Here are 4 basic ways to generate more website traffic for store and small businesses:
Make sure your web site has enough text content on each web page. Along with relevant keyword phrases that truly describe the page in your title, meta tags, and all internal links. Sites that are all Flash or graphics tend to do very poorly with the search engines.
Get as many incoming links from other relevant web sites. Incoming links with well written texts can dramatically improve your internet reach both from those sites linking to you as well as improve your search ranking positions.
Advertise on the search engines and other websites that your targeted audience frequents. The key to pay-per click advertising with the search engines is to have a good understanding of how pay-per click advertising works and how to generate the best, most relevant text ads for keywords. Don’t do paid advertising if you are not going to track and measure your results.
Add your website address to all your off-line advertising campaigns. It is amazing to see how many consumers go to the web after they see a company’s TV ad, newspaper ad or hear them on the radio. This is also true for direct mail and catalogs as well.
Also, be sure to do your research before signing up with any web marketing company. There are a lot of web companies that play on the fact that flooring people don’t understand the web and you become an easy target for them. Ask a lot of questions, know what you are getting into and make sure they are continually showing you the actual results.
Anyone with a website I am sure is getting a daily dosage of emails stating that they can get you to the top of the search engines and do it cheap too! Using Wordle.net I had fun making a word collage of some of the many things that one needs to know to do SEO the right way. Enjoy!
When you log into Google Analytics and many other analytic tools you often see in the reports two headings that many people find confusing. One is labeled: “Visits” and the other is labeled: “Visitors”, and the numbers never seem to match. That is because “Visits” is actually counting “sessions”, while “Visitors” is counting website visitors.
For example: A visitor could come back several times and each time they return it is counted as a new session (or visit), but it is still only “one” visitor (if they allow cookies from the website).
When you look at visitors it is best to look at “Unique Visitors”, which removes repeat visitors. Although this is not totally accurate because some people (like me) do not store cookies for long periods of time, it is still a good web barometer to use. (My cookies and history are automatically removed whenever I close my browser.But for most people they use the browser’s default settings which allow websites to store cookies on the computer for tracking purposes.)
Watching visits and visitors over time can help you gauge whether you are increasing traffic but you still need to additional web metrics to really understand if the right outcomes are being achieved by your website. For instance, drilling this down to the page level will give you more useful information about which pages are being viewed the most often. Adding the bounce rate to this report can be very eye-opening and give you some insights into customer behavior.
One of the best web metrics that I get asked about the least by clients is the Bounce Rate. Yet, it can be a great way to determine which web pages stink, from the visitor’s perspective. There are exceptions, but for most websites the Bounce Rate helps you understand a little more about visitor’s behavior.
So what is Bounce Rate? Bounce rate is the percentage of people who came to your site, landed on this specific page and immediately left. They never clicked on any other internal page links. They came, they saw, they left! Just one pageview and they said good bye! Nothing compelled the visitor to look further into your website.
Bounce Rate
A lot of web metrics are very inaccurate, such as time on page or time on site, and are difficult to really measure. Bounce rate is pretty easy to measure with analytic tools (such as: Google Analytics) and should be easy for website owners to understand.
If a web page has a high Bounce Rates (over 50%) and the web page was meant to get them to click on links going to other pages in your website then you can definitely conclude the page is getting a failing grade. The page content and links need to be re-vamped. For example: maybe the keywords used on the page are causing you to get the wrong search engine traffic. so by adjusting the keyword phrases throughout the page and keywords used to link to this page will achieve a more targeted audience and a lower Bounce Rate.
There are times that a high bounce rate may not be avoided. For example: a new blog post may get you a lot of readers who just want to read this blog entry and then leave right away.
The bottom line is, you need to regularly monitor the Bounce Rate through your website analytic tools and take it seriously. Your visitors are telling you something, so don’t ignore it.
A lot of websites today include PDF documents for visitors to download. It would be nice to know how many people actually are downloading those documents. With Google Analyics it is possible to track downloads and see them results in your Google Analytics reports.
All you need to do is add some Javascript code to your hyperlinks and be sure your main Google Analytics urchinTracker() tracking code is placed near the top of your source HTML code, but not about your <body> tag. Inside your anchor tag (the hyperlink) include the following:
Now every time someone clicks and downloads the pdf file it will appear in Google Analytics as a page with the name: /pdfdownloads/filename along with the number of clicks . You can use what ever name you want too to help you identify it in your Google Analytic reports. If you have several different PDF documents for users to download… no problem! Just give each on a unique name for tracking. For example using the above: “/pdfdownloads/filename1″, “/pdfdownloads/filename2″, “/pdfdownloads/filename3″, etc…
You could also try this out with external websites that you link too to see how many visitors click on the various outbound links and which are the most popular.
Matt Cutts from Google explains how Google arrives at website titles used in Google ’s organic search result listings (the free listings). Writing a good, very relevant Title Tag helps ensure your title will not be altered.
PS -- When I have time I will explain this in more detail.
Here is a cool little video that demonstrates how you can use Google Analytics to match the user’s geographic location with the keyword phrases used. (By the way, I created this video online with just my browser at: http://screenr.com/iSB)
Many small businesses have limited marketing budgets to spend on Pay-Per-Click advertising for their websites. Still, they recognize to be successful online their website needs to show up in the search engines when potential customers are searching for their products and services they offer. One of the ways to accomplish this is through high placement in the natural listings on the major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Bing, AOL, Ask).
The natural listings are the free listings (also called “organic listings”) and appear on the search engine results along with the sponsored, or paid listing. Of course, everyone who has a website wants to be on page #1 of the natural listings for the most popular search terms. Unfortunately, there are only 10 natural lisitings per search engine page results. So what can we do to help reach more of our targeted online audience?
This is where smart search engine optimization (SEO) comes into play. By optimizing each page for specific keywords along with geographic keyword modifiers can really help your target audience find your website. Many web users today are narrowing their searches by adding keyword modifiers to the text they type in the search engines. This helps them find what they are really looking for much faster.
For example: rather than just searching for “plumber” which would give a consumer millions of useless websites, they are now adding specific geographic words to help find their local businesses, such as: “Tampa Bay plumber” or “Chicago plumbing contractor“. (They may even add a zipcode or suburb name as well.) By adding these “geographic keyword modifiers” helps consumers narrow their search to find local websites that are most relevant. This is how many consumers are conducting searches for their local businesses today.
The problem becomes that most small business websites have done a poor job optimizing their website. The websites lack the right geographic keyword modifiers combined with the best product/ service keywords used by their target audience. The best website investment any small business can make today is to hire a website design company that truly understands search engine optimization (SEO) and can develop a sound SEO strategy as well as help track your results.
Note: Incoming links from other, relevant websites that have high creditability can also help improve your natural listings. I will discuss that in future posts.
If you haven’t noticed Google is for ever changing things in their search result listings. This is why search engine optimization (SEO) should be an ongoing process. Websites need to have someone or an SEO company continually updating and monitoring their website and it’s placement on the search engines. Below is a Youtube video I created showing the most recent Google search result listings for the general keyword phrase: hardwood flooring. (Notice that 7 of the organic listings are pushed farther down the results because of the addition of thumbnail images, local listings and product listings.)
From small towns to big cities location, location, location is extremely important to all types of retail businesses. Being located on “main” street can mean many more customers and it’s easier to build customer awareness. Businesses also pay more to have these prime locations.
But when it comes to the Internet, “main” street becomes more difficult to understand for most businesses. Your salespeople are not normally online to help shoppers, nor to ask for the order. (If you use LivePerson or Meebo on your website you can chat live with potential customers.)
I would hope most retail stores see the search engines as the prime online, real estate locations, especially page #1 of the search engines results listings. Search engines are the busy main streets where everyone is flying by on the computers. Being high on the search engine listings gives you a good chance that they will go to your website look around and then go to your store to make a purchase. So how much is this prime online real estate locations worth to your business?
This is what search engine optimization (also called SEO) is all about. It is about getting your website on those prime Internet locations where your “targeted” audience is cruising by. If you want the best locations on the search engines you are going to have to pay to get there. It is not rocket science but it does take more than just stuffing pages with a few keywords. You also will need to have search engine optimization done on an ongoing basis if you want to stay at the top of the search engine listings. The real plus side to the search engines are the playing field is much more even than in the brick-and-mortar world. You don’t have to be the biggest players to be found on these prime locations.
Side note: there are other online locations as well that can also help drive targeted traffic, but I will save that for another post sometime.
Bio: I am the owner of Webstream Dynamics, a full-serivce web design company. I have been developing websites since the mid-1990s. Today, I focus on web design, SEO and Internet Marketing for many small businesses, chambers of commerce, and retail stores. I have also written articles for trade publications and I have given Internet seminars at various trade shows.
