Ready? (drumroll) Here it is:
How do I get more traffic to my website?
Well. I’m a web designer and not an expert on getting more traffic to one’s website,let alone getting any traffic at all. But because I get asked this question so often I’ve made it my business to find out. Not that I am an expert but for me the design of the site is only half the battle. My outlook on having a much visited site used to be “if you build it they will come”. But I’ve long since had that notion kicked out of me. Getting traffic isn’t as simple as that. Your site has got to be offering something people want,right? But even if you are-how will they find you?
Stating the obvious.
More traffic to your site equals more money, which is why you built a website for your business in the first place.
SEO.
If you’ve read any articles on SEO you will have found out that they all say the same thing:The cheapest way to get more traffic to your website is to improve your website’s SEO (the most expensive way is to buy ads, but then you knew that).
They go on to talk about niche websites and how to corner your niche and how to place keywords on your home page (your home page is “/” as in “http://mydomain.com/”).
If you’ve ever done a search for a specific topic you may have noticed sites that just list a bunch of URLs.These sites are alot of the time in the top result pages of your search.They don’t actually provide anything other than lists of URLs, all related in some way to your search topic but usually not very useful to you. The reason these kinds of sites get into top result pages is because these URLs are keyword rich in and of themselves. And there you go.
The general shift has gone from believing in the Holy Grail of key words in the meta tag to using key words in one’s articles and pages.
People (your future customers) who look for services and products on the internet do not often delve farther than the first result page of their search.You’ll think this is very unfair because if only they’d gone to page 8 they might’ve found your site!
So look at your website. Is your home page just an image? Is there any kind of actual content in text on it? What about in the alt text for the lone image? The title text? Nothing? This isn’t helping.
Look at your navigation. Is it made up of Javascript rollovers? Is it an image map? Is it an image map with no alt text with the actual href attributes in them? YEAH? Also not helping.
On your home page, did you include anything in actual text (did you type it or did you make it into an image?) that relates (in a keyword rich kind of way) to the product or service you want to sell? NOPE? Totally not helping.
Switch from Tables For Layout site design to a HTML and CSS.
This is not just me saying Tables Bad, though I do believe they are bad when used for for layout.
The Muddy water: Loads of Tables For Layout websites have good search engine results & Really obstinate people ♥ to list all the big sites that use Tables.
Well, SmartyPants, The USE of Tables doesn’t mean it is a Tables For Layout.
Some designers use tables in forms and galleries or anywhere they feel they need some easy alignments.
I’m not saying that is groovy I’m just saying it isn’t Tables For Layout to do so.
How many pages make up your website. Do you have a beauty of a time keeping them all consistent?
Don’t you agree it would be easier to maintain a website with one Stylesheet rather than trying to update 1,000 HTML documents?
SEO experts advise moving all embedded CSS and javascript to external files. This is supposed to declutter your document head, allegedly to allow the deeper crawling of actual content. This is also kind of good to do so that your site isn’t searchable for it’s embedded styles but rather for its content.
On The Other Hand:
The O in SEO stands for Optimization, not Magic Bullet.
Fact:
Sites get ranked based on how long they’ve been up and running. On the other hand, brand new sites get top listings because they are new.
Most of my clients paid someone (else) to build their website for them. This someone may not have paid any attention to any of the points I just made. I do not believe that the previous designer meant to throw a spanner in the works for their client. They, like their client, just didn’t know. They were paid to make a website and they made a website.
Yet.
I believe my duties as a designer extends beyond picking a nice color scheme and whipping up some pretty graphics. I may not be able to instantly deliver your site to the top of search results pages but the least I can do is make sure the site I build doesn’t hamper the process.
Where can the client help?
The client can help by being confident enough about their business to toot their own horns. What’s this business all about? What makes it so fabulous? You ought to know the answer to this question.
The Client Should Write The Copy!
Please don’t assume it is the designer’s job to write copy for you. That’s not only lazy it is also not going to help you in the long term.
Clients who have a firm grasp on what their business provides to consumers tend to provide excellent copy that I can use in their home pages. It’s so much more important to have 3 keyword rich paragraphs on your home page than it is to have an attractive image on the home page. Robots don’t “see” images. People see them so that’s nice.
And there is no rule you can’t have both!
Have a blog. Blogs are good for SEO. But.
The potentially damaging thing about attaching a blog to your business website is the subjects you will discuss there. And the language you will use.
If your blog’s posts are of a political bent your customers will be put off by your stance no matter what. Unless your business is the exposure of mendacity of political agenda, skip politics.
Look at other business blogs, see how they consistently post articles about their products or services and not what their baby/dog/little nephew did this morning that was so cute? See how they never mention what an ass they think George W.Bush is? Emulate.
Don’t use rough language
We all cuss and that’s a fact. But blogs peppered with four letter words offend and offended people don’t like to buy stuff from folks who have offended them. Don’t cuss. Don’t even allude to a swear word. Just don’t do it. If you must swear try to do it in a humorous way — it’s just not that easy to be so funny that folks won’t want to wash your mouth out with a bar of soap. I swear in my posts every now and then but I’m an artiste. Perhaps I should take my own advice?
Get a Sitemap
Even a text file based sitemap helps. The better options is xml. There’s a sitemap generator plugin- for WordPress. Google WebMaster Tools is the place to go for explanations on sitemaps,sitemap generators and xml.
Take your website into your own hands.
Update your website.
The more you put into it the more you will get out of it. Websites that were thrown up 2 years ago and haven’t been touched since aren’t going to get a lot of traffic or repeat traffic for that matter. If you decide to make a change the best thing you can do is make sure your site is updateable by you.
This is why I build and rebuild sites around WordPress. WordPress allows me to make a website that is easily updateable by my clients and they do not have to know any html.You may know html like the back of your hand but in my experience loads do not.They are terrfied of it and when I start trying to get them to use any their eyes glaze over and…you get the idea.
Credit
WordPress is incredibly easy to use which is why it makes such a great CMS. I can make sure that the theme formats every aspect of their content without them ever having to touch html–beyond what is easily provided by the WYSIWYG buttons.And WordPress has made it possible for me to say utterly confidently “I can do that” when a client asks me to add a feature to their site because of all the plugins available.
Plugins that Rule
Without a doubt the best plugin I’ve ever used is the CForms Plugin by deliciousdays.com.Because it makes any kind of forms for you it takes the pain out of creating goodlooking,functioning, xhtml correct,easily edited forms.One of the most painful not to mention T-E-D-I-O-U-S jobs of a website designer is creating forms. I can’t thank them enough for this plugin.
Robert Felty authors a cool plugin called Collapsing Categories.Makes it a snap to have clickable open sub categoriespretty much just by activation and adding the widget to the sidebar. So far I’ve only used it once but it awesomely solved a specific request from a client -check it out.
Summary
Have actual text in your pages and use product/service-appropriate keywords in them and don’t overlook the importance of keywords for your service/product in text content for the home page.
Use correct document structure without a messy nest of font tags or tables or javascript to block robots crawling the content.
Update your site frequently.
Don’t try to be the next Rush Limbaugh in your posts if your blog is attached to your
business website,steer clear of politics. Never four-letter-words if your blog is attached to your business’s website,either.
*My clients all seemed to have had a tables for layout website with an image with no alt text on the home page…which is why I go on about it so much in this article.