The term website usability has been around for quite a few years, and yet it is something that seems to be barely discussed in the more heavily trafficked marketing forums. Even so, it is interesting since it is an area of vital importance to the success of any business website. If your site is not very “usable,” then basically people will not want to use it – meaning stay there, or return – meaning not very sticky. As you know, you certainly want both in your corner if you wish to succeed on the net. Furthermore, there are many factors involved with usability, and the only way to optimize your site is to know what is going on with your visitors. That is the reason you have to consider all the accessible information. You never actually understand what can happen should you ignore particular details, criteria and other factors.

There is usually one method to monitoring your visitors, and that is through a good tracking program. What you can do is identify problem spots on your site, and next begin testing that spot to take care of the issue. We know that is not extremely high tech, but it is the state of where things are at today. Many tracking scripts are extremely simple, and of course you can use something highly effective like Google Analytics. They mostly do the same things, and then it boils down to features and benefits. Just several important areas include how long people remain on your pages as well as precisely where they enter and leave from. The best scripts will not leave you wondering about visitor behaviour on your site.

Hopefully, just as with so many other areas regarding your website, you will have to to pay more attention to some things than others. Still, the bottom line is how you wish to use it, and how much of it will impact your situation. When you engage in the overall process of increasing site usability, you are optimizing. You can optimize your site for any number of desired actions, including conversion rates; either an opt-in or a sale. The proven method or approach for optimizing anything on your website is accomplished through testing. As you may know, there is simple A/B split testing as well as Taguchi multivariate testing. Multivariate testing is much more powerful and different than split testing. You can take the somewhat blind approach and select random aspects of your pages to test. Still, if you are tracking and notice visitors are always exiting on the same page, then that is a huge clue that something on that page is causing them to leave. When you have that kind of information, now is the right time to take a more intelligent approach to your testing.

This process of enhancing does require time, but if you are serious about developing a business it is worth doing. Once you have been through the process, you will have discovered a lot plus make a lot more money. You will get your conversion rates to a rewarding level, and this really is what it is all about. Finally, your achieved result is increased success and constant business growth. However, the important point as it concerns website usability is you have to make sure you get not purely the information you need, but it has to be the right information.

If you want to dominate your niche, the key to success is to get targeted traffic to your website. One very successful strategy is to use Google News to maximize your exposure and, therefore, bring cash-carrying buyers to your web page. To begin, you’ll want to start with an optimized press release.

You might need a paradigm shift if you think that the press release is to make an announcement about your product or service. It is not. In fact, your press release is just another tool you will use to reach prospects and direct them to your website. Here is how it works.

Google news uses algorithms and continuously crawls the web. Therefore, if a prospect types in specific keywords related to your niche market in Google, related press releases and articles are immediately accessible from more than 4,500 news sources.

This is why competitive intelligence is a critical step in your Internet marketing stratagem. By knowing your market and studying your competitors, you can have an insider’s look into what prospects are searching for when they utilize Google search. Then you are going to use these targeted keywords in your articles and press releases. To stand out among the 3 million plus articles that are indexed in Google News, you will need to use the very specific search terms you have developed after studying the keywords your competition is using to cash in.

Still, you will have to go a few steps beyond just using a few specific keywords. Keyword placement is very important if you want to get more targeted traffic to your website. Include the keyword in your headline. Although there is no specific number of times that you should include that keyword in the body of your article or press release, there are ways to optimize your article to stand head and shoulders above most of your competition.

To begin with, include the keyword in the first paragraph as well as the last paragraph of your article or press release. You will also want to add the search term at least once in the body. It is very important that your article is content-rich and not just focused on throwing in keywords. You may have read articles or seen web pages where keywords are inserted recklessly and randomly into the text to optimize the site. Google prefers content-rich pages, so integrate your search terms within good writing for best results.

You might be tempted to focus on branding in your press release. Unless you are promoting a product that already has a lot of exposure, focus more on using a generic description of your product or service. That way, prospects who are looking for a keyword phrase are more likely to find your press release. Furthermore, link your press release to your website; however, create an individual page for it.

Once your press release or article gets listed in Google News, you will get more targeted traffic to your website. Your article is usually indexed within 10 minutes, so you can expect to see results fairly quickly, especially if your topic is newsworthy and timely. Once you are listed in Google News, people will see you as an authority and will visit your site more often.

One very important factor in website optimization that is often overlooked is title tags. This is the code for your page in the “head” section. Many website owners make the mistake of just using their company name on every page of their side for the title tags. Since the search engines use the title and keywords in your content, you are losing out on the chance for increased rankings.

Importance of Keywords

Before you begin building your website, you should select three or four primary keywords. There are a number of free keyword research tools available to help you find the appropriate keywords for your niche, and it is recommended that you take advantage of them to be certain that the keywords you use will work for you.

What Should  My Title Tag Include

This is where many people get lazy, and it is costing them, whether they realize it or not. By just putting your company name, it will be harder for the search engines as well as internet surfers to find you, unless you are already well known, like YouTube.com.

For the smaller business owner, it is recommended that you put your name, your city, and 2 or 3 of your primary keywords. For example, if you own Tom’s Marketing Company, “tom’s marketing SEO consulting,” would be far better than “toms marketing company.” This lets people know that you are a marketing company, and you also do SEO consulting. “Tom’s Marketing Company,” has no emphasis on what type of marketing you in fact do. You could even add your city of state, “Tom’s marketing SEO consulting California.”

You should limit your title tag to no more than 65 characters since that is the limit that most search engines will display, so avoid any unnecessary words that just waste space.

Title tag mistakes

There are five major mistakes that people make that cost them increased search engine rankings.

1. Having no title. It may sound a bit odd, but there are many sites that do not have a title. This is important as it tells the search engines what keywords to list you under.

2. Just using your company name. Unless you are well known, who the heck are you among the millions of other small business owners and marketers?

3. Using your company name on every page. You may think that having your company name on every page is helping, but in fact, many of the the search engines penalize websites that do this. Using different tags for each page will get you listed in the search engines for several keywords. In addition, it makes your page content relevant to those particular keywords for better rankings.

4. Saving file’s names incorrectly. When saving a file name, instead of saving it as the date, or your own personal method of saving files, consider using one of your keywords. Example:  Instead of saving a file as “010309.Jones,” saves it as “seminar.Jones.” If you conduct seminars, you would be using one of your primary keywords.

5. Hyperlinks. When most people put hyperlinks on their page, the use things like “Click here,” or “Read More.” Try using a keyword as a hyperlink instead, i.e. “Next SEO Conference.” Utilizing keywords helps increase your page in the search engine rankings.

These suggestions are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to search engine optimization, however, making a few simple changes in your title tags will prove to be beneficial to your online business.

Nowadays, almost everyone is trying to do everything on a budget – grocery shopping, traveling, major purchases and even internet marketing. Putting up a website is easy – it doesn’t take a whole lot of money and with Web 2.0 platforms, you could do it yourself, even if you are not that technical. Promoting your website takes a little more work, but follow some website promotion ideas, and you will see that it can be done successfully on a budget. Unless you have a nice nest egg, saving money is important and reaching your target audience with minimal out of pocket costs is just what most internet marketers are looking for in today’s economy.

Some people have a knack for internet marketing, and others need a little help along the way. Patience and persistence are the key factors to success with internet marketing. It is not a business that blows up overnight, instead it builds gradually until one day you realize that you have a steady stream of income, and you have made it. Knowing how to advertise and reach your audience should be your main focus once you have your website up and running. Remember, it doesn’t have to be perfect the first time around, and you can always make changes.

You just have to get out there and get your feet wet – stay in shallow waters until you are ready to dive in with the big fish, and believe me, there are plenty of them. You will have a lot of time to compete, but for now, let’s just focus on some website promotion ideas.

Search engine submissions and rankings are two critical parts of promoting your website. If the search engines don’t find your websites valuable, the search engine spiders won’t crawl them and if your sites don’t get crawled, you won’t get ranked. So first you must focus on your website submissions.

There are literally hundreds of search engines where you can submit your website. It is recommended that you stick with the most popular ones – Google, Yahoo, MSN/bing, but don’t forget about the others. There are two ways you can submit your website: manually and automatically. Naturally, manual submission takes more time since you have to submit to each of the search engines individually. If you are really serious about getting started, investing in software that will automatically submit your website to a number of search engines is a wise move. This will save you a significant amount of time and for less than 50 bucks, you can get your site submitted to over 640 directories just by filling out one form. You can do the math on that one.

Getting Your Website Ranked

No one really understands the algorithm of the search engines. They have a special formula that they use to determine the position in which websites are ranked. Some of the things that they use to determine this positioning are the number of links your website has (other websites, which are linked to your website), the quality of content, and the overall appearance of your website. The number of links seems to hold a lot of weight with the search engines as well as the quality of the content. This content can be in the form of articles, audio or video, so why not get that camcorder out and start filming some quality content.

Banner, classified ads and text links are inexpensive ways to increase your traffic and get your website noticed. Press releases are another way in addition to article marketing with a resource box linking back to your website.

As you can see, there are a number of ideas that you can promote your website, even if you don’t have a lot of money. There are many effective low-budget marketing strategies that have proven to work so try one or two – or try them all. In time, you will start to see increased traffic and hopefully increased sales.

Analyzing your web traffic statistics can be a priceless tool for your online business, but before you can get the most benefit of this tool, you must understand how to interpret the web traffic analysis data.

Many web hosting companies only provide you with the basics when it comes to web traffic analysis data. It is then up to you to utilize this information to the best of your ability. This web traffic analysis that you do receive from your web hosting company can be a bit overwhelming if you do not understand how to apply it to your online business, so let’s go over some of the information you may receive, so that you will understand how to use it. The basic data that you will receive will be visits to your site. These visits can be tracked daily, weekly and/or monthly.

The purpose of these figures is to measure your website’s activity accurately. At first glance, it may appear that the more traffic you see the better. In fact, most people assume that their website is doing well from viewing these figures, however, this perception is inaccurate. By seeing what your visitors are searching for, you can accurately measure your website’s activity, but disregard the first glance since it is not accurate if we speak about analising your web traffic.

“Hits” Don’t Matter

There is a myth or a misconception about what is known as “hits” and what is quality web traffic to your site. Hits are simply the number of information received by your server. If you think about it, a hit is simply a number of graphics per page. This is to give you an idea of how inaccurate the “hits” concept can be. One good example is if your homepage has 15 graphics on it, the server notes this as 15 hits when in fact it is really only one visitor checking out one page. It is for this reason that “hits” are not very useful when you do a web traffic analysis of your website.

The goal is using a web traffic analysis to figure out how well or how poorly your site is working. One way to figure this out is to see how long visitors are spending on your site. If the time spent is relatively short, there is a problem. It could be your website appearance or your content. It is up to you to figure out and fix those problems.

Importance of Keywords

In addition, web traffic analysis stats can help you determine effective and ineffective areas of your website. After you have analyzed your visitor statistics, now take a look at your keywords and keyword phrases. If certain keywords are sending visitors to your site; the more targeted the visitor, i.e. they find what they are looking for on your site, or even better, if they  fill out your contact form or make a purchase, then you know that the particular keyword(s) is valuable.

Keywords are crucial to attracting quality visitors to your site who are ready to do business with you. Careful analysis of the keywords your visitors are using to find your site will give you an understanding of your visitor’s needs and motivations.

If you notice that users are finding your website by typing in your company name, that is great news, and it means you have achieved an important level of brand recognition, which is a promising sign. As a result, always look at your web traffic analysis stats the right way and your site will be on track for success.

If you want to become number one in your niche market, it is paramount to increase web traffic to your site, to create brand recognition and to build authority. If you want to brand yourself in specific markets, there are five steps you can take to be the go-to person in your niche market.

1. Create content for the search engines

By creating good content laden with SEO keywords, you can brand yourself as an authority in your target market. You can start by searching for other businesses in your niche. Pay close attention to the keywords that they are using over and over again. If you see the same keywords on the first page, you know that these words are working. Use the same keywords in your website content to optimize your website, what will in return increase your web traffic and establish yourself as an authority.

2. Write feature articles

Feature articles are great for establishing authority in your target market. Write short articles that give value to your prospects. For instance, you can give tips to succeed in the marketplace, or you simply define certain procedures and processes that your prospects need to know. Short, focused articles can be posted on your blog, submitted to online article directories or submitted to AboutUs.org. It is important to give away free information in your niche market in order to establish yourself as an authority. People follow authorities, and the more exposure you can get, the better, resulting in an increase of your web traffic.

3. Send your content to as many sites as possible

Write to webmasters and ask if you can be a guest author on their website. Include a bio box after your article with a link to your website. If people like what you have to say, they will click on your link to get more information about who you are and your business. Focus on branding your name so it becomes widely recognizable.

4. Do interviews

If you can get an interview with an expert in your niche market, it is gold, especially if it’s a high profile interview. Post the interview on your site or use it as a giveaway in one of your promotions. Don’t forget to post it on YouTube to increase your visibility. You should also grant interviews to other marketers to position yourself as an authority. Be sure to get rights to use the interview on your website, social networking sites and on YouTube.

5. Participate in social networking sites

Social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace have a worldwide audience, and this is a great opportunity to blog about your business, your products or the services you offer. Because social networking sites post updates to your friends or followers, they will have immediate access to the latest information you have to offer. Twitter is another great resource to keep your followers up-to-date about the latest developments in your business. The updates are short and to the point, and you can post your website URLs for immediate exposure and brand recognition. This all will clearly help you increase web traffic.

To increase web traffic to your website is a matter of establishing yourself as an authority in your target market. Follow market trends, take note of what the heavy hitters are doing and above all, do what they are doing but do it better.

Have you ever experienced this scenario? You spend hours, days, and weeks (maybe months) working on your website and product creation. You might be starting simple with a blog, or you may have a product package to sell. You just know that what you have to offer is so great that the question how to get traffic to your  blog or site will be no problem, right? Not necessarily. Creating a website is only part of the equation. Getting noticed takes a little work.

The first step to getting noticed is to create fresh, original content on your site regularly. For most websites, this could be once or week or several times a week depending on your market. You’ll want to keep the information useful to your target market, so make it helpful. It is also wise to close blog entries with a teaser about the next blog to keep readers coming back for more.

While the best copy is conversation and speaks directly to the reader, don’t underestimate the value of hiring a proofreader. Too many websites and blogs these days are riddled with spelling, punctuation and grammar errors. If you don’t care enough to produce quality content, what does that say to your readers? Your website is the face of your business and if the world sees a sloppy site, visitors won’t see you as a professional. While you don’t have to have an English-teacher-ready copy, the conversational tone and style should reflect a tone of professionalism.

Next, you’ll want to optimize your copy. Use keywords in your copy that are related to your topic. Google’s free Keyword Tool can help you determine a list of relevant keywords. Search engines like original, quality copy surrounding the keywords. Don’t be tempted to use keywords in a list or to haphazardly place the words in the copy. It should read smoothly. For best results, add the keyword or keyword phrase to the title, to the first paragraph, and to the last paragraph. You should also add a few keywords in the body of the copy, preferable in the first third of it.

You can link to other high-quality websites. Consider exchanging links with other webmasters. These are called backlinks. Backlinks are, essentially, your hyperlinks on other websites. When clicked, these links point back to you site. The more backlinks that you have, the higher you’ll rank in the search engines. Sources like Digg.com and EzineArticles.com are great resources you can use to create backlinks.

If you choose to post on Digg or EzineArticles, you’ll want to create quality content that you can post on those sites. This is called article marketing. You can either write the articles yourself, or you can outsource the work. The more articles you post, the more traffic you can drive to your blog or website. Articles on these sites – and others -always include a bio box about the author as well as links that point to the author’s websites.

Even though your blog or website may be new, you can still get noticed if you follow some of the strategies above. Fresh, keyword-rich content is paramount to getting noticed by the search engines. If you work on your website consistently, post your links on other high-ranking websites and create keyword-rich, high quality articles, your website will climb in rank in the search engines, hence it solves the question “how to get traffic to your blog or new website”.

Getting targeted traffic to your site is easy if you know how to do it. One very effective strategy is to use backlinks.

Backlinks are your website links that are displayed on another website. These links literally point back to your site from the host site. If the host site has a high ranking in search engines, you will get more traffic from the exposure.

Using backlinks makes good business sense, and there are different approaches you can take to increase your site’s ranking in search engines and draw loads of traffic to your site.

1. Post in forums and message boards

Participate in niche-related forums and message boards to bring traffic to your website. Most forums allow you to post your link in your signature line, and curious posters will click on your link to check out your site. The higher the site’s ranking, the more visible your site will be.

2. Leverage article marketing

Article marketing is another great way to get visibility for your site. Post in as many article directories as possible. At the bottom of your article will be a biography box where you will describe your business and add your website link. As website owners and bloggers link to your article, your rankings improve. The key is to write newsworthy and relevant content so that others will want to link your articles to their websites.

3. Participate in social networking sites

Create profiles in Facebook and MySpace. These social networking sites have worldwide audiences, and they rank high in search engines.

4. Exchange links with another website owner

This is where you exchange links with another website owner. It is a reciprocal agreement that creates a win-win situation for both of you. Do a web search to find other sites with high rankings and ask the site owner if he is willing to trade links with you.

5. Be a guest blogger

Approach website owners in your niche market and ask them if you can submit a free article or blog to their websites. You will add fresh content to their site, and you can include a short bio and link to your site at the end of the article.

6. Purchase backlinks

This is a sticky issue because some people question whether buying backlinks is ethical; however, it is common practice among Internet marketers. When you purchase backlinks from a broker, your site’s link will show up on other sites – multiple sites – which will increase your search engine rankings.

7. Practice strength in numbers

In order to have a significant impact, you should have backlinks on as many sites as possible. There is strength in numbers, and the more backlinks you have the higher your site will rank in the search engines.

Driving targeted traffic to your site is easy if you are willing to spend a little time and effort to take advantage of all the tools Web 2.0 has to offer. The more backlinks you have, the higher your search engine rank, and the more traffic you will get on your website.

Internet marketing is not like it used to be. Today, everybody is trying to get in on the act. Even small niches often have plenty of sites vying for Google’s attention. However, what can you do to stand out and get consistent traffic?

Update Your Site

This is probably the single most important element to getting consistent traffic. After all, if you don’t show your site some love, then why should Google?

And it is not just search engine traffic that you will help out by updating. The more you update your site, the better your chances of being blogged about, socially bookmarked or being linked to on a related site.

Update on a Regular Basis

But as for Google, consistent updates – and the links that come with it – show that your site is relevant. It shows that its part of the conversation, and today’s Web 2.0 is all about conversation.

Google loves fresh, user-generated content. Authority is still important, but recency is important nowadays too. If you post new content – web pages, blog posts or both – on a regular basis, then you look a whole lot better to Google. (Not to mention the above mentioned links that come with content will also show Google and other search engines that your site is in fact relevant.)

Whether you update every day, 2-3 times a week or once a week, it is important to stay consistent about it. Stick to a schedule. This will help Google and other search engines know how often to send spiders your way.

Use Good Tools to Make it Easy

If you’re not hot on making HTML pages and don’t have the money to hire someone else to do this for you, don’t worry.

If you’re doing a content site, content management systems like Joomla can be a good way to go. WordPress, while originally a blogging platform, is also an excellent content management system.

Alternatively, if you are using an off-site blog, use WordPress and drip-feed it. You can date your articles by when you want them to appear, and they won’t post until the date you have set for them. This kind of “working in chunks” makes it easier for you to update. Just write or buy your content, plug it into WordPress and “set and forget”. Just make sure you note when the last content is set to post, and have some new content ready by then!

Use Web 2.0 Sites

Web 2.0 sites like Squidoo and Hubpages tend to index quickly in Google and often rank really well for their keywords. These pages can help you get consistent traffic to your site.

And if you are using a site like Squidoo, that uses dofollow tags, Web 2.0 sites can also help your site’s general overall ranking, which will help you get more consistent traffic as well. Just be sure and regularly add new pages as time goes on.

Getting consistent traffic to your site is doable and really not that hard, but only if you put in a consistent effort!

So you finally got your niche site up. You put up ten, maybe fifteen or twenty pages of content about your niche and put some damn good affiliate links on those pages. You have sent out some articles to get good organic backlinks, traded a few links here and there.

Maybe you discreetly bought some links to your site to give it that extra push to get that consistent website traffic. Then you made a couple of blog posts on a good site like Blogger, linked back to your site, and pinged it. You moved on to another site and waited for a while so that your first site could get out of the sandbox.

Finally, after a while, it made it! Your site has a little bit of age on it, and Google shows a bit of love. A few people see your site and maybe decide to link to it — you have probably even been socially bookmarked. The site is starting to rank well with Google, and you are making a few affiliate sales, maybe even a lot. You couldn’t be happier!

But soon, your consistent website traffic, and your sales start to drop off. What happened?

You didn’t update. You stopped adding content. You stopped blogging and bookmarking. If you were buying links, maybe you didn’t keep on with it, or maybe you didn’t keep adding them. And Google noticed.

You see, Google has a certain kind of attitude towards your website. If you’re not giving the site any attention, then why should everybody’s favorite (or at least most used…) search engine treats it any different?

You’ve got to be consistent to maintain consistent website traffic. You have got to show your site some love!

When you don’t, Google assumes that nobody cares about your site. It assumes your site maybe is not so relevant. And so it doesn’t want to rank that site anymore.

Google these days is all about recency. It is hard to establish any kind of authority anymore if you don’t have lots of activity. Even just getting links is not enough — you have got to maintain your site. You have got to update your pages, you have got to add new pages, and you have got to have links coming in on a fairly frequent basis.

How often you update your content will determine how often Google sends spiders to your site. Take a lesson from Web 2.0 social media sites. Many of those sites pretty much have Google camping out on their front doorsteps, just waiting for the chance to index them. In fact, many of these sites get indexed several times every day!

Why?

Updated content. Pure and simple. Google loves recency almost as much as it loves authority these days. It goes to sites that are active, because that indicates that users love those sites! And it is Google’s job to give people what they want.

So update your site. Give it new content regularly. If you are buying links, do that on a consistent basis — albeit discretely. Give your website some consistent attention, and Google will too, resulting in consistent website traffic for you.