When people search the web, they are usually looking for the answer to a question or problem. When you provide the answer, you are rewarded with visitors. You can then create income streams from that traffic by offering products and services of interest to your visitors.
The first step is to figure out what people are searching for. You may think you know what search terms your potential customers use, but you could be very wrong. They may use different terminology than you, so start by doing keyword research. One free resource you can use is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.
Write strong titles. I have been guilty of using titles that were too clever. Don’t go for the clever title, use titles that are descriptive. Include your keywords in titles. Promise a benefit.
Make it easy to read. People do not want to read pages of dense type on the screen. Use short sentences, short paragraphs and bulleted lists to make it easy to read.
Remember that content is more than words. Useful content may include photos, graphs and charts, audio, video, and more. Use multimedia to attract and engage site visitors.
Encourage your visitors to get involved. You may allow visitors to rate site features, make comments, post to a forum, write reviews, or even to contribute content such as articles, photos and videos.
Update your content frequently. Add new content to your site at least weekly, and more often if possible.
Put some of your content on other sites. Upload videos to YouTube.com, pictures to Flickr.com and articles to EzineArticles.com. All of these sites allow you to post your content there for free, and you can link to your site from theirs. But do not put all of your content elsewhere. Some should be exclusive to you.
Watch your stats. Your web host should provide some kind of information about how many visitors your site receives and where they came from, or you may prefer to use Google Analytics. Look at your site’s stats to see what works. What sites refer the most visitors? How many people are coming from search engine results, and for what did they search? Are you seeing spikes in traffic? Do they occur on certain days, such as the day you updated or the day your email newsletter went out? I always see an increase on the days when I send out an email newsletter.
Once you know what works, keep doing it.
