Traffic Educator

I thought it would be good to get everyone started with 5 easy tasks you can do to start getting yourself noticed. While doing these tasks alone cannot guarantee that you will rank number 1 today, they will set the ground work for larger projects you can work on in the future. Remember, this is just to get your feet wet, so don’t worry too much about being perfect. We will work on perfect later.

1. Check your spelling
One important thing to remember about the search engines is that they go through your site and see what’s there. If you have words spelled wrong, then the search engine is not going to know what it is your site is talking about. Some people may argue that the search engines are smart enough to do some basic spell checking when they are going through your site, but think about it this: if you can’t get the spelling right on your site, do you really look more important than a site that can spell everything correctly?

An easy way to do this is to copy all of the text on a single page of your website and paste it into Microsoft Word or Google Docs or some other word processing application and use the spell checker built into these applications. Then make the changes to the text on your website that you need to make sure the spelling is correct.

Remember, people searching for your site will be typing words into a search box to find your site. If you haven’t spelled those words correctly on your site, then they will not find a match there.

2. Start a blog
A blog is technically a web log, but you might as well think of it as an online journal. This site, for example, is a blog. If your company does not have a blog, then you are missing out. Blogs give you a chance to provide valuable information to your potential customers and visitors. The more information you can provide, the more valuable resource you become. The more valuable you are perceived, the higher you potentially could rank on the web.

To get started without having to install any software on your own, check out one of these two, free, blogging sites:

www.blogger.com
www.wordpress.com

When you are writing articles, make them relevant to the content on your website. If you are selling flowers, talk about caring for roses, how to get that florist smell at home, what flowers are good for what occasion, etc. This is also a great place for you to discuss sales and features of your website.

Make sure that every article you write has some sort of link back to your main website. The idea is to provide information so valuable that the people reading your blog will follow the links to your site.

3. Pick your keywords
This part can be tricky (and will soon be a part of several more posts), but it is important to start right away. Pull out something easy to take notes on (paper, word document, spreadsheet, doesn’t matter) and start writing down every word or phrase that you think it important about your site. Think about what you would use to search in Google to find your site. Using the flower shop site, here are some examples:

• online florist
• roses
• valentine’s gifts
• fresh flowers
• flower delivery

At this point, it doesn’t matter how vague or generic your list is (we will work on putting together a more comprehensive, targeted list together later); what matters now is that you come up with as many words and phrases as possible that go along with the theme of your website. Spend some time on this, it’s important.

Finished? How many do you have? The goal for this round is 20; if you don’t have 20, go back to brainstorming and come up with some more (check out reference.com if you need some help). Have more than 20? Then pick your 20 most compatible keywords.

Now go through your site and see how many times you can see these keywords show up. Lots of times? Sometimes? Never? If they aren’t in your content, consider adding them. These are the first pass at the words you think are important about your site, if they don’t show up, how will anyone find them?

Tuck these words away for later. They are what you need to focus on from now on, what you will be evaluating yourself against, and what you need to make sure your site content focuses on.

4. Re-write your content
So what happens if your keywords are on your site? Or what happens if you look at your site and see that there are lots of pictures, but not much text? Let’s say you own the online flower shop, do you describe your product “Roses” as just “Roses” or maybe even “Red Roses?” Search engines are looking at the text on your website and eating it all up. If there is nothing there, they have very little to compare user searches against.

Go through the text on your website and make sure the text fits both of the following criteria:

• The text is descriptive, contains lots of adjectives, fully describes what you want it to describe
• Reads naturally, as if you were reading a book
  

It’s easy to stuff descriptions full of descriptive words, but make sure it isn’t distracting. You want to please your readers as well as the search engines!

5. Make some friends
This might seem strange, but the web has made it important to make friends in order for people to find you. Start collecting a list of other websites that write about whatever it is that your website is about. For example, Mr. Flower Shop Owner, look for websites dedicated to gardeners, blogs by people who love flowers, romance websites, or anything else that might have an interest in your site. Be careful not to include in this list anyone who might compete with you (but write them down somewhere else, competitors will give us good information in another article).

Once you have this list, reach out and talk to the people who are running these sites. Introduce yourself to the owners and tell them what your site is about. Join any online discussion groups and contribute to the community. Respond to blogs where people have questions or comments about something you know a lot about.

The point of this exercise is to start making a name for yourself; you want to be seen as someone with lots of experience in your field, someone who can be trusted. Once you reach that point, people will start to follow you to your site, will start to write about you, and your popularity in the search engines will rise.

That’s it for today’s list. Try it out and start getting things rolling. If you have any questions about the 5 easy steps, feel free to post them here or use the Contact link above to get in touch with us. And keep checking back for more information on getting your website lots of good, high quality traffic!