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HOW TO ATTRACT QUALIFIED SALES LEADS TO YOUR WEBSITE:
By Robert Boilard
There are many ways to increase your website traffic, but traffic
really is not the key. The key factor is trying to get qualified sales
leads and customers. I would rather get 25 people that are actually
looking to purchase a new website than 2500 people that are not.
Listed below are some of the ways you can get the kind of visitors
you want. I will however, keep the descriptions short as I will be
writing a full article about each one of these topics in upcoming months.
Keep in mind that some of these techniques will not work for every
business but most will. TRY THEM, THEY WORK!
1. YOUR PAGE TITLES. Your page titles should be short and
descriptive and should be 5 to 8 words. This is a safe amount for all
search engines and will insure people searching for your website will
be able to read your page title when the search engine results are
displayed. This is a very important tag for search engine placement.
Your title should be in the header of your HTML code
<HEADER></HEADER> and should look something like this.
<TITLE>Web Site Promotion - Increasing Your WebSite
Traffic</TITLE>
2. KEYWORDS AND PHRASES. Look at every one of the pages
in your website and prepare a list of keywords and key phrases that
go along with the content of each page in your website. If they end up
to be the very similar, simply rotate them so that you don't have the
same keywords in the same position on every page. So many people
make the mistake of placing keywords on their first page and no
where else. Your keywords should be different on every page of your
website. You should also be careful not to repeat any words more
than 3 times and you should not have more than 30 keywords in your
page. Your keywords should also go in the header section of your
HTML page <HEADER></HEADER> and should be in a meta-tag
that the search engines can read. If after a while you are not getting
the traffic you expected try changing your keywords and resubmitting
to the search engines.
<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="promoting,
promotion, Website promoting, ...">
3. PAGE DESCRIPTION. Write a precise description of every page
in your website using as many of the keywords that you prepared in
step 2. Try to leave out as many filler words as possible, like if, that,
is, are, to leave more space for the keywords. This is the description
that the user will see when the search results are displayed. The
description will also be placed in the header section of your HTML
page. <HEADER></HEADER> and again will be in a meta-tag.
our description should be about 200 to 250 characters in length.
<META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="Increase your
Website traffic using, meta-tags, descriptions, effect page titles">
4. PAGE CONTENT. Your page content is also very important to
search engine placement. The content of your pages should be
keyword rich and should be about the same subject of the keywords
and phrases in your meta-tags. Don't try to fool the search engines, it
will only hurt your placement. Again try to leave out as many of the
filler words as you can saving more room for the important words
and phrases. Your page design should not include frames, to date
there are only 2 search engines that understand frames, the rest don't.
If you absolutely need to use Frames and would like to learn how to
create your pages with frames the correct way, send an email to
frames@rbdesigns.com
5. SUBMIT YOUR PAGE TO THE SEARCH ENGINES AND
DIRECTORIES. There are so many search engines in many different
countries, among the largest are Alta Vista, Infoseek, HotBot, Excite,
Lycos, just to name a few. There are also many services on the net
that will charge you to submit your site to all these search engines
ranging from $25.00 to $250.00 dollars. WHY PAY for something
that you can do yourself, FREE. Unless you really don't have the time,
I would recommend using this service here:
http://home.sol.no/~nbk/submit/index.html
Fill in one form and this
script will submit your site to 28 search engines, and they even have
a FREE 300 search engine and directory version here:
http://home.sol.no/~nbk/submit/experimental/
Do this once a month or
every other month to keep the search engines up to date with changes
to your pages.
6. SUBMIT YOUR PAGE TO YAHOO. Yahoo is the most
important and a highly visited directory on the internet. This is
probably the single most important submission you can make,
however it must be done manually unless you have expensive
software to do just that. Instructions can be found at Yahoo. http://www.yahoo.com/docs/info/include.html
7. REQUEST LINKS ON SITES THAT PERTAIN TO YOUR
INDUSTRY. Search for sites that support your industry, such as
trade organizations and suppliers. Write the webmaster a nice letter
or email asking for a reciprocal link to your site and in return put a
link on your site to theirs.
8. INCLUDE YOUR URL ON STATIONERY, CARDS, AND
LITERATURE. Make sure that all your business card, letterheads
and brochures have your web page address and email.
9. KEEP THEM COMING BACK WITH A FREE USEFUL
SERVICE. If your a realtor, put a free amortization calculator on
your website, free reports, free email address and useful things that
make them bookmark your site and keeps them coming back. If you
sell used equipment or merchandise, add an Auction to your site. Be
creative, there are a host of free CGI scripts on the internet, get one
and install it. The largest resources I have seen are listed below. You
will have to know how to install CGI scripts but if you can't do it ask
your webmaster or Hosting Service to install it for you.
The CGI Resource Index http://www.cgi-resources.com
Search Script http://www.scriptsearch.com/
(5400 scripts)
The CGI Collection http://www.itm.com/cgicollection/
10. START A RESELLER OR ASSOCIATE PROGRAM. Just
about every business can use a sales force. One of the secrets to
being successful on the net is to duplicate yourself and your efforts.
These sites will show you how to do it.
http://www.associateprograms.com/
http://atlnetwork.com
http://associate-it.com
11. LOCAL BUSINESS DIRECTORIES. Do a search on the
search engines for your local city, town and state. Many have
local business directories that are free to place ads or links on.
Write them a short email and description about your business.
12. START AN OPT-IN MAIL LIST OR NEWSLETTER.
People love to belong and be accepted. You can start an eGroup
(email group) for your business to keep your visitors, customers,
suppliers up to date on just about any topic you desire. Learn how
here. http://www.egroups.com
13. BUY KEYWORDS FROM THE SEARCH ENGINES. Very
few people know that you can buy "keywords and phrases" from all
the top search engines. Buying keywords will insure excellent engine
placement. Make a short list of your most important keywords and
phrases. Contact the sales department at the major search engines
and ask them what it would cost for each one of your keywords and
phrase. The cost will depend on what words you are asking for and
the number of times that they are searched for on that particular
engine. They keep close track on every search that is placed with
there service. If your in the right business you might be surprise at
how inexpensive this can be, however if you are in the type of
business that is very "big business" like cosmetics or web
development, your budget probably won't allow for this type of cost
.
14. KEEP A DATABASE OF VISITORS. Keep all your contacts
that you obtain through your website for future use, you will want to
use them later for such things as announcements, specials and sales.
Always respond quickly to any inquires you get from your website.
The internet is a "instant gratification" medium, meaning people don't
like to wait. I would also suggest setting up an Auto-Responder for
your website.
15. CREATE A "SIGNATURE" IN YOUR OUT GOING E-MAILS. Most e-mail programs such
as Eudora, Microsoft and
Netscape allow you to designate a "signature" to appear at the end of
each message you send. Limit it to 6 to 8 lines: Company name,
address, phone number, URL, e-mail address, and a description of
your business offerings.
16. NEWS GROUPS. There are over 40,000 news group on the net
on just about every topic you can imaging. Find some pertaining to
your industry and partake in the discussions. Do not send
Advertisements to these groups, let the Signature File At the bottom
of your email do the work for you. Use a service like DejaNews
http://www.dejanews.com or the news client in
Microsoft Outlook
or Netscape with the news service that your ISP subscribes to, and
most of them do.
17. HAVE A MONTHLY CONTEST. People love getting
something for free. Usually no matter what business your in, whether
your selling products or a service you should be able to do this one.
Having a contest brings a surprising amount of people to your site. If
you sell baskets for example, give one basket away per month, or
every other month. There are many places on the net to announce a
contest. I have listed a few below. This is also a great way to building
a database of perspective customers.
http://www.ContestGuide.com
http://www.sweepsonline.com
http://www.onlinesweeps.com
http://www.prizenet.com
http://contest.catalogue.com
http://www.webstakes.com
http://www.sweepsource.com
http://www.contestworld.com
http://www.freestuff2000.com
18. TRACK YOUR VISITORS. I also highly suggest adding a
Tracker to your website. Trackers will tell you where your visitors
found your website, keywords they used, what country they're from,
day of the week, time and a many other statistics that will allow you
to tweak and change your website and really know what advertising
is working for you. There are many Free Trackers available but the
one I suggest is http://www.extreme-dm.com/
19. ACCEPT CREDIT CARDS. If you are really serious about
making money on-line, you must accept credit cards. There a couple
of ways to do this, however. You can add a shopcart service like
AmeriCart http://www.americart.com , I have used
this service for
some of my clients and they are very professional and the service
works very well. This will save you from having to buy a Site
Certificate to add security or SSL to your site, a site certificate runs
about 300.00 dollars and your hosting service usually charges and
estimated 20.00 per month for the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) The
only draw back to a service like AmeriCart is that you will need to
have an existing Merchant Account which you can set up through
your local bank. Another alternative is a service like Total Merchant
Solutions (TMS) which will accept and verify credit cards over the
net. This is a little more expensive but easiest way since there is no
intervention required from you, except to fill the order. A service like
this will automatically deposit your money directly into your account.
http://www.merchantacct.com
20. BANNERS. There are many ways to drive traffic to your site that
other marketers may recommend, such as banner exchange programs,
awards programs, Free For All Link Pages, etc. etc. etc. They in fact
add very little value to your site or business, and even distract your
visitors away from your products, when you've worked so hard to
get them there. I just hate to go to sites that are filled with other
peoples banners. If your going to do banners, do them right, buy space
for your banner on other sites that will drive the kind of traffic to your
site that you need, and keep other peoples banners off your site if
you can. If you need banners try this on-line banner maker, it's free
and it's fast. http://www.animationonline.com/
I have certainly not even touched on all the ways to generate sales
leads to your website. The business of E-Commerce is basically a
numbers game. The more links and more search engines you are
listed in, the better chance of your success. Advertising on the internet
is just like any other business, YOU HAVE TO WORK IT in order
to succeed. Success is a very relative term, success is not making a
Million dollars on the internet, unless that is the goal you set. If you
planned to make a hundred dollars and you've made a hundred and
one, you have been successful. Set your goals and achieve them!
About the Author:
Robert is a professional developer and CEO for RB Associates
( http://www.rbdesigns.com ). Robert is also a
Chapter Chairman of
the International WebMasters Association and an International
Co-Chairperson for the IWA Awards Committee, member of the
HTML Writers Guild and the Microsoft SiteBuilder Network.
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