Driving quality traffic to your website.

Posted on September 21, 2007 by marc meyer

So you have built a killer website, it’s optimized and ready to go, but you want to drive traffic to the site, and you don’t want to spend a dime. You have one month to do it. What are going to do? Do You:

a) link bait
b) blog spam
c) forum spam
d) submit to all of the free directories
e) whore out your sites ad space
f) manually try and create backlinks with sites that have cross-promotional relevance with your site
g) create 10 other sites and link them together…
h) something that has not been written here
i) ask for more time
j) ask for money to do some ppc
k) social networks and social bookmarking

The reason I ask, is I am faced with that challenge from time to time, and as much as I wish I could make the process move quicker, unfortunately it does not. So I am always curious as to what other people do. Perhaps a few dimes need to be spent on certain things, if so what would you spend your money on to get the biggest bang of sustained traffic? For more answers to these questions I would check out one of the few Naples, Florida’s SEO companies.

Building a website? Don’t forget about the user!

Posted on August 21, 2007 by marc meyer

In the golden age of SEO and SEM often websites are built with the search engines in mind. This is not necessarily a bad thing its just that sometimes one of the key elements is forgotten. The user. The person who brings revenue and eyeballs to your site in the first place.

We know that content is king, always has and always will be. We also know that content is one of the keys to a search engine friendly site. But when the content does not speak to the user and is geared more towards the SE’s. Then we have a problem. As a Search engine marketer, you have to be intrinsically aware of what you are trying to achieve. Simply put, you want…web nirvana. That happy place where you have achieved the goal of creating a search engine friendly site with a user friendly design.

It can be done, but remember that it has to be built from the inside out. That means your pages have to have ample room for content. Sure Flash is cool but really, what does flash do for a site? It makes it sexy and it’s visually appealing but the SE’s are not too wild about it. But… “What about my user? They like it!” And there my friend is the Catch-22. What’s good for the user is not necessarily good for the search engines. Thus the thinking that has to go into any and all web deployments. You have to straddle the beam like an olympian. Balancing between the users needs and expectations and the SE’s criteria.

Keep the flash to a minimum if you must use it, and spare the flash/splash as some organizations are wont to do. I would say that most users skip the intro anyway. Once you get past the flash, crank copy that you as a user would want to read and that is relevent to the site. After a rough draft, you can then go back and possibly tweak with some of your key words.

After you have crafted the content, then you can work on the structure, site maps, alt tags, metas and linking, all which speak to the SE’s and really won’t affect the user too much. Lastly once you have the site done, go back and see if it flows; and if you the user think the content is relevent to you, the user! While you’re at it, I would highly recommend one of the few Naples based seo companies

SEO: Actual rankings versus expectations

Posted on August 20, 2007 by marc meyer

So the client comes in and says,”I need more traffic”. Ok you say, do you want the quick fix or do you want something that will last. In other words, are you willing to do the work that it will take to sustain a site that has traffic day in and day out or do you want to blow it out regardless of the cost? As a business owner, and depending on your product, your site and what you expect it to deliver to the bottom line there is reality and then there is the sweet smell of false traffic so to speak. I’m not saying that the traffic won’t convert to actual sales but when you run out of money acquiring traffic, then what are you going to do? So you’re sitting there saying, I have to or can spend money and I can generate traffic to my website. Absolutely. And you’re not the only one doing it. If you think the Big Players in your business of choice are not doing it, then you better think again. And they can outspend you right into the ground…

Some people think that once you build it and they come, they will keep coming back over and over and over again. That very well might be true if your brand is abercrombie, Gap, or Limited Two. But the online shopper is so fickle and so NET saavy anymore, that you really really have to work hard to keep that buyer coming back.

So having said that, your goal as business owner who has a web site, should be to acquire traffic, keep the traffic, sell to the traffic and keep them coming back. And the only way to really do that is to build your website right the first time. Granted you come back to the site and re-do it. We all do that. Or we tweak a page, upgrade this or maintain that. But I’m talking of SEO 101 where you build the site with the search engine’s in mind from the inside out, so to speak.

Some times we become so enamored of a design, a logo, a bell or a whistle that we forget the effect that the design will have on the design and how the SE’s( search engines) will view it. Make sure that whoever you are dealing with knows what they are doing in regards to a SE friendly design.

So to sum it up, if you think you are ranking well make sure you are looking at an organic or natural listing versus a paid one and understand that the paid listing is good only as long as you can afford to have it in the top 3 of the first page.

I could wax on, but I will save that for another post. The bottom line. Build your website right the first time so that the traffic keeps coming back. Oh and one last thing, make sure you have the right analytics tool to measure your traffic as well. For a company that is doing it right, you might want to check out my new venture, truly one of the few Naples search engine optimization companies