to directories, you should use the "robot" meta tag and include "NOODP" as its content. This will ensure that search engines show your desciption.
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Keyword Density: This has to do with the frequency you use your keywords in the content. A lot of people argue that this approach is something of the past and that search engines don't pay as much attentin to it as they once did. All I can tell you is that search engines are smart and you'd be a fool if you think that you can outsmart them by stuffing your paragraphs with your keywords. Keyword density should never be of a concern to you. Just write naturally and ensure that you are providing good quality content. This is the only way to go if you want the search engines to show you some love and serve your pages. Always remember that content is king. Another thing, a lot of people try to fool search engines by stuffing their pages with keywords while giving them the same color as the background. Never do this because you risk to be penalized and even have your page withdrawn from search engine index.
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Use search engine friendly URLs:
When naming your pages avoid using spaces between the words. I recommend that you use hyphens(-). A good practice will also be to use your keywords in the URLs. Besides, try not to "overburry" your pages in multiple directories.
- Anchor text links: When serch engines' spiders encounter a text link on a page it will try to determine whether this link is relevant to the page it links to. Let's say you're trying to link to a page where your targeted keyword is "firm abs". When you link to this page, avoid using text links like "Click here" or "check it out". Rather you should us text that includes your most targeted keywords. This will tremendously help the spiders to know waht that page is about.
- Image Alt Tag:
This is probably the most overlooked element in the search engine optimization process. Search engines do look at image alt tags and you should include them in your code. Use variants of your keywords, and if you happen to have more than one image, you should use different variants. Another reason you should use alt tags is because there are still some browsers that don't display images. in this case, the text that you use in your alt tags will be displayed instead of the image.
Off-page Optimization
One thing that search engines look at when ranking a website is the number of external or incoming links to that website. However, your concern here shouldn't be getting as many incoming links as possible. You should look for quality links. Off-page optimization is all about quality link building. Link Building is an ongoing process that should always be one of your priorities. There so many ways you can build incoming links to your website. Some of the most common link building techniques are the following:
- Article marketing: This my favourite and is one of the most effective methods to get quality backlinks to your website. If used very carefully, you won't see but good results. the way it works is that you write articles that pertain to your niche and then you submit them to article directories like ezinearticles.com or goarticles.com. If you submit unique and quality articles, there is a big chance you'll see your articles published on other websites. The good thing is that for a publisher to use an article he or she will have to keep the article intact and include the resource box with it. Therefore, you should always make use of the resource box and insert a link back to whatever page you want to rank high.
- Viral Marketing: Offer your visitors something for free like an ebook where you embed links to your web page. This will allow you to have loads of free traffic.
- Web directories: Although web directories are not considered to be a source of substantial traffic they provide a good way to get a site indexed. There are many directories that you can use such as DMOZ.org.
- Paid Links: There is a lot of controversy about this method. Basically, you buy links from link-selling websites that pass PageRank to your website. It's still effective but You can use it at your own risque. The last time I checked with Google, I learnt that paid links, destined only to pass page rank, are against their webmaster's guidelines. They even urge anyone to notify them if they encounter a site that engages in buying or selling this kind of links.
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