Sunday, June 7, 2009

Easy Ways to Get More Targeted Traffic to Your Website

By Ricardo d Argence

If you have built a business website, it will only be successful if you can get targeted website traffic to visit it and stay on it long enough to get your message and act on it.

The more time a visitor spends on your site the more likely it is that they will get your message and take action. Enticing visitors to click through the pages of your website is a good way to keep them on your site. You can increase page views in four easy steps:

1. Your website should have well-written, unique content that's relevant to your subject matter. Don't simply "try to sell" people on your product or services. Instead, have the honest intent of delivering quality information to your prospective customers. If you give visitors what they need, they'll keep coming back and might even recommend your site to others. In addition, search engines pick up good content, which means you'll be more visible and will get more traffic as a result.

2. Keep your copy short and simple: Some people find it difficult to string a single sentence together; others never know when to stop! When it comes to website copy, remember the good old acronym, K. I. S. S. - keep it short and simple!

The information you present should be concise and easy to read. Paragraphs should be short and to the point. It's a well-known fact that Internet writing has to be shorter than print writing because people's attention spans are shorter when they surf.

Now, that doesn't mean you can't present an excellent, several thousand words-long article, but it DOES mean you probably should break it up into smaller installments that people can read in short increments. This also helps you with "click through" rates (which also helps you with search engine ranking), because having people go to the "next section" at the bottom of each short section by strategically placing a link there is only going to encourage them to stay and keep reading -- and keep clicking through, too.

3. Formatting and highlighting are key, too. Similar to sales copy, if you have headlines that pop and phrases that stand out, you're going to make your copy more interesting to read. If you have long chunks of plain, boring black-and-white text with no breaks, no headlines, no colors to break things up, people will be very likely to get bored and stop reading.

You can increase the time they spend on your site by highlighting all the keywords and keyphrases. Dont be afraid of white space, either. Generally speaking, highlighted text that is laid out with plenty of white space around it is attractive to the eye and helps the visitor to scan the page, which will be appreciated. Break up longer articles into pages that deal with different sections of your theme and invite the visitor to go to next page by posting a link at the bottom of each section.

4. Put some article "teasers" and a site map on your first page. The site map, of course, makes it easier for people to get around your website (and makes the job easier for search engine spiders, too), which they'll thank you for by coming back to visit often. And the article "teasers" on the first page encourages people to click through and read more -- again, making you a darling of both your visitors and search engines, which will only increase your visibility and therefore your targeted traffic.

The above steps are very simple ways that will help people to find and visit you; if you use them, you'll also keep visitors coming back for more. This will give you more page views, more targeted traffic and better business success.

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