I spend a lot of time answering questions for my clients about what they can do to get more visitors to their sites. The thing is there is no easy answer to sum it all up. It is an ongoing process that takes commitment from site owners to work on their own and with their web designer to get the results that they want.

Some of my clients have made this commitment. Some, I have not heard from since the day their site went live. They paid good money for their site and they pay their hosting every month but their sites are sitting there and no one is coming.

I have developed this site as a coaching forum to help my clients and others to learn simple tasks that they need to in order to grow their sites. I know we are all busy but we all have a vision to grow our online business or we wouldn’t have a web site to begin with. All it takes is 30-60 minutes each day to take steps toward greater success with your site.

Not only will I be coaching you myself but I will have marketing professionals guest blogging here. So please subscribe to this blog and lets start to grow our businesses!

Monday, January 21, 2008

Creating incoming links

One of the most important things that you can do for your web site is to create incoming links back to it!!! I can not say this enough. The more sites that you have linking to your own site the more often the search spider will crawl your site. The more sites that you have linking to yours, the higher you will be in the search rankings. In addition to it being good SEO it will also create traffic to your site.

How do you get incoming links to your site?

Request them: Find other sites that will be valuable to your visitors and send the owner of the site an email requesting a link exchange. I will usually add their link to my site first and let them know that. People sometimes feel obligated to reciprocate if you have already added their link to your site.

Link Directories: Submit your site to free directories. I do not recommend paid directories as it is possible the search engines may penalize you. Do a search for “free link directories”. Here are a few to start:

http://www.dmoz.org/
http://www.sponspot.com/internet/web_directories/
http://www.funender.com/free_link_directory/partner.php
http://www.3dollarauto.com/
http://www.alinkdirectory.com/
http://www.advertisemysite.net/
http://www.businessesonly.com/add_premium_listing//

Blogging: Start a blog and link back to your site from it. Keep it updated and exchange links with other blogs. Also, post on other people’s blogs!!! Always include your site url in the space provided.

Articles: Write articles for other people’s sites or blogs in exchange for a link to your site.

Offer something for free: Maybe you have a product that you can offer in exchange for a link back.

Forums: Post on quality forums that relate to your business. Always include your link in your signature line.

Social networking: Get involved in social networking sites. They are a great place to get your link out there and network with others who will exchange links with you. (More on social networking later)


Creating link backs is something that should be a continual NATURAL process. By natural I mean that the google does not want to see 15 links added at once (say by utilizing top 100 lists) then nothing then another 15. Instead concentrate on creating a constant flow of new links to you site. It is something that you should make time for daily or weekly.

How many are enough? The more the better. The search engines do not say what the magic number is but in my opinion “The guy with the most links wins”.

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

CONTENT, CONTENT, and CONTENT.

Take a good look at your site. Is your home page content rich with text containing keywords that have been researched for your business needs? Search engines love text and I recommend that your home page contain as much text as possible about your product or service. This text should not be any old text. It needs to contain phrases specific to your product or service.

What about your category pages? Is there a key word rich description on each category page? If you are using Solutions Cart this is easy to do yourself from your administration panel. Content is king! Your web site must be your salesperson. Make sure every category page has a great description of the products in that category. I love when each category has its own banner. If you are going to make your own banners please make them all the uniform with the same font type and color. This keeps your site looking professional. Remember though that banners are images and search engines do not see images. You must have text descriptions under each banner.

Now take a look at your product pages. Does each product have a good description? On a web site you only have images and descriptions to sell your products. You MUST make the most of both. Always include dimensions of products. So many times I see items on sites and the dimensions are not included. If a client bothers to email you to find out if that great vintage mirror will fit in their powder room, you will most likely have lost that sale by the time you reply.

Remember, when it comes to selling your products and being found in the searches: CONTENT, CONTENT, and CONTENT.

If you would like a key word analysis done for your site please contact me so we can schedule a date to work on your content. Please not that my hourly fees will be increasing in the spring so please schedule soon to get my current rates. If you are not comfortable writing your own content please contact me and I will put you in touch with a content writer that can help get you on the right tract at a reasonable price!