Here are some helpful tips you can do on your own to promote your site visibility:

1. Use the power of your social network. If you haven’t already, create a business page on facebook and include the link to your website. Invite “fans”. Need more “fans”? Offer special promotions through your business that are only offered to “fans” on facebook.

2. Update your content constantly. if you want more traffic, you will want to continuously update your content. This is one purpose that blogs achieve—they provide fresh, updated content while upholding your professional reputation. Prospective consumers will not visit your websites if they do not have good and high quality content.

3. Get the repeat visitor. Use the “bookmark” tool and add it to your site so users can bookmark you. Make sure to always offer the customer an option to sign up for emails and special promotions.

4. Manage your links to find out what is working and what needs improvement. Link managers such as linkcounter.com and hypertracker.com can track visitors’ movements around your site, monitor clicks on links to your e-newsletters, email signatures, message board posts, search engine listings, etc. These managers can also check for invalid links on your site and show you how many visitors have downloaded something from your site.

5. Select keywords by brainstorming. What words are users going to type in to their search engine of choice to find your business? Brainstorm a list of keywords and type them in to a search engine. Who are your competitors? A good SEO campaign begins with smart keyword choices. Use these key words whenever possible in your blog and comments on other pages with links back to your site.

There are tricks to every trade. On Tuesday, we explained how search engine optimization increases website traffic. SEO employs a proven variety of techniques to attract search engine spiders and maximize indexing of your website into Internet search engine data bases. SEO vastly improves the probability that your site will be displayed on the short list when a consumer inputs a query about products, services or information offered on your website. And that short list is where you want to be. Studies have shown that most consumers never click beyond the first page of search matches. The goal of SEO is to get your site ranked highly enough by Internet search engines to put it as close as possible to the top of the first screen of query responses.

As we mentioned, there are tricks to every trade and SEO is no exception. With more than 20 years of combined experience in search engine optimization and Internet marketing, the SEO experts at Increase Visibility have developed and perfected specific techniques proven to drive maximum traffic to your website. Among the most important of these SEO techniques are keywords, title tags, URLs and linking.

• Keywords. Deciding which words to optimize for search engines is the most crucial and most difficult task in formulating a SEO plan. The words selected as keywords must match those most often used by consumers to search for what you sell. Finding the specific words that are most popular and create the highest search volumes is as much art as science. There are tools that measure search volumes for specific words, but it’s selecting the right combination of highly-relevant keywords that will bring paying customers to your site.
• Title Tags. For successful search engine indexing, the text that appears in the title bar of your browser is the single most important element on your web page. Loading this title tag with keywords maximizes indexing when search spiders crawl your web pages. Each page should have a unique title to ensure indexing. Otherwise it’s like having a shelf of books all with the same title. No one knows they’re different books.
•  URLs. URL structure is equally important. Because search engine spiders crawl URLs much as they do individual web pages, your URL should be constructed to make use of keywords rather than the default numbers assigned by many publishing systems. To avoid confusing search spiders, each page should link to a single URL.
• Linking. The way in which other sites link to yours impacts your search engine ranking. Including keywords in linking anchor text improves search engine rankings. You can encourage this by providing copy-and-paste HTML code for linkers.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the most effective way to drive traffic to your website. When consumers search for products, services or information on the Internet, Google, Yahoo or whatever search engine they use sifts through millions of websites in its data base looking for the best matches to the query. It ranks those matches according to its particular standards and algorithms and shoots them back to the consumer. While the search engine may produce thousands, even millions, of matches, only about 10 to 12 at a time are displayed on the consumer’s view screen. Most consumers will check out matches on the first page provided and a few will click to view page 2 or page 3. Beyond that, your website might as well not exist. Search engine optimization is like putting bright, blinking neon lights around your website. It tells search engines: “Here I am! Choose me!”

By targeting search engines and the techniques they use to match consumer queries to websites, SEO effectively increases the visibility of your website on the Internet highway, increasing website traffic and bringing more potential consumers to your door.

 

“The typical website gets 61% of its traffic from organic (nonpaid) search engine results, and 41% of all traffic from Google alone,” Christopher Null wrote in a recent posting to PC World’s Business Center blog, “Ensuring that the company’s site ranks highly in search results is, for most businesses, a make-or-break proposition.”

Optimizing your website to consistently gain the attention of Internet search engines requires a multi-dimensional approach that specifically targets your preferred customer base. The goal of SEO is to place your website as close to the top of the results list as possible when a consumer initiates a search related to your business/industry and the products and services you offer. It’s not a job for amateurs. Search engines are constantly changing the way they rank pages to keep up with new developments in computer algorithms, spam avoidance and technology. Web pages need to be re-optimized monthly to keep up and maintain their high rankings.

You can’t count on search engines to simply “find” you. Web pages must be manually submitted to search engines in strict accordance with highly technical guidelines developed and constantly revised to eliminate spam. Experienced SEO firms have also found that it’s not good to put all your eggs in one basket, so they also submit web pages to major directories. Directories are human-edited lists of websites that are also indexed by search engines and included in their query response data banks. Placing your website in major directories increases your opportunity to be cataloged by search engines and discovered by consumers.

On Friday: Specific SEO techniques that improve search engine rankings.

Remember when you were a kid and you went to the store with mom or dad. There was a big sign over the door announcing “Hale’s Hardware” or “Belmont Cleaners” or “Grier’s Grocery.” As you walked in, the shop owner greeted you from behind a high, polished wooden counter. Maybe he chatted with your parent while he walked around his shop, helping your parent find what he came for. They’d exchange a few more pleasantries while purchases were rung up and bagged and you were waved off to the next errand with a cheerful good-bye. Shop owners who were able to create that special personal connection with their customers thrived. People enjoyed shopping in their stores and kept going back.

Even in today’s world of impersonal big-box stores, business owners understand the value of creating a personal connection with their customers. That’s why Wal-Mart employs seniors to welcome you to the store and hand you a cart. It’s the reason someone calls out “hi” when you walk into a Staples or Best Buy. It’s why Target employees walk the aisles asking if they can help you find what you’re looking for. And it’s the reason savvy business owners today have websites.

Websites are like the polished shop counter of the brick and mortar stores of your youth. They’re what greet potential customers as they exit the Internet highway and come in the “door” to your business. The tone of your website content, the ease with which customers can move around your website, the depth of the product information provided, pictures, video feeds, Q&A features, chat rooms, forums – all of these website elements work together to build that highly-prized personal contact with your customers that keeps them coming back.

What many business owners fail to realize is that no matter how fabulous their website, no matter how gleamingly polished their “counter,” customers will never find them without a nice, big, bright “sign” over the door. When you create a website, it comes with an ordinary, little sign, your URL. But there are thousands of URLs out there littering the Internet highway, competing for customers’ attention. It’s search engine optimization that surrounds your sign with bright lights and makes it stand out above your competition. It’s search engine optimization that catches the attention of consumers and leads them to your door.

Next Tuesday: How SEO increases website traffic