centresource interactive agency

Given the sheer volume of websites, it’s understandable why gaining visitors to your website is so difficult. According to Google’s 2004 statistics, you’re competing with 8 billion other web pages that want visitors as much as you do. If this makes you feel helpless (and that your website is worthless), take hope! There are two very popular methods for increasing traffic to your website: Pay-per-click and Search Engine Optimization.

First things first

The first step to generating traffic for your website lies with understanding why you originally decided to create the website. Was it for credibility and marketing? eCommerce transactions? Interaction with the visitor? Determining why you created your site is the most important part of an overall traffic generation strategy since it determines the type of visitors you want – and what you’ll do with them when the arrive. So many businesses fail to complete this step and it erodes the effectiveness of any traffic generation technique they choose.

Once your site is ready for visitors and achieves its intended purpose, start generating web traffic with a ‘Guerilla Marketing’ approach – tell everyone about your website. Determine ways you can drive your current customers and vendors to your website on a repeated basis. Techniques include posting sales literature, RFPs, surveys, frequent buyer clubs, industry news, and other items valuable to the visitors you want coming to your site. By effectively using your website for those that already know your business, your website gains popularity and transforms into a central part of your business. The more your company uses it, the more ideas will emerge on how to make it better. So begins your transition to making your website an integral part of your business.

Pay-per-click (PPC)

PPC is when a company pays for ‘clicks’ that take visitors to their website. This traffic typically originates with search engine networks such as a Google, Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly known as Overture), and FindWhat. These three search networks account for 98% of the paid search networks.

To generate traffic, a company can ‘bid’ on specific positions in a search results page based on specific keywords. Specifically, your company can determine a key phrase that target customers would use in a search engine – and can appear in the results when that phrase is searched for. The top ad position generates the most ‘clicks’ and costs more than lower ad positions. You can see PPC ads when you do a search on Google.com – the ads are located on the right side of the search results page.

For highly desired phrases, PPC can be very expensive since search networks employ a bidding system. If your company wants the top position (and the most clicks), then you must bid a higher amount per click than your competition. It’s an imprecise science that can be costly if done incorrectly. Entire courses are devoted to effectively managing a PPC campaign and cover issues such as ROI per ad position and how to design creative ‘landing’ pages for visitors that click through your advertisement.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

When a person uses a search engine, the search results (those that are not paid advertisements) are known as natural results. Placement on the first page of the natural results is highly coveted and can only be achieved if the search engine determines your site is the best match for that search phrase. Natural search engine rankings are primarily based on:

• Content – The textual content that an engine can analyze
• Structure – How easy can an engine crawl your entire site
• Popularity – The number and relevance of inbound links to your website

Most companies design their website based on functional and aesthetical requirements – not around SEO factors. Once the site is complete, companies are frustrated to learn that they don’t appear in any search engines.

SEO describes a score of techniques used to optimize a website for increased search engine rankings. There are many reputable services that will assist with SEO, but the process can be costly, require ongoing management, and may take 3+ months to even see a change in your rankings. It’s also important to realize that even the best SEO efforts cannot guarantee placement at the top of the coveted first page. The most direct explanation is that another competitor may conduct a SEO campaign on their site as well – thus increasing the competition for the #1 page results. Despite this risk, a successful SEO campaign is the most cost effective method for generating traffic to your website.

Below you’ll find 7 examples of SEO techniques that can increase your natural rankings:

1. Register your website with every free search engine and directory you can find.
2. Pick 2 or 3 ‘phrases’ you want to be found by and make sure those phrases are all over your site.
3. Avoid using images for text. Search engines cannot analyze images for content.
4. Try to have at least 200 words of content on each page.
5. Create a Sitemap and link to it from the Home Page. Search engines love Sitemaps and will use it to find the other pages on your website.
6. DO NOT TRY TO TRICK THE SEARCH ENGINES. Hidden text, long lists of repeated phrases, and other dubious tricks can get your site completely banned from a search engine.
7. Make sure all images have an ALT TAG (alternative text that represents the image to the search engine, text based browsers, and handicap accessible viewers).

PPC and SEO are real techniques that can result in significant traffic to your website. PPC results in immediate traffic, but can be very costly over a long period since you always have to pay for every visitor. SEO is risky and can be expensive on the forefront, but is most cost effective over a longer period of time since you aren’t paying for each visitor. The good news is PPC and SEO provide clear strategies for getting visitors to your site.

Nicholas Holland is President and CEO of CentreSource Inc., an IT infrastructure and custom development firm that creates websites and provides traffic generation services such as PPC management and website SEO. Additional information for the Nashville-based company can be found at http://www.centresource.com.